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An eight-year-old boy with a passion for technology and great sense of curiosity found out that the illness he is battling is terminal by typing the disease’s name into a Google search. His parents had chosen to keep this dreadful information to themselves, until he found out.
Dominic Stacey has been diagnosed with the progressive condition, which he called “tired legs”, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and in a moment of curiosity, Googled it while his parents were away, according to the Mail Online.
His discovery? The average life expectancy of someone with the rare disease is 25, as it causes muscles to degenerate, leading to problems with walking and breathing.
His parents battled to get him to understand why they had chosen not to tell him, says his father, Dominic senior:
“He came up to me and asked me why I had lied to him,’ he said. ‘We sat him down and explained everything. It was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had. We were all in bits.”
“Since then he’s had several nightmares about it and always calls us in for a cuddle.”
Bending the truth?
His response when previously asked by his son about whether or not the disease would kill him had been to reply that “no one knows when they’re going to die”
Dominic junior , despite medical challenges which include being in a wheelchair and suffering epileptic seizures every day, is, for the time being, trying to be a normal kid, enjoying Xbox, seafood, drawing and maths. The family has since helped to start a charity organisation in support of Duchenne’s sufferers and their families.
It’s every parent’s nightmare: Discovering your child has a terminal illness. While these parents obviously had good intentions by not disclosing the eventual outcome to their son, they had to deal with the fallout when he found out on his own.
If your child was terminally ill, would you tell him the truth?
Dominic Stacey has been diagnosed with the progressive condition, which he called “tired legs”, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and in a moment of curiosity, Googled it while his parents were away, according to the Mail Online.
His discovery? The average life expectancy of someone with the rare disease is 25, as it causes muscles to degenerate, leading to problems with walking and breathing.
His parents battled to get him to understand why they had chosen not to tell him, says his father, Dominic senior:
“He came up to me and asked me why I had lied to him,’ he said. ‘We sat him down and explained everything. It was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had. We were all in bits.”
“Since then he’s had several nightmares about it and always calls us in for a cuddle.”
Bending the truth?
His response when previously asked by his son about whether or not the disease would kill him had been to reply that “no one knows when they’re going to die”
Dominic junior , despite medical challenges which include being in a wheelchair and suffering epileptic seizures every day, is, for the time being, trying to be a normal kid, enjoying Xbox, seafood, drawing and maths. The family has since helped to start a charity organisation in support of Duchenne’s sufferers and their families.
It’s every parent’s nightmare: Discovering your child has a terminal illness. While these parents obviously had good intentions by not disclosing the eventual outcome to their son, they had to deal with the fallout when he found out on his own.
If your child was terminally ill, would you tell him the truth?
