Worse Than Cancer

If you talk to enough parents of autistic children, eventually you will here some sort of comparison to cancer. I know I've made the comparison at least once during the early days of grappling with this new (to us) and unknown "affliction." AUTISM, it's a scary word.

In many ways, hearing that your child "has autism" is every bit as scary as hearing that your child has cancer, or at least it must seem that way to parents who have never heard the latter. I think most parents who decide to invoke the 'C' word are simply trying to use an extreme example of how difficult it can be to have and raise an autistic child. It's an act of desperation when conventional descriptions fail to garner the desired level of sympathy or understanding from their audience. If you aren't raising an autistic child it's nearly impossible to understand the unique brand of stress that can accompany the diagnosis and all that can come with it.

After a few years, if you happen to be blessed with a good memory and the honesty to accurately recall the origins of these emotions, you may feel more than a bit guilty for ever uttering those words. For those who are new to autism, I strongly advise thinking long and hard about the similarities and many, many differences between having a child diagnosed with autism and learning that your child has cancer.

There have many been great advances in the treatment of pediatric cancers in recent years, and survival rates continue to increase as new drugs and treatment modalities are discovered, but survivors and their families will always live with specter of relapse and secondary health complications from the very treatments that saved their lives. CANCER is a scary word because most people associate the word with DEATH. Another scary word.

Autism, on the other hand, is never a fatal condition, though many autistic people may require extra help to recognize and avoid dangerous situations.


Unlike autism, cancer can be divided into increasingly narrower sub-categories through relatively accurate testing procedures. Treatment recommendations usually depend on many factors including stage and type of malignancy. True, many drugs and procedures begin or began as experimental treatments but response and outcome are predictable, to some degree, and treatment protocols are based on many years of clinical trials. There is little doubt that many cancer treatments carry considerable risk. Radiation, surgery and chemotherapy aren't the sort of things that a responsible medical professional would recommend if he or she didn't know that the benefits outweigh the risks. Left untreated, most cancers are fatal so the choice is usually clear.

More often than not, the horrors of autism are perceived as such by parents who may read of how terrible it is to be autistic or how hard it is to raise an autistic child. Again, I'm not saying that parenting a child with disabilities is always easy, but it is nothing like cancer.


Don't believe me? Get in touch with a family who has been through it. Ask a parent who has lost a child to a fatal disease if they would trade places with a parent of an autistic child. Ask them if they would trade all of the difficult moments for a hug or a glimpse of happiness in their child's eyes as they engage in a favorite stim.

Or ask family members of a child who has survived cancer if they would rather have an autistic child if it meant they could spare their child all of the medical procedures that allowed them to survive.


"But a pediatric cancer survivor," one might observe, "stands an excellent chance of living a long 'normal' and fulfilling life, right?" There was also a good chance that they wouldn't. Want to know what it's really like? You really can't but maybe try reading a few stories like this one before you decide to compare autism with cancer.

In a perfect world, no child would ever have to battle cancer. No child would be born with or develop a disability. Every child would be exactly what we wished for and we'd all live happily ever after. Fortunately, or unfortunately if you prefer, we don't get to make those choices. We do what we can to protect our children from harm and help them if they are sick or injured, but certain choices are beyond our reach, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise.

If you are reading this and you absolutely must insist on trying to draw parallels between cancer and autism, take some time to really think about that and imagine how you would make healthcare decisions for your child if he or she were faced with a potentially fatal disease rather than a developmental delay.


When was the last time you heard a cancer patient or family member say "This is worse than autism."