My Sick Kid

Just before my eldest daughter's third birthday she started getting a bit sick. She would vomit occasionally, would have trouble going to the bathroom and generally just not be one hundred percent. We took her to the GP a few times, they did a few tests, but in general it seemed to be clocked up to just the general random sicknesses that kids get.

To cut a much longer story short, it wasn’t that. She had a growth in her stomach that was causing her a great deal of discomfort and impacting her bladder. My wife and I spent what I can only describe as the worst and longest night of my life waiting to find out what the growth was in hospital. It turned out not to be cancerous (which is what we spent all night preparing ourselves for) but would require a couple of surgeries and a long series of medications to sort out.

I could talk about the specifics of what happened to her. But what I want to talk about is how I dealt with it at the time, what tools I’ve developed since and how I’d hopefully deal with it now. Because, like I’ve said before, hoping that bad things won’t happen in life is not a sustainable way to live. I’m hoping that what I’ve learnt will help me when tough times arise, and maybe they might help you if you find yourself in a similar position.

You think you are your child's guardian and protector. But when it comes to illness, unless you work in the field, you are way out of your element. You can do nothing to help. It’s incredibly demoralising and emasculating. Your mind is saying, I want to prevent you from coming to harm, but now we are face to face with it and all I can do is stand aside. Let someone else who you don’t know take charge. Knowing that the one who can help your child get better isn’t you, but some stranger, is hard to take.

Now that might sound like ego talking. But there is something more animal and innate about it. As a parent, it’s not about you. You love your child more than you love yourself. Handing over the role of key protector to someone you don’t know is scary in a primal way. How can you trust that they want the best for your kid. It goes against every natural instinct you have to pass your child into the care of someone else when they are vulnerable.

Now we are in a very fortunate position, our sister in law is a paediatric nurse. So we often would call her to discuss what was happening and get her opinion on things. But for most people, that isn’t an option. But to be honest, even with that, having a child in hospital with an unknown illness is just about as nerve wracking an experience as you can have.

I have dedicated a session or two of my own therapy to this topic. Hence why I’m writing about it. I want to share my own reflections and some coping mechanisms I developed out of those conversations.

One of the big things I did was blame myself for things that were out of my control. I found that I was beating myself up about not preparing my daughter for something that I didn’t even really understand. So not only did I feel useless for not knowing what was coming myself, I’d see her scared and uncomfortable and in my head that would become my fault too. It was a brutal cycle. Living in that state of anxiety and self-blame for an extended period catches up on you. It drove me inside myself. I couldn't support my wife the way I wanted to, because I couldn’t get out of my own head for long enough. I spiralled downwards.

What this meant was that I wasn’t the best version of myself. Not for me. Not for my wife, and certainly not for my daughter. What I know now, and if I ever find myself in this position again, I’ll make sure that I take time to recognise my own headspace. The only thing I could really control was how I reassured and supported my family. As well as being a measured and thoughtful intermediary/advocate for my daughter with the doctors. To do this I’ll use some of the activities in my modules. The obvious one is an anxiety audit. With so much going on, taking time to understand what you can control and impact will help you, and in turn those around you.

Communication and connection is hugely important too. I was certainly guilty of not sharing some thoughts and feelings with my wife. I can see how that could evolve into a problem over time. Don’t stop talking with your partner. You are both incredibly stressed, adding a feeling of isolation to that is not helpful. The same also goes for your child. They pick up on everything. Watching you pace up and down, knowing that something is making you stressed but you not telling them anything is also not helpful. I get the idea of trying to ‘be strong’ for your child. That’s what I thought I was doing. In reality, what she needed me to be was to be honest. Acknowledging my fear (obviously shared age-appropriately) and the situation as a whole is important. In a similar position now, I would communicate far more openly with everyone around me.

This is helpful, but to be honest, the first thing you need to do is breathe. This is something I didn’t do at the time. I remember the tightness in my chest from the anxiety being unending. But I hadn’t yet properly learnt how to use my breath to deal with those feelings and symptoms. So instead everything I was doing and thinking was coming from a position of high anxiety. My thinking couldn’t possibly be clear and I couldn’t reassure anyone else with any sense of conviction. The skills I’ve developed, and I encourage everyone else to develop, are around your own physical ability to calm yourself. Breath is the best way to do this. Practice it now, so it is there for you when you really need it.

There are also a couple of practical things about being in a hospital that I also learnt. The first, write down your questions for the doctors. You get a very minimal amount of facetime with them and it is easy to get flustered and feel rushed. So doing a bit of prep before they appear is always helpful. The second, you will spend a lot of time sitting around waiting. In fact, that’s pretty much most of your time. How you spend that time will impact how you react when things start to happen. It feels like down-time, and you should certainly take time to switch off, but some of it should be used on things like the exercises I’ve mentioned. Like I’ve said in other pieces I’ve written, you’re also role-modelling this for you child. They are worried too, it’s very unsettling for them. Building up coping skills with them is of benefit for them too.

It’s still hard remembering this time. Occasionally my phone will pop up a ‘memory’ of a photo of my daughter in hospital, and it still knocks me. But with time and personal growth, I’ve processed things in a way that (hopefully) makes me better equipped in the future. I hope that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation this might be a little help to you too. It’s about as scary and anxious a time as a parent can have, and we all need help if we find ourselves in that position.