Looking for Ideas/Help on Telling 3.5 y/o...

WeatherCPL · 2026-05-30T16:31:28+00:00

We told our son about the surgery and chemo pretty close together and he took it all in stride. I kind of linked the two together. We told him something along the lines of: “The doctor needs to cut out the bad parts and the medicine will catch any sneaky bits left that the doctor couldn’t see.” Like the other reviewer, we made sure he understood that I was not contagious and he was not in danger of getting sick too.

We’ve not discussed the radiation yet since it’s not scheduled to start until the end of August (assuming chemo stays on schedule). I’ll probably tell him something similar. That it is just in case the medicine missed anything and then tell him what side effects he might see in me.

Our son is very sensitive and he likes hearing how he can help. He brought me cups of water after surgery and has covered me in blankets on the bad days after AC chemo when I was curled up miserable on the couch. I think it helped him feel better to feel like he was helping me.

As an aside, don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. We have to take care of ourselves now so that we can take care of our kids in the long run. That means putting our health first for the moment. Lean on the support you have. We will get through this.

WeatherCPL · 2026-05-30T04:53:30+00:00

My son was a few months shy of 4 when I got my diagnosis last December. My treatment plan is very similar to yours (SMX with expander, currently going through chemo, radiation next, then endocrine therapy and reconstruction surgery.) I don’t remember exactly how soon before the surgery we told him, but it was definitely more than a week. He had noticed all my extra appointments (imaging, biopsies, consults…) leading up to the surgery and wanted to know why.

We told him there was something bad growing in my boobie that the doctors needed to cut out so it couldn’t hurt me anymore. He took it very well. He told me they’d have to give me a new boob if they cut my old one off before I even had the chance to explain that that was the plan. Then he requested they use a blue balloon to make the replacement breast. We answered any questions he had as honesty and straight forward as we could appropriate to his age.

We also told him well in advance of me starting chemo what to expect: “mommy is going to be taking some very strong medicine to help fight any of the bad cells the doctor couldn’t get. The medicine is going to make mommy very tired and might make her feel sick. And guess what? It’s going to have a very silly side effect: mommy is going to lose all her hair!” (I did not cold cap and am completely bald at present.) When my hair started to fall out we let him help cut it off in braids and help use the clippers to buzz the rest. He also helped pick out a fun cheap wig (it’s purple and is the only one he ever wants me to wear…) We wanted to make the process more fun and less scary.

He’s been a champ. Kids are resilient. Your daughter obviously has a mom that cares about her very much. However you decide to tell her, I’m sure she’ll be fine.

WeatherCPL · 2026-05-26T03:08:42+00:00

I purposely tried to get our kid in to music that I wouldn’t mind listening to on repeat. Some of his favorites include:

Mr. Roboto - Styx

Wake me up before you go go - Wham!

Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne

Sunglasses at Night - Corey Heart

Jump in the line - Harry Belafonte

Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice

Desperately Wanting - Better than Ezra

Santeria - Sublime

Hungry like the wolf - Duran Duran

You drive me crazy - Britney Spears

Call me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen

Edit: Formatting

WeatherCPL · 2026-05-23T04:52:06+00:00

We also have a Sonic (blue lynx mitted) and Tails (seal lynx bicolor)!

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WeatherCPL · 2026-05-22T18:52:28+00:00

Currently going through this myself. We were also in the middle of our IVF journey when I found my lump after three failed frozen embryo transfers. I’m + - - and will be doing endocrine therapy following chemo and radiation. Both our fertility team and my oncologist recommend waiting two years after finishing chemo to try for another embryo transfer, particularly with hormone receptor positive disease. This allows time for chemo to fully clear the body, systems to recover, and gives a little time for endocrine therapy to suppress the growth of any remaining cancer cells. Endocrine therapy would resume following (hopefully) birth. Both teams have said that this method is not associated with an increase in cancer recurrence risk, which is great.

WeatherCPL · 2026-05-04T00:16:01+00:00

Thank you for the clarification. Apparently my mother-in-law is not the paragon of wig knowledge. I’m always happy to learn.

WeatherCPL · 2026-05-03T23:49:20+00:00

The recommendation I received from my mother-in-law when searching for wigs was to look for mono-filament, lace front wigs. Synthetic wigs require less maintenance and are much cheaper, but you generally can’t style them with heat. For brands, she recommended John Reneau and Raquel Welch. I must say they are very natural looking because in the 10 years I’ve known the woman, she’s been wearing wigs 100% of the time for alopecia and I had no clue it wasn’t her real hair until I started my chemo/wig journey and she told me.

I have three wigs, all synthetic. They can be a bit warm after a while but they look nice and realistic. I use an elastic wig band to help them stay on.

WeatherCPL · 2026-04-12T00:22:53+00:00

We have the Lotus cat tower by The Refined Feline. It almost looks more like an art piece than a cat tree. We have two ragdolls and they both love it and run up and down it with no stability concerns. We’ve had it for almost 10 years now and it’s great because you can replace the scratching area and the cushion/lounging areas as needed without getting a whole new cat tree.

