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A Big Story (working title)    by Carolyn McDaniel This is a story about families in crisis. It is not about the typical dysfunctional American family however, but about those whose child has been diagnosed with cancer. America may be a nation in crisis, but nothing else compares to the effect of a child’s critical illness. The family beset by a child’s illness quickly becomes a microcosm of the world’s ills. In every day of 2006 over 3800 Americans were diagnosed with cancer. Twentysix of these were children. Statistically, that’s a small number. But statistics cannot relate the human condition behind the numbers, and numbers cannot portray the trauma within families affected by a child’s critical illness. Statistics, generalities, “one-size fits-all” diagnoses and treatments fail to address the very real needs of the individual patient within the individual family. It is cliched but true: crisis brings out both the best and worst in people. Children’s cancer brings out the absolute best and absolute worst in people. Severe illness in a child involves not only everyone in a family, but everyone in the child’s sphere: the extended family, the schools, the institutions of the community. Cancer is the great leveler, transcending everything that defines the individual: gender, status, ethnicity, education, intelligence: everything. A whole new kind of family support system must be generated that offers help and hope, and must be accomplished at a time when no one in the family is functioning at their best. In addition to all the other factors, there are unique problems associated with diagnosis and treatment of children with any disease, and cancer is no different. Young children cannot express and explain symptoms, their symptoms often mirror normal growth and developmental patterns, and importantly, children cannot make medical decisions for themselves. These conditions along with others inherent in childhood illness impose almost overwhelming stress on all members of an afflicted family. Reactions among those afflicted with potentially life-threatening diseases vary of course, and often with cancer the reactions are extreme. Some persons cannot bring themselves to even say the word, and resort to euphemisms: “The Big C,” a “tumor,” or simply “It.” Some seek alternative treatments and alternative medicines, sometimes with the tragic result that the alternative treatment keeps them from pursuing more orthodox plans that might have altered the outcome. The other side of the coin is that traditional medicine often rejects the very positive aspects of incorporating homeopathic treatment. There is so much that isn’t known, so much that can’t be known, and so much fear about the effect of the unknowing, and always, looming there, the Damocles sword of the consequences of making the wrong choices. With children’s cancer those reactions and fears are magnified and multiplied because it is not easy to make decisions that are literally life-altering for someone else. As moral, thinking persons mature, they learn to philosophically reject controlling the lives of adults with whom they interrelate. Parenting requires very different attitudes. It is morally wrong not to set standards and boundaries of behavior for one’s children. Within the context of a child’s illness, parents are faced immediately with the terrible dilemma of not only dealing with the problems the patient faces, but also with the added dimension of making life-altering decisions for their beloved child, who cannot make decisions for him/herself. The family also faces many persons in the chain of influence who routinely face making decisions for others, and who seem to do so with impunity because there are no life or death consequences for them. Many times, to the distraught family members it seems as if pharmacological producers, the treatment centers, doctors and care providers, myriad social workers, and insurance companies are playing medical poker with straight faces because they are playing with somebody else’s chips. For poor families already forced to make wrenching decisions about apportioning their income, a child’s cancer diagnosis quickly becomes a nightmare. Catastrophic illness is the generic insurance term. But in all too many families already financially challenged, the catastrophe is compounded. Health insurance is simply one more unaffordable luxury. The family that has no insurance quickly finds that poverty imposes implications beyond the restrictions and social stigmas they may have experienced previously. Acceptance of the condition itself along with diagnosis and treatment assumes many forms, depending on the individual circumstances. Acceptance doesn’t mean fatalism or ruling out hope and positive action. Essentially it becomes simply dealing with reality. All along the way the family encounters both facilitators and road-blockers, nurturers and negative forces, persons of authority who hold some key to success in the process, but who lack understanding and compassion for the individual and individual difficulties. Each family copes with the Damocles Sword; arrogance, fear, judgment and indifference in others, indecision about treatment centers and treatment alternatives. In each case, with each family, a path to acceptance is different, but essentially the same. It has been said in varying ways that what doesn’t destroy us makes us strong. Coping with a child’s cancer can produce better parents and better human beings, and through their suffering they as well as the community at large can learn pathways toward both physical and emotional wellness. Human beings are not automatically ennobled by illness, and it is a rare individual who begins a path toward growth and self-knowledge without some catalyst or stimulus. Denial of reality traps people in their own misery; the process of acceptance moves them forward. It is usually crisis of some sort that begins a process of change. Just as a process of acceptance is a factor in treatment, there are also positive aspects of the life journey to be found in the healing process. Part of this is realizing the body and mind cannot be separated in either treatment or healing. Healing is improved through association with humanistic persons and environments. Beauty, art, music, literature, and positive, compassionate persons all foster physical healing and emotional well-being. This is our story: nurturing persons, humanistic treatment centers, and a positive path toward a healthy future.   (click here to contact Global Documentary)

Photograph by Tricia Ilima Hamasaki (Alexander Wallach in Waikiki, Hawaii , Sept. 2005) © 2007 Andreas Wallach Productions Page Content © 1999-2007 Andreas Wallach Productions