Mommy Guilt Gone Viral

I am reading a book called "Hope and Suffering - Children, Cancer, and the Paradox of Experimental Medicine".  It details the medical and social changes from the 1940's through 1980's; a journey of childhood cancers, specifically leukemia, from unrecognized, to untreatable, to experimental, to largely curable.  It's a great story in some ways because medicine/science really has prevailed.  Leukemia used to be universally fatal within months.  Now about 90% of kids with ALL can be cured for life.  But this progress came at a price.  Kids were basically experimented on for years because parents and physicians were desperate for anything.  Even agents that only bought time and didn't change the eventual outcome were willingly taken because it might keep them alive until a cure could be found.  The meds were toxic, the effects of the disease were terrible, and children and families alike suffered horribly.
But there's another part of it the bothers me and really hits home.  As soon as childhood cancers were recognized as existing as separate entities from adult cancers, the lay press and organizations like the American Cancer Society published material advising mothers to be on the alert.  They stated that they could save their child's life with their vigilance because early diagnosis was the key.  Which was completely bogus.  Science knew these diseases existed but there were no effective cures.  If you had a local tumor that could be completely excised, you stood a chance but the chances of detecting a solid tumor before there is at least nodal spread is so unlikely.  The book is full of stories of moms who took their kids to the pediatrician time and time again and were basically told they were crazy, go home, oh, and by the way the child turned out to have a brain tumor or leukemia or retinoblastoma.
Even now the majority of the parents that I meet blame themselves for their child's cancer diagnosis.  Childhood cancer comes up during a time when parents really are responsible for everything involving their children, and if not for the disease itself they always feel guilty for not bringing the child in sooner.  Still today, many children have seen their pediatrician a few times before anyone realizes it's more than migraines or a cold or constipation.  Uncommon things are uncommon and every child with a headache doesn't need and can't get a CT scan.
This whole book is set in an era when World War II was over and women were expected to come back out of the work force and have babies.  It was the Patriotic thing to do.  For the first time in our nation's history children were treasured as more than just parents' possessions and potential revenue sources.  Women's successes were judged by their parenting.  I just can't help thinking about all those mothers who watched their babies suffer horribly and die and were told by every newspaper and flier that went past their door that it was their fault.  If only they'd been a more attentive mother.

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Not that everything always has to be about me, but this is often how I feel when I think about Nate and his allergies and vomiting.  For so long I just didn't think anything could be wrong with my baby and I really overlooked and excused all his symptoms.  And to be fair the first pediatrician that we went to over and over really did tell us that i was being an over reactive pediatrician parent and nothing was wrong.  But now, when I look at my little boy, especially pictures of when he was sick, sick and looked it, I just feel awful, and I want to take it all back, go back and fix it, make those months of his babyhood less miserable.  This isn't going to kill him but it has plenty of power to make me feel like an inadequate mommy.

For this reason the first time I tell a parent that their child has cancer I also tell them it's not their fault.  It has nothing to do with what mom ate during pregnancy or whether they made the kid go to bed at 8pm every night.  I also tell them they brought the child in at just the right time and the job now is to go forward and not torture themselves looking back.

I hope it helps.