This morning’s drive in turned plenty deep plenty quickly.
“Dad; would a hurricane blow the hair off someone with Cancer?”
Whoa
After skillfully not crashing; I ponder a suitable response. I’d have preferred a ‘Where do babies come from’ as I have a script for that one but this was left field.
‘Those two things are quite unrelated darling; how did you put them together?’
Silence..
“Well; I’d noticed that when people get Cancer they lose their hair. I suspect that Cancer makes it loose so if you’re in a hurricane, those strong winds will only make matters worse.”
I can see her logic and decide to tackle the big one first.
‘Ok; it’s not the Cancer that causes sufferers to lose their hair, its the treatment. It can be quite aggressive’
Having lost my mother to the big C, I know enough about the topic to feed her facts. Preempting her next enquiry, I continue.
‘Cancer happens in the body at a cellular, microscopic, level. Every part of us is made up of cells. Technically we are constantly regenerating ourselves but slightly older than the version before..”With Cancer, somehow the message to create a new cell gets messed up and misunderstood, so the new cell isn’t quite as it should be. If there are enough of these not-so-right cells, they can attack the good cells. That can be really bad’
She looks creeped out.
‘It’s a gradual process; we call it mutating‘
Less creeped and now showing the look of ‘I’m gonna tell folk this in the playground’.
“So is a cell small? what’s the smallest living thing?”
Now I’m wading out into deep waters…
‘I think it’s a single celled, protozoa but I’m not sure; I’ll check this evening’
It’s been a while since Biology class.
“I think it’s a woodlouse”
The hurricane went unmentioned.
BSD
broke-single-dad 