Mom Battling Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer Decides to Tell Her 6yo Son She's Dying: "Today Was the Hardest Day of My Life"

Editor's note: This article was originally published on May 18, 2021. It has since been updated.

No mother should ever have to tell their child that they will no longer be able to be a part of their life, but that's exactly what Dr. Nadia Chaudhri had to do. The 43-year-old neuroscientist and professor from Montreal, Canada, had to tell her 6-year-old son that she didn't have a lot of time left to spend with him. Chaudhri, who had been diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer, underwent a hysterectomy and several rounds of chemotherapy only to find out that cancer had returned.

"Once ovarian cancer returns, it’s considered a terminal diagnosis," Chaudhri told Good Morning America. "There is no treatment. You’re just buying time." When she and her husband received the devastating news, they worried about how to break it to their son but decided the best way to deal with the issue was to keep him in the loop as well.

"My husband and I made the decision that we needed to tell our son what is going on because all the treatments are failing me," said Chaudhri. "He already knew that I had cancer. He knew that I was still taking chemotherapy medication and trying to get better, but I don’t think he had a sense of how bad it is." Though Chaudhri had made the decision to tell her son, she wasn't prepared for it emotionally. Chaudhri said she woke up crying and feeling "completely devastated."

She took to Twitter to share what she was going through and wrote, "Today Is the day I tell my son that I’m dying from cancer. It’s reached a point where he has to hear it from me. Let all my tears flow now so that I can be brave this afternoon. Let me howl with grief now so that I can comfort him." Through her journey with the deadly disease, she had friends and family checking up on her, but after this tweet, thousands of people were sending heartwarming messages. They also lauded her for deciding to have such a difficult conversation.

"It really seemed to strike a nerve," said Chaudhri, who was flooded with notifications after the post. "A lot of people have written to me unsolicited and told me how important it was that their parents had that conversation and they assured me how they turned out fine, or they told me about situations where they didn’t have the conversation and how dreadful that was."

Chaudhri also spoke to a close friend, a psychologist, before breaking the news to her son. When she had the conversation with her son, it was short, but meaningful. "One of the things my son said was, ‘I wish I didn’t know. I wish you hadn’t told me,'" she recalled. "We said, 'We have to tell you because you’re part of the family and we didn’t want you to have a bad surprise. We wanted to give you the chance to ask your questions and talk about it and feel things with us, as a family.'"

"I’m so glad we did it because he needed to hear it and he understood right away what was said," she added. "It just worked out well even though it was the hardest conversation I’ve ever had." Now, Chaudhri is helping others prepare for the moment they tell their loved ones. "I know it’s going to be a shock and it’s going to be sad but I’m trying to help get everybody to a place where it can be more of a celebration of my life and less of a shock of my death, and my son is part of that."

"It's important to be good and be kind and be honest and have integrity," she said. Chaudhri moved from Pakistan to the U.S. at age 17 to attend college. She has also started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to allow young scientists to be able to continue the research she was doing on drug addiction. The campaign has raised close to $190,000. Chaudhri's story also shows just how important it is to love and cherish people because we never know when our last moment might be with them. 

References: 

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/wellness/story/mom-outpouring-love-twitter-revealing-son-dying-77674650

https://twitter.com/DrNadiaChaudhri/status/1392079822722056197

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-nadia-with-travel-awards-for-young-scientists?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

Cover Image Source: GoFundMe/Help Nadia Fund Awards for Young Scientists