When Gamze Evren was diagnosed with stage 3 rectal cancer, she immediately made a bold decision: to hide it.
The 53-year-old mom of two from Concord, NSW, kept her cancer a complete secret from both her two daughters and her own mother for almost two years.
It was 18 months before she told her mom and oldest daughter, and two years before she told her youngest – by which point, she was in remission.
“It would have been too intense”
Evren’s daughters were 14 and 10 when she was diagnosed in August 2021. Straight away she hushed it up, telling them she was going for a routine appointment.
“I played it right down, saying I had some bleeding, but just to be sure I was getting checked. I was no way going to share it with my teen and tween daughters,” she tells Kidspot.
“I wanted to ensure they wouldn’t associate cancer as a threat for me anymore – so I waited till that was true.”
Furthermore, her oldest daughter had just lost a friend to brain cancer a year before. “She was very sensitive about death and still grieving,” she says. Her daughter even asked her to keep any bad news from her as she “couldn’t cope.”
Evren’s sister-in-law had also recently been diagnosed – and had lost her hair. Evren’s daughter had cut her own hair to support her aunty. “It would’ve been too intense for her to hear I had it too” she says.
“And my youngest was just too young to handle that information.”
To hide it from her daughters, Evren knew she’d also need to hide it from almost everyone else.
“I wasn’t able to let any of my friendship circle know either; I simply couldn’t risk a remark finding its way to my daughters,” she says.
“So, it was only my husband and sister who knew. I had enough pressure from them, all with their good intentions of course.”
The fact it was during the pandemic actually helped: people weren’t mingling as usual.
But her intuitive older daughter sensed something was wrong.
“Promise you won’t leave us”
At night before going to sleep, she’d get very emotional, saying ‘mom please promise us you won’t leave us, that you’ll always be there for us,’ and would be crying.
Still, Evren reassured her and remained tight-lipped – even to her own mum.
“My father passed away from cancer many years ago,” she says. “I knew mum wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
Moreover, Evren couldn’t have coped herself with the grief of her mum’s reaction. “I didn’t want any pity or negativity even in the form of sadness from her,” she says. “The cancer narrative is either pitying or a battle approach, which doesn’t resonate with me.”
At times, she says, it was lonely.
“Sometimes it all felt too much,” she says. “Everyone was expecting me to do everything for them as normal. It was a time when I needed to make myself my priority.”
“But it was also peaceful,” she says. “I stopped working and dived deep within myself, staying true to what I felt and not pushing myself to look good or feel or stay strong for anyone.”
Evren opted out of the surgery and chemo. To this day, she’s clear.
After 18 months, and in better health, Evren broke her silence on her condition in a phone call to her 80-year-old mum in Turkey.
“She sobbed. She couldn’t believe it,” Evren says. “I actually had to hang up and tell her I’d call back in a few days. I explained this was exactly why I couldn’t tell her. She can’t handle her own emotions. She was disappointed, but not angry.”
Next it was time to tell her daughters.
Although they’d sensed something was wrong, they were both in shock and in tears.
“I stand by my decision to withhold it from them” Evren says. “It made a wonderful example for them that a focused mind and commitment can achieve good health.”
When she explained to her older daughter her reasons for not telling her, she thanked her.
“She said: ‘I trust you mum. I’m proud of you.’”
“My children were very little”
Susanne Gervay, 69, from Sydney, regrets keeping her breast cancer diagnosis secret from her two children, who were five and eight.
“I wanted to protect them, so I kept it secret,” she says. “I believed I’d be all right. Wrong. I had traumatic surgery and, later, a mastectomy.”
Much later, her children noticed purple dye from her radiotherapy. They were traumatised when she told them it was cancer. “They slept in my room. Were scared every time I left the house. They thought I was a liar. I was a liar,” she says.
The second time Gervay had cancer, she told them. “It was better,” she says. “They could be part of my life.”
Gervay says the Princess of Wales is “amazing” because “she did what I did not do. She told her children carefully, safely so they knew they’re loved and she’d be there.”
She feels so strongly about kids being told in a child-appropriate way, she now writes children’s books on the issue.
“I know 100% not to keep the secret of cancer from your family,” Gervay says. “They deserve the right to be by your side.”
Deborah Thomas, CEO of Camp Quality, told Kidspot that the charity has developed an app, Kids’ Guide to Cancer, to give families age-appropriate ways to have this tough conversation.
“Parents tell us the hardest thing is knowing how to talk to kids about cancer in a way that isn’t frightening or overwhelming,” she says.