AIBU to think this sounds like DS's friend has tried to stretch the truth, about her dad's cancer...

[MattJoL]

Hi, I would rather people don't jump on me, if I sound insensitive, as that's not my aim.

DS is 12. He has been telling me about his friend's dad, for ages, and all about what has been going on. She basically told him that her dad has cancer. He has been there for her. Today, I got a call from him, as soon as he had gotten out of school; he said that her dad had picked her up and he looks really good. His friend had told him that it was this rare and very bad cancer, which he Googled and it says that it almost always results in death (I can't remember what it was called, but it's the one that is the quickest to spread). She said to him that he has been in hospital, getting every bit of treatment he can, etc. etc. so you can imagine what kind of picture my son and I had built up. DS asked her about how her dad is, the next day, in which she replied about how awful he is and they aren't sure how long he has left (DS didn't say that he had seen him). Her dad then collected her again, he asked her while he was there this time and she replied with "yeah, he is fine, he only has to take this 1 pill a day" and DS goes on to say about how he thought he was in hospital and she said "gosh, you always want to minimalise things, do you not understand how hard it is to have to take a pill for the rest of your life is"...

Hmm, it's a hard one I think. DS has been friends with this girl since he joined the school, in September, but they had gotten really close and he classes her as her best friend. It just seems a bit off to me. WDYT?

I'm sorry but I think you are being very insensitive. The parent might be protecting his daughter from every detail of treatment etc. My mum was diagnosed with cancer at the start of the year, she's had part of her bowel removed, waiting to hear when she'll have operation on her liver. She's currently undergoing chemo and takes tablets for two out of three weeks after her IV treatment. She looks and acts very well, but this does not mean it's not serious or that she's lying about having cancer. It's the worst news I have ever had to deal with - I'd be equally devastated and furious if someone implied (or inferred, whichever is correct for the pedants) that we were lying about her diagnosis and treatment. Please be very careful here.

If it's making DS uncomfortable I would say the best thing for him to do is gently distance himself and withdraw from the friendship.

This is horrible advice for a child needing friends when her dad has cancer.

What a hideous thread.

She's a child with a parent with cancer. Does it really matter if every detail isn't correct?

A friend has an inoperable brain tumour. The Christmas before last he was given 3 months max to live. He looks fine. He's on a trial drug which is keeping things under control. Yabu

My DH was diagnosed with cancer 18 months ago. Apart from an horrific two weeks, he always looked the picture of health. The treatment path he chose was chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and refused life changing surgery. The chemo given for his particular cancer does not result in hair loss, and a lot of the side effects are invisible. As far as I am aware, Tamoxifen, which is given to patients with breast cancer, is given in a tablet form and taken for a long time. At the moment, I would say YABU. Hopefully the friends dad will make a good recovery, lots of people do.

My sister in law was bright and shining and gorgeous at her sister's wedding, you would have had absolutely no idea if you didn't know. She was dead less than three weeks later. It three months to the day from her diagnosis to the funeral.

Also, they're 12? So the "reality" may be very much tied up in this child's fears of their parent dying.. which at 12 is, well, a pretty big deal (it's a big deal to me now at 38). If it isn't "true" in the factual sense, it will most likely be close to the emotional truth for this very young person.

If it's making DS uncomfortable I would say the best thing for him to do is gently distance himself and withdraw from the friendship.

This is horrible advice for a child needing friends when her dad has cancer.

^

And this. Rain falls in all our lives and in terms of teaching our kids about friendship it's really best to promote values of common decency - because what goes around does come around in this regard.

My sister had friends who had the most horrendous things happen - she had a friend who died of cancer at 14, a friend who was raped, kids with serious self-harm and suicidal issues and a friend with a parent who killed themselves. She was a wonderful friend to them then, and is now - and they have been wonderful friends to her, too. Everyone has shit times and the statistics show that adolescence is a particular time of difficulty for many.

Comfort is not a prerequisite for being a friend.

I have cancer. Hopefully not terminal. I've only so far had 2 oerations for it.
I may have treatment to come though it's unlikely to be chemo and I pray it's not spread ( hospital this week to discuss further).
On the whole I'm well Apart from 2 brief emergency hospital admissions for dealing with acute symptoms .I look well from the outside. In the 18 months running up to actually discovering I had cancer I was quite ill with lots of vague and random symptoms. Only Ill enough to go to hospital once the rest of the time I just struggled on. I went on family days out, a wedding, a few parties, on holiday and even camping.
I know some people in my circle don't actually believe that I have cancer. It hurts that people think I could lie about such a sick thing. I'm well aware that sadly some people will lie about such things. I guess if I have chemo (unlikely for my cancer unless I have mets elsewhere) and my hair falls out some people will decide I look too well for cancer and continue not to believe.

I'm fighting most days to carry on as normal. Not always just for me but for my family and teen kids. Some days I do actually feel OK too. Some days I fight hard to do stuff through feeling really ill for me. I put on nice clothes lots and make up and go about my day. I drive when I feel well enough and do all the usual mundane shit of life like going to Asda, taking the recycling to the tip etc , all because normal makes me feel in control or that life is normal when in fact it's not. Some days I sit in my bed or on my sofa when the kids are at school and my husband at work and cry with fear pain and frustration on my situation.. No one except my cancer nurse has seen that though.

I've found who my friends really are recently but I have been so hurt by a few sarcastic comment's and those that ignore me.

Cut this kid some slack. She's probably finding her way to cope. My 15yo has issues with me at the moment and most of its her trying to deal with this disease. I'm fairly honest with my kids but I am uncomfortable discussing my cancer in front of them with other people . Maybe it's similar for your sons friend.

