The Cancer Parent's Handbook

When the pediatrician said her 3-year-old daughter Cecilia's lethargy and the black circles under her eyes were childhood leukemia, Laura entered the frenzied existence of childhood cancer. That first day, she spent $250 on cancer books on Amazon, and uncovered the truth - there is no book, no expert, no roadmap for parenting a kid through cancer, and for leading a family through this journey. That realization was paralyzing and overwhelming.
Laura tried to become a cancer expert to fix their horrible reality. She pulled away from friends, family, colleagues, and even her therapist as she dove into the research, desperate for a guaranteed cure. Her marriage morphed into a series of transactions focused on two things: saving Cecilia, and swapping out care for her other daughter Madi, just 15 months old. Laura was isolated in her debilitating fear. Oncologists, nurses, and medical teams excel at providing treatment for the huge number of children with cancer and other long-term health conditions.
Approximately 400, 000 children in the United States are living with a chronic life-threatening condition. Of these, 53, 000 children die every year. It's up to the parents of these children to figure out how to move through this experience, a seemingly impossible task during the paralyzing stress and grief of their child's cancer or chronic health diagnosis. Without direction or strategies for living in this new world, all a parent can do is singularly focus on how to make sure their child survives.  The Cancer Parent's Handbook tackles these issues head-on, taking parents from diagnosis through the years of treatment and follow-up care with specific strategies and tools to not end up as another statistic in the cancer world.
Laura presents pragmatic practices for creating a more positive mindset, establishing a strong support network with your partner, friends, and family, and using smart tools to better endure the pokes, procedures, and uncertainty with more empowered choices. Laura leads parents to establish new routines for daily life and guidance on how to figure out where help is needed and how to ask for it clearly and gracefully so that extended family and friends can be deeply involved in helping the entire family.
Laura gives the play-by-play for creating a true team with your spouse or partner, sharing the daily tasks of treatment, and keeping your romantic life thriving.  In The Cancer Parent's Handbook, parents discover how to become fierce advocates for their child, family, and relationships, and themselves.