Mom's book
helps tots
learn to cope

By BETTY CIACCHI
Times-Union

    When Carolyn Stearns Parkinson was diagnosed with cancer, her youngest child was 5.
     Her two other children, Caprice-Ann and Kurt, were old enough to read about the disease. But there was little information for younger children about parents with cancer. Most was about parents who had died, something Carolyn and her husband, David, didn't want to emphasize.
     So Parkinson, of Pittsford, wrote her own book on cancer, chemotherapy and being in the hospital.
      "Kids need to know how it will affect them -- who's going to pick them up from school? Who's going to take them to dance class?" Parkinson said.

     Parkinson's book, My Mommy Has Cancercame out in November. Local artist Elaine Verstraete illustrated the paperback with color drawings of the family.
     Parkinson, who had taught nursery school children to college students before she developed cancer, said she started writing the book in 1989, two years after she was diagnosed with cancer in her small intestine.
     "It took me a while to even get the courage to show it to my family," she said.
     The book's purpose is not only to explain the disease to children but to help families talk about cancer. The book, published locally by Park Press, is sold locally at Waldenbooks, Village Green Bookstore, Borders Book Shop and other stores.
     Next year she plans to publish Mommy's in the Hospital Again, a book she's writing to help children deal with the separation from an ill parent in the hospital.
     She's also starting a newsletter this fall for parents, families and caretakers of cancer patients.