I always think in these situations I would rather be the person being kind and then laughed at for getting it wrong than the person that turned my back on someone when a bit of kindness could have made all the difference.

I can only think If I were in the dad's position and I was that unwell, I would want to shield my young daughter as much as possible yet not have death be a complete surprise (oh, nice and easy combination then) and I would want to do as many small normal things as I could manage (like the school run).

Maybe her dad is very bad, maybe he isn't, but either way she must be confused and scared about something. As a teacher, I often found kids with seriously ill parents spent a huge amount of time alone. That's a lot of time dwelling on heavy thoughts, especially with the limited world experience of their age. Someone who listens is very valuable for anyone with worries like that.

My sister was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

I had a group of friends who I told and hoped would support me. A couple of months after she was diagnosed Dsis bumped into one of the said friends, a conversation of how are you, Dsis 'well you know can't complain'.
My 'friend' then cried bullshit to me that I was dramatising Dsis illness and she was the picture of health.

My darling sister died weeks after that. It was six months from diagnosis to her death and only in the last days did she show any outwardly symptoms.

Please don't let your DS be that friend. She has apoligised but the fact she thought I would use my Dsis illness in that way finished our friendship and I know others were shocked by her callous behavior.

The child is 12. Maybe she doesn't fully understand what is happening or maybe hasn't been fully informed.

Anyway, one friend of mine was told he may only have months to live, and now a couple of years on is cancer free. Another friend died from cancer four weeks after seeming healthy.

Unless you're an oncologist I'm not sure how you can claim to have enough knowledge to judge.

My father has terminal cancer. He's not the picture of health, because he's elderly anyway, but his medication consists of painkillers when he needs them, and that's that. And if you ask him how he is, he'll say he's fine. And if you ask me how he is, I'll say that he's not too bad considering the diagnosis. You really can't guess at how ill someone is based on what they tell you.

My MIL had breast and lung cancer that spread elsewhere and she looked really well right until the end. She was also taking a pill that helped halt the cancer spreading for a time (not sure exactly what it was, she didn't like to go into it with us), but it was still terminal.

Err she's 12, her dad has cancer, I'd imagine she's terrified as it is. Whether she's got every detail correct doesn't really matter. Even if she has exaggerated a bit, what are you or your ds going to do? Call her out on it? Tell everyone? Make her life more difficult than it already is? Take what she says with a grain of salt if need be but ensure your ds offers a listening ear and support because she's probably feeling really confused and scared right now.

There's also a chance that her parents haven't informed her of all the details so she's filled the gaps as best she can. Regardless, I doubt she's being intentionally dubious.

Dds friend used to lie make up stuff her stories got more eleborate she told the group she was adopted and her uncle was her dad some kids do it for attention all you can tell your son to do is listen but dont get to involved.

The man could well have cancer though and the kid is filling in the gaps that she doesnt know

You can have terminal cancer and not have to take any pills.

Once terminal it is all about managing symptoms, not cure. One of the main symptoms is pain, which is usually treated with a morphine patch.

I sat in the pub with a friend laughing, drinking wine and eating chips less than three weeks before she died of cancer - when you look at the photo of us all that day you would have no way of knowing she was in the final stages of terminal illness.

Also not all rare and incurable cancers mean a short, visible illness. My dad has one - all he can do is take a chemo pill a day. At some point when it gets worse he may be hospitalised for in patient treatment and then they'll let him out again and back on his pills until the next time. At his age there's a chance he may die of old age first but if he'd been diagnosed with it at the younger end of the spectrum (which would have been when I was a teenager) then the cancer would certainly have seen him off rather than anything else.

I'm in my 40s with a very secure life and know he's going to die of something in the next decade or so but even I swing between panic about his cancer and pragmatism/minimising it. I can only imagine how a (in the nicest possible way) hormonal, insecure almost teenager would deal with that kind of situation - perhaps don't judge by the steroptypical bed-ridden, gaunt image you seem to have of what someone with terminal cancer looks like.

I had a friend who lied about a parent having cancer when I was 12. I wish I'd not fallen for her lies but I was young and naive and thought I was being a good friend. I found out she was lying when a teacher found me upset after the friend had told me her mum only had weeks to live. The teacher didn't know anything about it, investigated and found out it was all a lie

So yes, people do lie about this sort of stuff.

Do you not know the family at all OP?

By the way, I'm not saying she IS lying. Just that I know people do

Of course she may not be lying but children can lie about major things

My mum died from cancer, it's a very up and down illness.

It's all about managing symptoms, which dr's manage to do very well. Few bad weeks, followed by a few good months and so on.

Not all treatment comes in pill form. Radiotherapy and steroid injections for example

Is there anyone at school he can talk to? Teacher, counselor, etc? Talk through his feelings about supporting her through this family crisis - will give him good strategies to cope if it is true, and if it's a pack of lies hopefully the teacher/counselor digging a bit might start to unravel it all?

He'll either end up with some useful tips on how to deal with friend and her situation, or her situation will unravel and he'll get tips on how to protect himself from people who deceive to get attention....

I heard that some people, acquaintances whom I'd thought were friends, thought I was lying about having cancer
I spoke to the hospital nurses about it and they explained it as sometimes people would rather deny a healthy young person having cancer than face the reality of it being true and unfathomable/unexplainable.
Their point was everyone has their idea of cancer. How it should look in a patient, who should get it, how it should be treated. Variance from their ideas gives them a chance to call bullshit and pretend that it can't happen indiscriminately rampantly unfairly.

It hurt me massively and at a time when I needed support. Please think hard about what you do next.