Talking to children about their grandad's lung cancer

It’s taken me a while to have the courage to post on here, but here goes last November my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer it had spread to his lymph nodes in his chest and secondary in his liver , he had 6 cycles of chemotherapy and 15 rounds of radiotherapy the results were positive the tumours had shrunk. 5 months later after finishing treatment  (yesterday) we were told it’s back from the last scan it’s spread rapidly in 6 weeks, I have 2 children who idolise their grandad and I’m on here to see if anyone has any advice on what/how to explain this to them x

  • Hello Linz 27, 

    I am so sorry to hear about your dad's diagnosis and that the cancer has come back and the cancer has spread rapidly in just six weeks. It must be really difficult for you to process all this. I hope you won't mind I have slightly changed the title of your post to make it more specific and hopefully attract more replies from others who have also had to talk to their little ones about a loved one's cancer. 

    It can be really hard to find the right words to talk to children about cancer. We have some very useful information on our website about this which will also point at helpful resources such as books to tackle this sensitive subject. You can find out more about this on this page.

    But as there's nothing like hearing from other people's experiences, I will now let our members come and share their experiences with you. 

    Best wishes to you and your dad, 

    Lucie, Cancer Chat Moderator

  • Hi Lucie, thank you for getting in touch and helping me in the right direction, I really appreciate it I’m struggling to come to terms with this myself,so any advice on how I can help my children too is appreciated x