Jane’s Story: I had to protect him, there was no other choice

Jane’s son Josh was three years old when he was diagnosed with cancer, and ahead of #WorldCancerDay she’s been reflecting on finding strength during the most difficult times:

“22nd April 2014 is the day our life changed forever. It was the day that our beautiful three year old little boy, Josh, was diagnosed with Burkitts Lymphoma. Our life crumbled in seconds.

When you hear the words, “your child has cancer”, your head takes you to the worse situation imaginable and how could we ever survive that, but our precious little boy became a real life superhero. He showed us bravery and courage that we could never imagine.

It took us a few days but eventually we found incredible strength that we didn’t know we had. We were surrounded by so many incredible, brave children fighting this monster, their families all coming together and inviting us to be part of an incredible ward family and we were being looked after by a wonderful team.

There were times watching our little boy lie in front of us in so much pain, looking so poorly, so weak and vulnerable, that we were broken. We were scared but had to find strength….Josh needed us.

I searched positive quotes on line to help find the strength and positivity I needed. We shared Josh’s story on Facebook with friends and family and our support network grew and grew. We had so many beautiful messages from friends and strangers too (many who became friends). Families whose children had had cancer reached out which gave us hope and strength. This helped us so much.

We can’t forget our wonderful CLIC Sargent social worker Saiorse. Within the first few days she was there to help us through the darkest days of our lives. Having this support gave us so much strength to focus on helping Josh fight and get better.

Author: Alison

Posted on Wednesday 20 January 2021