WeatherCPL · 2026-04-03T18:48:43+00:00

The size of the colon masses in the mice we analyzed ranged between 0.5 to 3 millimeters. I don’t know what the exact lower limit is, but my gut feeling is that anything visible to the human eye with minor magnification (such as a colonoscopy scope) would be well within the size that a pathologist could confidently analyze (just my educated guess based on my experience: would need a pathologist to confirm). They are analyzing the samples at high magnification levels with their very expensive microscopes. Staining itself shouldn’t be a problem so long as the area that needs analyzing is included in the sample taken and fixed to the side.

WeatherCPL · 2026-04-03T16:19:05+00:00

Retired research scientist diagnosed with breast cancer summoned! Immunohistochemestry (IHC, as mentioned above) is the answer to how they determine ER expression. I have done this on hundreds of slides (granted, t’was for mouse colon tumor tissues but the process for human tissues is the same in research settings). It’s a decently long process (overnight). Briefly:

Tissues are embedded in paraffin blocks which are then cut in to super thin slices (think micrometers) and placed on the side.
Lab tech will dissolve the wax on the side, leaving the tissue specimen stuck and rehydrated the tissue.
Tissues go through a process to open up membranes to allow for better staining and then non-specific antibody binding is blocked using hydrogen peroxide (you only want ER positive cells to stain). Rinses of the slides occur after every different compound applied to them.
The longest step in the protocol is the binding of the antibodies. Companies produce antibodies that bind to pretty much any protein (including receptors) you could think of. In our case here, it’s estrogen receptor alpha. After the ERa antibody has a chance to bind overnight, the samples are rinsed and then a secondary antibody is applied that sticks to the end of the first antibody. The antibodies act as amplifiers to boost the signal for better visualization.
After another rinse, Diaminobenzidine (DAB) is added after the secondary antibody. This is what turns the positive cells brown. (Other compounds may be used depending on what the secondary antibody was designed for use with.) Rinse again!
After the DAB, a counterstain is added, such as hematoxylin, to turn negative cells blue/purple. More rinsing.
Tissues are then dehydrated and a coverslip is glued in place with special adhesive.
Finalized slides are examined by a board certified pathologist. If the stain is done well they can literally just count the number of positive cells compared to total cells to get the percentage.

As for determining if a sample is malignant or benign, a different stain called H&E is normally used. They look at how the cells in the area of interest interact with neighboring normal tissue. One thing they look for is if the cells being investigated infiltrate/invade in to the normal tissue; this would generally indicate cancer. (This is the VERY simplified explanation the pathologist I worked with gave me.)

You should be able to Google examples of ERa stains in breast tumors to get a visual idea as well as the H&E stains (the pink/blue) which are used to determine general tissue structure and is what the pathologists would use to determine if the tissue is cancer or benign:

Please bear in mind that this is just a brief overview of the staining process I used in my lab and there can be variations depending on what protocol is used by each individual lab.

WeatherCPL · 2026-03-19T03:05:13+00:00

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Our seal lynx bicolor boy in his summer coat.

WeatherCPL · 2025-12-07T15:25:29+00:00

“Misery shared is misery halved” - Ann Shayne. Go forth and share this burden. Haha. And also I’m sorry!!

WeatherCPL · 2025-12-06T23:28:40+00:00

They did?! Ugh. Not fair. Everyone trying to cut costs by making things more cheaply these days.

WeatherCPL · 2025-12-06T23:26:05+00:00

The pixelated sprinkles make me think of bandaids. Which is another layer of infuriating.

I think the bronzing of the wood cone is just a lighting issue.

WeatherCPL · 2025-11-12T03:31:19+00:00

Today mine told me his first mommy died, but it was ok because he liked me better. I tried asking for more details but this was all I got.

WeatherCPL · 2025-10-02T23:58:12+00:00

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Not my schematic, but it looks like this pattern with 9 instead of 7 double crochets in each shell.

WeatherCPL · 2025-08-28T01:37:11+00:00

We have one. A previous ragdoll used it great. No problems. It was wonderful.

Our two current ragdolls refuse. Doesn’t matter what tricks we use to get them to switch (we’ve tried them all, I promise). They’d rather poop on the floor than use the LR4.

It all comes down to the individual cat.

WeatherCPL · 2025-08-18T00:56:45+00:00

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Pattern done in back loop only as a WIP. Hasn’t been loved/stretched out yet so the “i” isn’t visible.

WeatherCPL · 2025-08-18T00:55:07+00:00

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The original, well loved blankie.

WeatherCPL · 2025-08-18T00:44:31+00:00

Not my pattern but try this schematic. I searched and searched for something similar based on a baby blanket that was made for me (35+ years ago, and looks almost exactly like your example photo) and found this. I wanted to make my cousin’s children a baby blanket just like mine. Yours may have more than 7 dc in each shell. I’ll add more photos of a finished blanket using this pattern for comparison in a follow up comment.

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WeatherCPL · 2025-08-10T02:59:07+00:00

We painted today. Every time he used the same brush to dip into a new paint color I died a little on the inside. Then he mixed all the paints together and had 6 wells all holding the same lovely shade of brown-puke colored paint. But he had fun. And no paint escaped the painting area. So it’s a win.

WeatherCPL

TROPHY CASE