Do I tell the children yet?

@tarheelbaby sorry for your loss.

@LemonWater222 - really sorry you've all had such a tough few years. It must be extra hard facing a bowel cancer diagnosis after your DH's friends awful experience.

There will never be an ideal time to tell them, although I do get where you're coming from with your daughters holiday. But I do wonder if they would be upset to be told later, and it may effect their trust in other information down the line.

You sound a close family and you will all worry about each other.

Ultimately you will do what is best for your family but if you share what you know now you can all pull together to face what is a very stressful time.

What does your husband think? How is he coping with the diagnosis?

Also do take care of yourself it is very hard to watch your loved one go through treatment. Do reach out to your support networks.

There is a lot of support around and your DH has been assigned a nurse so do call on them for any advice and support you might need going forwards. Here are a few other sources of support that could help now or in the future.

Bowel Cancer UK may be helpful information sources when needed and for support.

Macmillan has a support line. It also has advice on telling children and teens about a parents diagnosis. There might be some things there that help you think about what to say even though I know yours are late teens and older.

www.macmillan.org.uk/cancer-information-and-support/diagnosis/talking-about-cancer/understanding-children-and-teenagers-reactions

Hope is a charity that supports young people when a loved one has a serious illness from 5-25 years

hopesupport.org.uk

Similarly Riprap is a charity that supports teenagers with a parent with cancer

Shine cancer support is a charity that supports young people and their families with cancer

shinecancersupport.org/information/friends-and-family/

Thinking of you and sending you all strength

After, and let your DD enjoy her holiday.

My way of giving info to my DC was need to know/age appropriately/in a timely manner.

Your DC are young adults but still have a way to go before they're fully developed emotionally - and this is their dad, so its going to be harder for them.

So, firstly, do they need to know ? - Yes, they do need to know

Secondly - age appropriately - getting that sort of news about your dad is gonna be tough, and at their still fragile ages doubly so

Thirdly - in a timely manner - telling them the full story now will leave them in a huge void of not knowing until further test results are confirmed. Tell them he's had some symptoms (pain, discomfort, dodgy toilet activity) and he's had some tests, and that he's having more tests to get a diagnosis and plan for treatment. This is all true. If it is confirmed to be cancer you will have a reasonably robust plan given by the time you meet the consultant again, you will have far more information which will help you answer your DC's questions.

Telling them before a holiday, before you have solid answers isn't the best idea imo. Does your ds have any idea of his potential outcome for the year at uni? Mitigation would be using your health difficulties this year, I don't think they would accept Dad's potential diagnosis this late in the day for the current academic year.

After prognosis and treatment plan are in place.

@LemonWater222 I would tell them after you’ve received confirmation that he has cancer. A prognosis of the stage of the cancer and the treatment plan might not be confirmed for a while yet. In my case I didn’t get the full picture until after surgery.

We didn't tell ours until we were 100% what the diagnosis was and what my treatment plan was.

Wait and catch your breath, sometimes these things take weeks.

Sorry you're going through this at all

Do other people know? Make sure they are told first. I found out my granny had cancer when one of her neighbours mentioned it to me in a restaurant. I was completely shocked.

Definitely after. There is nothing to tell them right now.

My parents told me about my dad’s prognosis (not cancer) but kept it (and told me to keep it) from my siblings. I’m the youngest and was still at school and they were at uni and we couldn’t “worry them”. It was really hard and then he died and they were all absolutely blown away by it - like it had come out of the clear blue sky. Definitely tell them together. I don’t see what is wrong with waiting until you have a diagnosis and a treatment plan discussion, especially as the waiting and not knowing is really tough, but it’s not wrong to tell them now either.

Hi there, firstly I’m so sorry to hear of your circumstances. I can’t advise you what to do in terms of timings, but I work in a university and your son should be able to put in a personal extenuating circumstances (PEC) claim or his uni’s equivalent. This would usually need some supporting evidence or statements but would cover the resits and provide a safety net to him. Just so you know, but I’m thinking maybe you already do :)

My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was around your DD’s age. I found out by accident from a family friend. My parents had kept it from me because I had a job interview coming up. I never, ever trusted them again.

I've been through this as the single parent of an adult and a teenager. I chose to wait to tell my children until I knew what the outlook was. (Took 3 weeks to get my scan results)
The waiting to find out how bad my prognosis was was so hellish that I couldn't pass that onto my kids. It felt kinder to tell them when I could tell them what treatment I'd be having.
I hope everything works out for your DH. I'm 18 months past my diagnosis of bowel cancer and looking back, the first few weeks of not knowing how bad things were was the hardest part.

