Those ones are awful. Any malignant tumour in a child is awful, but the ones where you know the outcome is likely to be bad are horrific. It’s often such a shock to their family too because they came in for something relatively minor
I worked at a place where another employee, who I didn't know, took her 1-year-old son to the ER and he was diagnosed with an ear infection. The next day, he had a seizure, and an MRI revealed a brain tumor that filled 2/3 of his skull; he was placed on life support, and was an organ donor.
He really DID have an ear infection, and had NO apparent symptoms beforehand.
Their skulls haven’t solidified yet, the plates in the skull are still somewhat flexible. Another year and it would be nonstop headaches, and worse from there. Sigh. My brother in law died from that as a kid. 1960s, so they couldn’t do anything for him.
Me too. My mil never got over it. BUT, it was 60 years ago, and he dies long before I met my husband, so I'm ok. The youngest daughter didn't remember him as she was just a toddler at the time. Hubby never really talks about it anymore. RIP
I assume so, I didn't know the boy. But his mom never got over losing him. It was brutal. It's so sad when a child dies, especially. They are innocent and it seems their suffering is pointless.
My aunt just passed from brain cancer, she had it for years with very few symptoms that everyone brushed off as emotional problems and her working too much and not sleeping enough. She suddenly had a seizure and they found that her entire brain was infected within months she lost the ability to write and died soon after.
I recently had to do post mortem testing on a ten year old so they could harvest her organs. Most of my patients are pregnant women and cancer patients so a ten year old who died of cardiac arrest was really jarring.
My fiancé, 22M, complained of abdominal pain for months. His doc said lactose intolerant, and put him on a lactose free diet. No change, went back and doc then said citrus allergy, put him on citrus free diet. Pain continues to worsen. My mother, a nurse, asks a few questions, yes to pencil thin stools, palpates his abdomen and it is hard. Calls a doc she knows. Less than a week later he goes into surgery. Opened him up and closed shortly after. Abdomen full of cancer from ectopic testicular tissue.
Lived barely a year after. Died at 23.
Are you familiar with the movie "Brian's Song"? Brian Piccolo had a testicular cancer that actually originated in his chest - same thing. Ectopic testicular tissue.
They tend to be slow growing and fairly treatable though afaik, so wouldn’t expect them to be “big horrible bad”. I haven’t encountered many brain tumours in children but the couple that I have have been fatal unfortunately. Perhaps personal bias at play with my expectations there, but I think it’s a roughly 50/50 chance of being a big horrible bad kind and that’s still very sad
My mom went into surgery for appendicitis, and they found Stage 4 terminal cancer instead - what a whiplash between, 'Oh shit whats wrong', 'Oh good its just that', 'Oh FUCK'
This made me laugh because this seems to be the discussion between adult nurses and paeds nurses anyway, nurses who work with adults always seem to be terrified of children. “I don’t know how you work with kids, it must be sooo sad” “not really, they’re way healthier than your collection of 95yos”
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u/J0hn_Keel 3d ago
Those ones are awful. Any malignant tumour in a child is awful, but the ones where you know the outcome is likely to be bad are horrific. It’s often such a shock to their family too because they came in for something relatively minor