There’s a world that exists within hospitals and oncology floors — a world you never notice until you’re forced inside it.

It’s the world of lab results and scan days, of port accesses and chemo schedules, of quiet tears in hospital bathrooms and forced smiles for your child.

It’s the world of childhood cancer.

And unless you live in it, you can’t really understand it. Not because people don’t care — but because this world speaks a different language.

I used to be part of the “outside world.” The one that worried about birthday parties, baseball schedules, and bedtime routines. Now, my worries have numbers — hemoglobin, ANC, platelets.

I can read a CBC panel like a second language, but I still can’t find words to explain it to anyone who hasn’t been here.

When my mom asks what the blood counts mean, I want to explain. I want her to understand why I held my breath waiting for that ANC number, why 1.2 feels like a miracle. But sometimes I just can’t.

It’s not that I don’t want to share — it’s that the emotional cost of translating this world into one that makes sense to others is too heavy.

When friends text, “How are you doing?” I freeze.
Because how do you answer that?
Do you tell them you’re terrified of the next scan? That you haven’t slept because the sound of your child crying through the pain still echoes in your mind? That you’re grateful and broken at the same time?

It’s easier to say, “We’re okay.”
Even when “okay” means we’re surviving one moment at a time.

The truth is, this world changes you. You learn to smile through tears, to find hope in numbers, to celebrate the tiniest victories — weight gained, a day without fever, one moment of laughter in the middle of the storm.

You learn what real bravery looks like. You watch it every single day in your child’s eyes.

And while I wish no one had to understand this world, there’s a strange kind of beauty in the connection between those who do. Other parents in the oncology clinic can read your face with one glance. They know when your child’s counts must have dropped, or when you finally got good news. No words are needed — just a nod, a small smile, a shared strength.

So to my friends and family — I love you for asking. For trying. For caring, even when my answers are short and vague. Please know that when I go quiet, it’s not because I don’t want to talk. It’s because there are no words big enough, or simple enough, to explain what this world feels like.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to tell the story out loud.

But for now, we just keep living it — one count, one moment, one breath at a time.