Through Their Eyes: How KT Roland Used Her Granddaughters to Help Children Understand Multiple Myeloma

Through Their Eyes: How KT Roland Used Her Granddaughters to Help Children Understand Multiple Myeloma

How do you explain multiple myeloma to a child?

For adults, the disease can be difficult enough to understand. We talk about plasma cells, bone marrow, abnormal proteins, chemotherapy, stem cell transplants, remission, relapse, and countless blood tests.

But a toddler doesn't need a lesson in hematology.

A grade-school child, however, may be ready to understand a little more.

That realization led author and multiple myeloma advocate KT Roland to approach the subject in two different ways, using her granddaughters, Amelia and Adele, to help explain Grandma's cancer at different levels of childhood understanding.

The result was two children's books with one shared purpose: helping children understand what it means when someone they love is living with multiple myeloma.

Starting With the Youngest Children

For very young children, cancer is an abstract concept.

They don't understand bone marrow or plasma cells. They understand what they can see.

Grandma looks like Grandma.

She still smiles. She still gives hugs. She still reads stories and laughs. She may still play, cook, go places, and do many of the things she has always done.

So how can Grandma be sick?

That question is at the heart of Grandma Doesn't Look Sick: Unmasking Multiple Myeloma Through a Child's Eyes, featuring Roland's granddaughter Amelia.

For younger children, understanding myeloma begins not with the biology of cancer but with something much simpler:

Sometimes people can be sick even when we can't see their illness.

That is an important concept for little minds.

A young child might think being sick always means having a fever, coughing, staying in bed, or looking visibly ill. If Grandma doesn't look that way, being told that Grandma has cancer can be confusing.

Amelia's perspective gives younger readers a way into that conversation.

Grandma might look fine but feel tired.

Grandma might need to rest even though she was playing earlier.

Grandma might go to the hospital even though she doesn't look sick.

And sometimes Grandma may have to say no to something she really wants to do.

The message isn't meant to frighten children.

It's meant to help them understand what they are already seeing.

As Children Grow, So Do Their Questions

Eventually, “Grandma is sick even though she doesn't look sick” may no longer be enough.

Children get older.

They hear more.

They ask more.

They want to know why.

What is cancer?

What is happening inside Grandma's body?

Why does she need treatment?

Why does she have so many blood tests?

Why is she tired?

Why does she hurt?

Why does everyone worry so much about her getting an infection?

Those questions require a different kind of conversation.

That's where Roland's second children's book, Understanding Grandma's Battle with Multiple Myeloma, comes in.

This time, her granddaughter Adele helps guide children through a more detailed explanation of Grandma's disease.

Rather than simply understanding that an illness can be invisible, older children can begin learning what multiple myeloma actually means.

The explanations can grow along with the child.

Two Granddaughters. Two Levels of Understanding.

Using Amelia and Adele allowed Roland to look at myeloma through two very different sets of young eyes.

One child might simply need to understand:

Grandma is sick even though she doesn't look sick.

Another may be ready to understand:

Grandma has a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma, and it affects cells inside her bone marrow.

Neither explanation is wrong.

They're simply meant for children at different stages of development.

That's important when families talk about cancer.

We sometimes think there is one “cancer conversation” we need to have with children. We sit them down, explain what is happening, answer their questions, and hope we've handled it correctly.

But children grow.

Their ability to understand illness grows with them.

And their questions change.

A toddler's question may be, “Can Grandma play today?”

A preschooler's question may be, “Why is Grandma tired?”

A grade-school child's question may become, “What does cancer do?”

Eventually, an older child may ask the question every family dreads:

“Can Grandma die from it?”

Each stage deserves an honest answer appropriate for that child's ability to understand it.

Children Don't Need Every Detail—They Need the Right Details

There is a difference between being honest with children and overwhelming them.

A three-year-old doesn't need survival statistics.

A five-year-old doesn't need to understand an M-spike.

A seven-year-old doesn't need a detailed explanation of cytogenetics.

But children do need enough information to make sense of what's happening around them.

They need to know Grandma's tiredness isn't because she doesn't want to play.

They need to know they didn't cause Grandma's cancer.

They need to know cancer isn't contagious.

They need to know why washing their hands and staying away when they're sick can be especially important.

Most of all, they need to know they can ask questions.

Turning Real Love Into Stories

There is something especially meaningful about telling these stories through Amelia and Adele.

They aren't simply fictional children learning that someone's grandmother has cancer.

They represent grandchildren trying to understand something that became part of their own family's story.

For KT Roland, multiple myeloma isn't an abstract disease.

It's part of life.

And that means it became part of her granddaughters' lives, too.

Children in families affected by cancer don't get to choose whether cancer enters their world. It arrives through Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, a sibling, or another person they love.

What adults can choose is how we help them understand it.

A Conversation That Can Grow With the Child

Together, Grandma Doesn't Look Sick and Understanding Grandma's Battle with Multiple Myeloma offer families two starting points.

For toddlers and younger children, begin with what they can see and feel.

Grandma has an illness you can't always see. She may get tired or hurt sometimes, but she still loves you just as much.

As children reach grade-school age and become curious about what is actually happening, the conversation can expand.

Grandma has multiple myeloma. It's a type of cancer involving cells inside her bone marrow. Her doctors use medicines and treatments to help control it and keep her as healthy as possible.

And the conversation doesn't have to end there.

As children grow, their understanding can grow with them.

More Than Books About Cancer

Ultimately, these books teach something bigger than the definition of multiple myeloma.

They teach children about empathy.

They teach them that we can't always tell how someone feels by looking at them.

They teach them that illness can change what a person is able to do without changing who that person is.

And perhaps most importantly, they help children understand that cancer doesn't erase the relationship they had before the diagnosis.

Grandma is still Grandma.

She may need more rest.

She may have doctor's appointments.

She may take medicine.

Some days may be harder than others.

But there are still stories to read, pictures to draw, hugs to give, jokes to tell, memories to make, and love to share.

Explaining Myeloma One Little Question at a Time

There may never be a perfect way to explain cancer to a child.

Maybe there doesn't need to be.

Perhaps we simply start where they are.

We listen to the question they're asking today and answer that question at the level they can understand.

Then, as they grow, we give them a little more.

Through Amelia and Adele, KT Roland created two different ways for families to begin those conversations—from the toddler trying to understand why Grandma doesn't look sick to the grade-school child beginning to understand what multiple myeloma actually is.

Because children don't need us to tell them everything at once.

They need us to help them understand, one question and one stage of childhood at a time.