Episode 11: Kids in the Hospital?

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If you had young children when your loved one had their first surgery, did you have them come to the hospital to see them? 

We didn’t.  

My daughter was 9 when my husband had his thyroid removed in an unsuccessful attempt to remove all the cancer from his body. As soon as we had a surgery date my husband looked at me and told me he didn’t want her to come to the hospital while he was there. 

The plan we created was, my daughter would stay at home with my sister who flew up to help us. She would continue her days at school and hanging out with her aunt while we were in the hospital.

I had no reason to challenge his wish. There are times when your loved one will say something to you and you feel how important it is for them. This was one of those times. 

He knew he wouldn’t feel or look good after surgery and he didn’t want her to be scared for him. He didn’t want her to see him hooked up to IVs and in pain. Let’s face it, it’s uncomfortable for adults to see each other that way. Why would we want a child to go through that without having the ability to process it at that age?

At 9 my daughter lived in this beautiful bubble where life was fun and exciting and there wasn’t a care in the world. We didn’t keep from her that her dad had cancer. She knew and she understood as much as a person her age could. But we didn’t make it scary for her. As you know from past episodes we chose to keep things at home positive, which may have reduced the amount of anxiety she had. 

So, we left her at home. She was safe. She got to school and she had fun with having family all to herself.  It was the right decision at the time.  

I’ll be honest, to not have to worry about her was a gift for me. I was exhausted and stressed out at the hospital. I didn’t really have the capacity to be able to take care of her at the same time. Driving back and forth between the hospital and home would have been 2 hours of driving each day and difficult to do.

Was it the right decision? Here’s the thing about looking back at the decisions you make as a caregiver - it isn’t fair for you to do. 

You have the luxury of looking back on things knowing what the outcome was and not being in the middle of the chaos and stress of cancer. Sure we all have things we can say would have gone better if we’d done them differently. But I think it’s a load of crap to think you should be hard on yourself because you could have known better and done things a different way. 

You can say that now but you couldn’t see the other options then. 

So if you did your best with the amount of information you had at the time then you should be secure in knowing you did what you thought was right! 

I am always trying to figure things out on the fly.  I find that caregivers really don’t talk to each other and have real discussions. If we even have the energy to talk about things we are usually worried that we will be judged by the decisions we’re making. What we should really be doing is start the conversations with - I think I really messed this up but I’m going to try to learn from it. Or, can you believe the crap that happened at the hospital last week I can’t believe it ! Or better yet - I am scared that —— or I think I messed up but ———-.

I get it, as a caregiver you are always second guessing yourself. A lot of the decisions you make can be life changing. Do you decide to do radiation or surgery. That’s a big decision. But those are decision we can make with our loved one along with the guidance of a doctor. 

I’m talking about the day to day decisions that we don’t have anyone there to help us make. The decisions we don’t have medical studies to help us weigh the pros or cons. Decisions like - do I set him up to sleep in the living room or try to make the bed comfortable for him? That insecurity is what makes it easy to second guess ourselves and the more we do that the less confidence we have in the decisions that we make. 

We don’t know what we are doing. How can we? We are all figuring it out on our own.

So, take a look at how you decide on things next time. If you question what the right thing to do is stop and ask yourself what feels like the right thing to do? Ask your loved one what they would like for you to do and be secure in the decision you made. 

That’s what we did. It felt right to let my daughter stay at home. If she would have cried to come see us we would have considered it. However, every time I talked to her she was ok with being there so we didn’t question it.

Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. It’s ok. 

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