The Lessons I’ve Learned

May 2007 Special Sections 

I can think of nothing worse for a father to hear than the dreadful word “cancer” concerning his daughter.

In 1985, my daughter Susan Splinter, the second of our four daughters, was diagnosed with breast cancer; she was thirty years old. At the time, she and her husband Tom had a daughter, Joan, six months old, and a son, Andrew, two years old. During surgery, doctors found that the cancer had spread, so Sue underwent radiation and chemotherapy.

It is hard to describe the sorrow her mother and I felt each day. We tried to keep a positive outlook for her sake, and we were able to travel with Sue and Tom to try to pack in as much living as we could into those few years. There was never a waking hour that Susan was not in my thoughts.

She had many good days, but we suffered with her on the bad ones. After a seven-year battle with cancer, Susan died in 1992, and all I could think was that children should bury their parents, not the reverse.

This past November, my daughter Carol Ann Sexton was diagnosed with breast cancer, too. Carol is fifty years old and the third of our daughters, and she and her husband Tom have three children: Kenneth, twenty-three, Ellen, twenty-two, and Ted, twenty. The shock at hearing another daughter had breast cancer was unbelievable; my first thought was that it was very unfair to have our family suffer this terrible disease twice.

Carol immediately went to the Mayo Clinic and underwent a double mastectomy in December. We were overjoyed to learn that although Carol had cancer in both breasts, it had not spread. For this reason, reconstructive surgery was done the same day; she required no radiation or chemotherapy and is considered cancer-free.

My four little girls always thought that daddy could fix anything, and for me to have to face the fact that I couldn’t fix cancer was a terrible thing. My daughters told me that although they always knew I loved them, I was not open about showing or expressing my feelings. But since Susan learned she had breast cancer, I have been much more open and demonstrative about my feelings.

I pray every single day for Carol’s recovery and for this awful disease to stay away from my wife, my other two daughters, Monica and Mary Beth, and my five granddaughters. I hope no other man reading this has to hear “your wife/daughter/granddaughter/sister/aunt/cousin/friend has breast cancer.” If you do, try to give them all the physical and emotional support you can.