By Sam Price
My name is Sam, I am a husband, a father and a grandfather and passionate about my family, I am nothing special just navigating life as we all do. I anticipated no great dramas, and my life seemed relatively normal. My eldest granddaughter is Sorrelle, ten years old, funny, intelligent and old beyond her young years. Sorrelle’s start in life was not normal! And what happened changed my life forever.
Sorrelle at ten months old was staying overnight with us, we sat her on our bed as we tempted her with her favourite Weetabix breakfast but this day, she seemed a little quiet, not as smiley as usual, not that hungry. I took her back to Gemma (our daughter) and mentioned Sorrelle seemed a little out of sorts and to just keep an eye on her, maybe she was getting a bug. Gemma kept a mother’s eye on her and later that day she noticed some slight bruising on Sorrelle’s cheek. On a mother’s instinct she took her to the local hospital…
It’s 11:30pm on 22nd August 2015, my phone rings, what I heard next will haunt me for the rest of my life. Amid the primal audible grief those words no grandparent, or parent ever wants to hear… “Dad, they think it’s Leukaemia!”
As I write this the emotion of that moment floods back. In the early hours of the next morning, we entered what would become home over the next three years. Manchester Royal Children’s Hospital oncology ward, we meet Professor Rob Wynn for the first time. As we lean over Sorrelle’s cot he confirms the diagnosis, our collective hearts sink as we contemplate the future, indeed if there will be a future!
That day two things happened for me personally; I realised I can’t protect my family from this, but I CAN get them through it.
Watching my daughter’s anguish and my granddaughter’s pain was the hardest thing I have ever watched and will remain with me for the rest of my life. Ironically now it is a memory that fills me with pride as it is a measure of what I was able to change, but trust me you don’t feel that at the time. You are the head of the family, the so-called Alpha male and yet you are useless against this disease. The feelings of frustration, anger, sadness are overwhelming. I wanted to scream, punch walls, find something to blame, find a reason. ALL futile and self-obsessive, no matter how well intentioned. So, you snap out of it! You MUST, you have a part to play that you discover is every bit as important at the chemotherapy, the transfusions, the bone marrow transplants and the antibiotics indeed a whole suite of medications. And so, what was my role? What would help my family get through this?
Let me paint in my background… My late father and brother were a comedian and musician respectively, appeared on television and stages and boy did they know how to act. It’s in my DNA too and so I determined my role to be that of court jester! To occupy the corridors of the ward, Sorrelle’s cot side, indeed anywhere she was. The job… “Grandpa, Make me smile, laugh, mess about!”
This did, as I discovered, two things; it helped my granddaughter cope with something she knew nothing of, but also gave my daughter respite from the horrors in front of her. She was able to watch her daughter laugh and smile and the consequence was that Gem too was able to smile and, at least for a moment, lessen the horrors. Using cardboard urine bowls as hats you discover can make a child howl with laughter to the point nurse’s attend, probably to check if the diagnosis was correct! Watching endless kids’ movies, drawing thousands of pictures, pulling endless funny faces and then when you drive home…
You break down a little. No Sam, don’t let your family see this. Don’t let them know how devastated you really are, how your heart quite literally aches. Then out of the car, smile in place and on we go!
Can I tell you there were no dark moments, times when we wondered if Sorrelle would survive? Sadly, there were those dark moments. But you trust the science, you trust that every component part required to save her is in place. It also means you find yourself questioning even the most eminent and saintly man I have ever met. You question not to confront but to explore, to maybe just maybe ask something that causes a reaction of further investigation which may tweak a treatment, that may just impact. In our case Sorrelle’s body did not behave how anybody anticipated or indeed what was written in the book. Maybe at this point I should share with you that only once Sorrelle’s treatment was successful and she was able to ring the ceremonial bell (still a sound that brings me to tears), did Professor Wynn share with us that they initially doubted Sorrelle would survive! Of course, no one talks about that at the beginning because as I clearly remember Rob stating quite forcibly, “I won’t give you percentages… I am here to cure your daughter/granddaughter”
So, this was the train that hit us. Me.
