In October of 2000, a biopsy confirmed that a lump found in my armpit was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Over the next nine months, I received chemotherapy and radiation therapy until I was brought to a state of remission.
In October of 2002, I had a recurrence of the disease. The cancer aggressively attacked my abdomen and bone marrow. The prognosis was poor. Over the course of the next eighteen months, I endured enormous doses of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, an autologous stem cell transplant and immunotherapy. The terminology for this was ‘salvage treatment’. In February 2004, I completed the full course of treatment. Since then I have been in a blessed state of remission.
Aside from coping with the terror of uncertainty and the actual side effects of the various treatments, the most difficult moments came when twice I had to sit down with my children and tell them that I had cancer. Nowhere was I able to find a picture book about a dad who gets sick with cancer that would help me explain to my seven-year-old twins and twelve-year-old daughter what our family would likely go through. This lack of resources motivated me to write a book “When Daddy Got Sick”.
It has been my great fortune to embark on a journey with four extraordinary people, Neil Mardinger, Lionel Soussan, Lawrence Paperman and Michael Flinker to create En Famille, under the auspices of Hope and Cope at Segal Cancer Centre of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Together we have launched En Famille with two objectives in mind:
- To provide young families living with cancer, support, resources and education to enable them all to cope with the challenges they face as one parent endures the hardship of this illness.
- To publish and distribute ‘When Daddy Got Sick’ to health care institutions in both English and French so that parents have a book in hand to begin a discussion about cancer with their children.
We are currently in the process of both raising awareness and funds for En Famille. We are grateful for all support that brings En Famille a step closer to helping families stricken with this difficult and dreaded disease.
Thank you,
Eric Gralnick
