Word: leukemias
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...acute leukemia that attacks children is an especially cruel disease, not only because of the helplessness of its victims but because of the problems that it creates for parents, brothers and sisters. Until the 1950s, the average survival time for a child, after the diagnosis of acute leukemia, was well under a year. Now, with half-a-dozen palliative but no curative drugs available, the average survival time is about five years in major medical centers, and a handful of patients have held on for ten years or longer. The harsh fact remains, however, that a diagnosis of leukemia-cancer...
...University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, four pediatric hematologists recently got together with a psychiatrist and a social worker to find out just what is the emotional effect of a child's leukemia on the parents, on siblings and on the victim himself. More important, the researchers wanted to find out what could be done to reduce the impact. That something needed to be done was obvious from the fact that in at least one half of the 20 families studied, some relative had required psychiatric care...
Shielding Parents. The very first question, says Psychiatrist Charles M. Binger, reporting for the group, was how soon the parents learned of the child's disease. In eight of the families studied, parents had suspected leukemia before any doctor ever mentioned it. The parents' first reactions ranged from outward calm to outright loss of control. Most suffered physical distress within the next few days or weeks, besides depression, anger, hostility and self-blame...
...parents that they were aware of the seriousness of their disease and even anticipated their premature death." The parents of 14 children tried to shield them from the diagnosis, yet eleven of these children indicated their sense of impending death. Only two teen-agers were told that they had leukemia and that there was no known cure for it. As a result of frank discussions, both their families reported "a more meaningful relationship with their child...
...Pete Seltzer. His public wit runs to doubletalk and the invention of nonsense "end" products: after-shaving mints, dietetic shampoo, reversible mayonnaise. "He thinks Cameroons are some kind of cookie," she reflects bitterly. But they marry anyhow and live together until their nine-year-old son dies of lingering leukemia...