“I don't think I coped particularly well. I think I internalized it. Far too much. And I have ever since, because I have little kids and you hate just let them see you like that. So I internalized it, I would recommend against that. There's a lot of great Facebook groups that I'm in, not for [cancer], but my daughter was born with cleft lip and cleft pallet and so I’m in a support group for that.”
Kristen Edwards is the daughter of a cancer patient that lost his battle during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She spoke of the difficulties of dealing with cancer during the pandemic and other family challenges/difficulties that arose over time. Kristen was in the ICU with her sister, as her husband had suffered from a heart attack, when their father had informed them over phone that he had stomach cancer and that it had spread to his lymph nodes. He began treatment after being diagnosed in January and began treatment the following February. COVID unfortunately hit the country during March and made it essentially impossible to visit for quite a while.