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Darryle Pollack: Okay, well I am telling you, telling my children was for me, definitely
the hardest part of everything and I tell you, things have really changed. When I was
young, when I was 18, I had a younger brother and younger sister and just to give you an
idea or perspective, my mother had cancer but no one told us and she died of cancer,
and we still were not told that she had cancer. Cancer was a word that nobody spoke. It was
always ‘she has cancer’…you know, nobody ever said it and I didn’t find out until
several years after she died.
So this was a big issue for me because I felt that I hadn’t been told and I needed to
tell my children but they were very…you know, I had a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old
and they each could understand different things and they are today, again, 17 years later,
there are so many wonderful books. There are resources that will help you tell your children.
I was at this survivor’s conference. There’s now videos. There’s things online which
kids are all very comfortable with sometimes.
Mia Curtiss: I’d like to interject something. For me personally, with my kids I felt that
how I handled myself was going to directly affect them for the rest of their lives. This
was a life lesson placed in front of me and I could either choose to rise to the occasion,
and for me it was being honest with my children at all times and teach them a life lesson
that they would carry with them throughout their journey in life and learn that people
don’t live forever, people don’t have hair, not everybody has hairs, some people
get fat, some people are sick. They all learn something from my journey.
Darryle Pollack: Also I think we have to remember that children, each have their own ways of
absorbing things. I think you are absolutely right Mia and I was also very honest with
my children but to give you an idea, now my children are older and at the time I think
one of the things that I…because I felt so strongly ‘why did this happen to me?
Why is this happening to my children?’ I am leaving aside the fact that I thought they
would be left without a mother, which they weren’t, but besides that, why did my children
have to suffer and the interesting thing was how they’ll look at it.
So I’ll just give you an example of how they can look at it. When I lost my hair,
my hair started to fall out. My son used to sleep at the bottom of a bunk bed and so one
night I leaned out under to say good night to him, kiss him good night, and some of my
hair fell on him. Okay, and we laughed about it or whatever. We told my daughter about
it later. My son was 5 or 6 then.
So then a couple of weeks later I got my first fake breast – a prosthetic breast and I
had just popped it into my regular bra and I lean over again to say good night to my
son and the prosthesis pops out of my bra, hits him in the face and we burst out laughing.
So my daughter, this is to show you what children’s perspective, my daughter comes in from the
room. She goes, “What’s so funny? Why are you all laughing?” And we tell her what
happened and she goes…she looks at me and she goes, “Mom”, she goes, “You know
last week your hair fell out on Daniel, now your breast falls out on Daniel”, wait,
she says to me, “It’s not fair – all the good things happen to Daniel.”
So you know, years later I really do think that you know, I have enough respect now to
see this and how it’s affected my children and I have to say that I think this challenge
made them the people they are today. They are both young adults and when I look around
at kids, I mean maybe, they did suffer a bit for this but in the end, it made them much,
much stronger people and it’s not like I’d say ‘oh it was great to have cancer’ but
it gave them something and I think more than anything, Mia you are right that I think if
you ask my children what do you think of everything your mom has ever done, I would say they are
most proud of how I was as a cancer survivor.