‘Mommy Doesn’t Have Hair Right Now’: Receiving a Cancer Diagnosis as a Young Mother

How do you explain to your 3-year-old why you’ve lost your hair, why you have to go away to the hospital for a long period of time and most importantly, that you are sick with cancer?

Amanda Ferraro, an acute myeloid leukemia survivor who writes blog posts for the CURE Voices program, explains how she navigated parenthood during cancer in this episode of the “Cancer Horizons” podcast. She also discusses the importance of mental health and shares advice for other patients and survivors.

“We actually put him into play therapy, probably as soon as I got home, which helped a lot with him kind of going through this, ‘what's happening?’” Ferraro said. “I just simply told him I was sick, and you know Mommy doesn't have hair now because of the medicine that I had to get. But we would count hairs when they came in.”

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