I was 24 when my mum was diagnosed with leukaemia and 28 when my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. My mums diagnosis was sudden with no chance of it being hidden but my dads took time for test results to come back however both my older sister and I knew from the start that something was wrong.
Speaking from personal experience I think you should tell your children together and straight away. They are your children but they are young adults. You sound like a close knit family so I can imagine they would be hurt by reality being kept from them even if you think it’s for their own good.
For me being involved in diagnosis / treatment conversations right from the start was really important and helped me feel in control in the most out of control circumstances.
Take care @LemonWater222 🤍

Hi OP, inn sorry to hear you're going through this.

2 years ago my husband was 99% positive for prostate cancer, an mri showed the lump the week before we took our daughter to uni overseas. We didn't tell DD or DS23 (has ASD and ADHD) at the time, we waited until DH had his biopsy 2 weeks later. We flew out our to DD with DS and told them both together, we didn't want either having to keep it secret from the other in case they wanted to talk about it.
We kept it factual and non emotional, cancer is this, doctor says this, next stage is that, and they both took it in their stride.
think it's important for you and your husband to have a much information as possible, Your understanding and ability to answer their questions will be reassuring. I hope all goes well for your husband. X

I was diagnosed with bowel cancer 18 months ago. I’ve had surgery and chemo and I’m doing really well, it was all removed and so far hasn’t come back.

My children were 16 and 15 when I was diagnosed and I told them as soon as the diagnosis was confirmed. At that stage I knew I would have surgery but didn’t know about chemo yet.

There is a huge range of outcomes from a bowel cancer diagnosis. Most people will be successfully treated. My brother was diagnosed 30 years ago with a far more advanced cancer than I had and he’s still here and cancer free.

I wouldn’t wait til after a holiday but I would wait til you’re feeling a bit calmer and have all the facts. In my experience kids will look to you for how to respond. If you’re calm and confident they will be too. Cancer treatment can drag on a bit so we encouraged our kids to get on with their normal lives and promised we would keep them informed. The only thing I could have done better was reassuring them that spending a huge amount of time at doctors/hospitals/tests was completely normal and didn’t mean things were going badly.

Don't do this. Aside from the fact that the university won't speak to a parent, the DS is an adult and so shouldn't be undermined like this.

When your DS has been told, he can decide what to do with that information in relation to his studies.

OP, it occurs to me that I knew more at 7 than your adult children know. You need to tell them, it's very unfair on them not to.

Receiving bad news is very difficult because the news is difficult.

Keeping people in the dark means they may never trust you to be honest again.

I would tell them immediately and together what you know now. He has a tumour and the medics suspect cancer.

This. Especially the par of knowing what the treatment will be.

This.

And this is the thing….the trust is then gone….and they will always worry that they are not being told something….far better to be straight from the get go…..imo

Based on my own experience when we were a couple of year older than your kids, don't wait.
My parents waited a week or so to tell my sister about my mum's diagnosis, until after her graduation and she was so angry when she found out it had been kept from her 'not to spoil the day'. She was also cross that I was told before her and had kept it from her too. I think she was rightly wary that people weren't being honest with her.
I think on the whole people react best when they have the full information to react to.

I can see how this feels time sensitive for you dc. And honestly I'm in two minds. The dc need to be told together what's happening, as a family. With the pressure of ds emailing uni - I kind of think this should be done on how his struggles are now. Focusing on him, they will be able to support him further once he/they know about a parents diagnosis.

As it is, the next appointment isn't until next week, your dd will be on holidays, ds would have sent his email, I'd let them know once dd is home, once everything is confirmed.

I'm so sorry you're going through this x

I went through this last year. Every medical person was convinced it was cancer. My GP was talking about a "treatment plan" and "multi-disciplinary teams". The speed that I was seen and tested was scary in itself. On one occasion I had a blood test in the morning and got a call to make an appointment that same night. Then a whole battery of procedures. I was one of the lucky ones - 6 polyps removed, no cancer. The diagnosis was coeliac disease (not picked up on the blood tests).

I think the approach is to treat every patient as if they have cancer until proven otherwise. Care and treatment was first class.

I would advise waiting until you have a firm diagnosis. If it's like my experience, it will be quick. Wishing you all the luck in the world.

I’m so sorry. Best wishes for a recovery to your DH.

Going against the grain here but depending on how his anxiety manifests, I’d get the information out there quickly and honestly, especially for your DS. I suffered badly from anxiety as a child and a teen and being denied information or feeling like people were trying to protect me from information made me 100% times worse because I would sense something was going on and catastrophe it x100 in my muddled head. The truth sets you free.