6 years ago, the mere thought of attending a conference for parents of children with cancer, or being part of a team or event that was related to childhood cancer, would have been a terrible nightmare for me.

After 6 years of childhood cancer experience, in fact the 2 different cancers of my 6-yearold son Garen, I was in Muscat, at the ICCCPO conference, proudly introducing, along with Mrs. Christian Makarem, the Children’s Cancer Centre of Lebanon, a centre without whose doctors, staff, and volunteers, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to stand there in Muscat, to tell everyone “my

son is doing well”…

Cancer is not something a parent wants in their child’s record book. You want to record height, weight, first tooth, first smile, first step. Not cancer, first chemo, first radiation session. Not LPs or bone marrow tests.

When your child is diagnosed with cancer, your world falls apart. You feel life has ended for you, and involuntarily you set off on a long and painful journey, when all you care for and live for are chemotherapy sessions, blood tests and transfusions, surgery, immunity levels.

The hospital becomes your life, your reality and all that really counts.

Then you realise you need support. Support to go on because life goes on. Support to take care of yourself and your health.  Support to function as a family, to take care of your other children.

That support can only be provided by people LIKE YOU. Mums and dads who have gone or are still going through your experience. With all the empathic and sincere understanding of family, friends, nurses and doctors, the most realistic support comes from someone who is, like you, the parent of a child with cancer… a person who has learned, like you, that this life holds no guarantees.

At the conference there were parents of children with cancer sharing their stories of battles fought and won, of battles fought and lost, of battles still going on. There were cancer survivors, appearing so energetic, hopeful, full of life. Their attitudes were contagious.

And yet, there were other parents with whom we shared a special outlook on life: real life for us takes place under the cancer umbrella.

Sharing the experience of childhood cancer and learning from it formed an emotional bond between the parents present at the conference. Everyone believed in the need to support parents of children with cancer - to help them overcome the obstacles created by cancer itself, to overcome the feelings of shock, disbelief and denial, fear and anxiety, guilt, sadness, depression, anger.

We learned as parents that we need to seek comfort from one another by talking about our feelings, to discuss fear and anxiety and seek reassurance from each other, to learn strategies to reduce anxiety or tension, to hear how other patients and parents have coped, to take as much control as possible of everyday events and decisions, and to talk with other parents whose children have similar diagnoses, yet different backgrounds and experiences.

I came back from the ICCCPO Conference with a more positive attitude, with more hope, and a more committed and responsible perseverance, convinced that parents of children with cancer should unite, meet, share and support each other.

We need to stay on-task, taking care of our children, without surrendering to hopelessness, without feeling fear and anxiety, without constant apprehension about the future.

As the mother of a child who has gone through the painful experience of two different cancers, but who goes on fighting with the strong will to win, I believe the best way to beat cancer is to live fully in the present. As for the future, I believe God will take care of it.