You and your Adult Children

Your relationship with your adult children may change now that you have cancer. You may:

• Ask them to take on new duties, such as making health care decisions, paying bills, or taking care of the house.
• Ask them to explain some of the information you've received from your doctor or to go with you to doctor's visits so they can also hear what the doctors are telling you.
• Rely on them for emotional support. For instance, you may ask them to act as "go-betweens" with friends or other family members.
• Want them to spend a lot of time with you. This can be hard, especially if they have jobs or young families of their own.
• Find it hard to receive--rather than give--comfort and support from them.
• Feel awkward when they help with your physical care, such as feeding or bathing.

As the adult daughter of a woman with ovarian cancer said,

"Mom was always the rock in the family. Whenever any of us had a problem, we could go to her for help. Now we had to help her. It was almost as though we were the parents and she was the child. To make it even harder, we had our own children to take care of and jobs to go to."