HealthWatch: New Book Explains Cancer To Children
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) -- Sue Glader was just 33 when she learned she had breast cancer.
"I didn't believe it" Sue said, "I was freaked out, I mean I was really freaked out."
She was afraid, and not just for herself.
"You know, what I was afraid of was leaving Hans", said the young mother. Hans was her little boy.
Glader had a lumpectomy, 4 rounds of chemo, 6 weeks of radiation and she lost all her hair.
Glader remembered how Hans reacted: "Where's mom's hair? And he'd rub my head and he'd giggle," she said.
Hans was young, just 13 months old, and seemed unaffected by her new "do." But that wasn't true of everyone.
"I had noticed that there were lots of kids that were older that would look at me in the park, in the grocery store because I was out in town without hair," said Glader
"I didn't wear a hat, I didn't wear a wig, I didn't wear scarves. I was the proverbial bald woman walking around town. And I knew that there were kids that were wondering what were going on by the way that they looked at me."
That's when the book "Nowhere Hair" took root. The book aims to help comfort and provide solace to children whose moms are getting treated for their breast cancers.
It's a children's book that's part whimsy, part cancer but full of humor, and sensitivity. There are positive images for the young and the not so young.
Gladder said when it comes to women with breast cancer," You are just as sexy, you are just as beautiful, you are just as powerful, you are just as cool. You just don't happen to have hair."
This book is a message of hope for all the women walking in her shoes.
