Wigan mum's book is helping children understand how cancer affects their loved ones

A mum has written a children’s book about a family dealing with life after a cancer diagnosis to help children understand more about the disease and how it affects their loved ones.

Mummy Goes To Hospital has been created by Lynsey Gregory, a Winstanley mum-of-two who was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) in January 2019. But rather than worrying about herself, her focus was on making sure her children understood what was going on, why she was so poorly and spending so much time away from the family home during her treatment.

She set about creating an illustrated book to help her little ones, Theo and Tillie, and two years later, the book is being given a print run by a Wigan based children’s book publisher.

“Whilst I was in the hospital, I began to contact charities and search the internet to try and find any stories, or anything I could use to explain, especially to Theo, where I was and what I was doing, and what was changing for our family” said Lynsey, 36.

“I got sent some lovely books which was great but they just weren’t right for me, for the treatment I was having.

“With ALL, because your immune system is so severely compromised you have to have your initial treatment as an inpatient. I needed to get across that I would be away for a while, and to explain what the children’ would be doing whilst I was in hospital. So I started writing things down, took screenshots when I was facetiming, and they’d send me pictures of what they were doing at home whilst I was in hospital.

“When I got back home, we’d do some little drawings of our own and made this little paper book, which was just what we needed.”

The result meant that, when Lynsey was later admitted to hospital for long spells of treatment her husband Chris or mum Sandra were able to take out the book and easily remind Lynsey’s children about how long she would be away for, and why, and help them understand that their home life would change but reassure them that some things would stay the same. One of the changes being nanna would be coming to live with them for a while and daddy and her would look after them during Lynsey’s treatment.

“I hope that other families going through a similar situation to us are able to relate to our story and can find comfort from it,” Lynsey said.

With the help of Wigan dad Matt Bacon and his own business LMD Publications, Mummy Goes To Hospital is in the process of being printed, to help more families and young children understand the illness. Lynsey and her family will begin to ‘gift’ packs of the books to charities, hospitals, health centres, schools and individual families going through similar who may benefit from having this resource.

Any books over she will offer to friends and family asking for donations. All the proceeds of the book will then be given to charity.

Lynsey has asked if anyone knows any one that may benefit from their story please get in touch with her through the Facebook page “Mummy goes to Hospital”.

This page will also allow anyone to purchase or donate towards the book or charity.

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