When a Parent Has Cancer: A Guide to Caring for Your Children

“Provides comfort, reassurance, and practical advice . . . The combination of the parent guide and the children’s story . . . is extraordinarily effective.” —Diane Blum, MSW, Executive Director, Cancer Care, Inc. At some point in our lives, many of us will face the crisis of an unexpected illness. For parents, the fear, anxiety and confusion resulting from a cancer diagnosis can be particularly devastating. When a Parent Has Cancer is a book for families written from the heart of experience. A mother, physician, and cancer survivor, Dr. Wendy Harpham offers clear, direct, and sympathetic advice for parents challenged with the task of raising normal, healthy children while they struggle with a potentially life-threatening disease. Dr. Harpham lays the groundwork of her book with specific plans for helping children through the upheaval of a parent’s diagnosis and treatment, remission and recovery, and if necessary, confronting the possibility of death. She emphasizes the importance of being honest with children about the gravity of the illness, while assuring them that their basic needs will always be met. Included is Becky and the Worry Cup, an illustrated children’s book that tells the story of a seven-year-old girl’s experiences with her mother’s cancer. “Both the guidebook and the story are sympathetic, sensitive to intense emotions, and, above all, empowering to parents and children facing the significant changes life-threatening illness demands of a family.” —Booklist “When a Parent Has Cancer reaffirms that life does go on. The book should help give children and their parents a context within which to deal with life after cancer and to ‘find the courage to face the future honestly, with love and hope.’” —Journal of the American Medical Association