Bellybuttonless

I was diagnosed with PMP when I was 37; my son Aiden was 7 at the time. One of the hardest things I had to do was tell him about my diagnosis and tried to field many of the questions that he had. He’s an only child, so he had a lot of worries and anxieties – but we agreed early on to be truthful and try to face whatever came together. We tried looking for kids books that spoke a bit about the experience, ones we hope also had a hopeful outlook.

While we found some great ones about dealing with breast cancer we couldn’t find any that dealt with the experience we were going through. Aiden suggested we make one together, so we did; we created ‘Bellybuttonless’. I was undergoing post-op chemo and couldn’t be very physically active yet, so it was the perfect activity to share together. We wrote it together and I illustrated it, which gave us lots of time to plan, discuss and heal together.

Afterwards, we have offered it up to the world — we hope that it can help other families navigate this incredibly difficult moment together. The book is published and available in different places, but our hope has always been to make it as widely available as possible.

The links below will take you to the download of the book in the webshop. Please feel free to download it and use, to share it with a friend that could use it. Any donation to this charity that so graciously seeks to bring awareness to PMP would be much appreciated.

– Apis

 

	+		Download Bellybuttonless and make a donation to Pseudomyxoma Survivor
			Download Bellybuttonless