Danielle Fishel reveals why she didn't tell her young sons she had cancer
Danielle Fishel feared telling her young boys about her cancer diagnosis would make them worry she would die.
Danielle Fishel didn't tell her young sons she was diagnosed with cancer.
The former 'Boy Meets World' star found it hard enough telling her husband, Jensen Karp, that she had breast cancer, and so she decided to tell Adler, five, and Keaton, three, that she had a "boo-boo" that she had surgically removed from her body so they wouldn't worry start worrying that their mom would "die".
Speaking on the 'Amy and T.J.' podcast, she said: “It was hard for me to have to tell my husband.
“Both of his parents passed. His mom died in 2022 from lung cancer and she lived with us while she was going through chemo and her cancer treatment. My oldest son Adler was three when she passed and he was very close to her.”
She continued: “One of my big concerns was would he ask, ‘Where did Grandma go? Why is Grandma not here anymore?’ My big concern was that if we tell him that she was sick, he’s gonna think the next time he gets a cold that he’s gonna die.
“Or that the next time Mommy or Daddy is sick, he’s gonna think we’re gonna die. So I wanted to be honest with him about the fact that she had cancer and that cancer doesn’t always mean that you die, but sometimes it does. And in Grandma’s case, that’s what it was.”
The 43-year-old actress admitted it was awful having to keep the truth from her boys, but she just couldn't "handle" them worrying that she might not make it.
She went on: “So when I was diagnosed, my fear was that I’m normally so honest with my kids but I can’t tell them I have cancer. I can’t handle that possibility that they’re gonna worry about me in that way.
“So they don’t know that I had cancer, but they do know that I had a boo-boo that I had surgically removed from my body and they needed to be gentle with me. I told them I love our bear hugs and I love wrestling with you, but my boo-boo means that I need to be gentle.”
This summer, Danielle had two successful lumpectomy procedures to remove the cancer, and after that, she told her sons her "boo-boo was all better".
She said: “When I was able to wrestle with them and swing them around, Adler stopped and he said, ‘Mommy, is your boo-boo all better?’ and I was so happy to tell him that, yes, my boo-boo was all better."
Danielle is not completely out of the woods yet, as she still needs to go through some form of radiation.
And despite catching the cancer early, the former Disney Channel star is still facing the possibility of lifelong medication.
She told E! News: "Being on hormone therapy, that's a lifelong thing or at least until I'm all the way through menopause. When I first was diagnosed, I had a fellow cancer survivor reach out to me, and I was like, 'Yeah, but thankfully mine is stage zero.’ And she wrote back and she said, 'I just want you to know there is no easy cancer.' And I thought about her saying that to me many times over the course of this treatment that I've been on so far."