What would my advice be to any grandparent finding themselves in the same situation?
Firstly, and said with a true heartfelt meaning…. I am truly sorry if you are currently on this journey. My advice, what would I do differently?
Well they say the measure of us is not what imposters arrive but rather how we deal with them. My advice… It sounds simple, and during this chaos it can feel like the most impossible thing… Just be grandpa! That’s all Sorrelle needed. Just be dad! That’s all Gemma needed. And here’s the thing, I’d been doing that for years, I had the experience of that. The skill is recognising you cannot change a thing, be yourself, be the grandparent and parent, do what you have always done. Recognise unless you are Professor Wynn, you cannot cure cancer, and no one expects you to! Your child needs a hug, the reassurance you’ve given them for years, not to cure everything, but to be there and support through it all. Your grandchild needs a hug. Don’t be afraid, I wasn’t going to break Sorrelle, cancer was doing a good enough job of that! So come on grandpa, get in there, hug that beautiful little girl, your sidekick, your soon to be comedy partner. And here’s the strangest thing of all, something you never think will happen at the point of diagnosis and admission, you really do find laughter on a children’s oncology ward. Why you ask? Because they are still children, they still play, they still laugh. Of course, they are poorly and of course there are some big things to deal with but again, you cannot change that, all you can do is remember I AM GRANDPA!
Then, although it seems like forever, your wonderful ward family, those nurses, doctors, families who really do know what you are going through, watch your granddaughter ring the “end of treatment” bell. What a sound! Everyone helped save a little girl and in turn save a family. They helped us re-prioritise our lives, allowed us to look again at what is important, and you discover something so simple, something over the years you forget… One magic word, TIME! It truly is the only thing we have of value, and so now we treasure it a little more, use it a little more wisely and waste it? Never again!
Not only did our family come through this but we are perversely better as a family because of it. We all wear the scars, Sorrelle physical and the rest of us emotional and psychological, but we wear them with pride. Sorrelle didn’t just deal with the leukaemia. She had bowel surgery, a stoma for six months, sepsis, septicaemia, adeno virus, two bone marrow transplants, and endless transfusions. Now because of treatment, Sorrelle has conditions that will stay with her, thyroid issues, chronic kidney disease, hearing loss, calcium issues, penicillin for life… But, and it’s a big one… The cancer is literally gone!
She is happy, she is clever, she is engaging. She is the best of us, and my best friend. The bond we have just cannot be measured. Until the age of three I looked like dad I guess, I was with her daily and loved every minute despite the surroundings. Now, we laugh together, understand each other, talk together, ponder life together, she is the most philosophical ten-year-old I know.
Now Sorrelle and I share a special journey. During her treatment I messaged our extended family across the globe daily, although no great fan of Facebook I used the medium to record all these messages. Some years later my daughter Gemma had kept them all and I decided I wanted to write a book, made up of the 69,000 words of messages over that three-year period. I wanted to give Sorrelle something to read when she is older to help her understand and prepare her for any issues she may have in her future. I wanted to raise awareness for those families yet to come who will find themselves in this impossible situation with just no understanding of how their world will change. Finally, I wanted to generate funds specifically for the ward that saved Sorrelle.
The royalties from the book are not designed to cure cancer, (though I wish they could) but rather to buy items for the ward that can help make the journey more bearable. And so, I began the process of writing the book. The title taken from a song that became my daughters anthem during Sorrelle’s treatment. The book title, “Small boat in a big ocean”, rather apt I thought and summed up Sorrelle’s position exactly.
It took eighteen months to arrive at the point we are now. On Saturday 21st December 2024 the Lord Mayor of Manchester joined us to launch the book. As I write this, we are getting ready to make the first royalty payment to the ward (the promotional cheque ordered). The book has been to the USA around the UK and copies have been bought in Poland, Canada, USA, UK and Greece. We have received letters of thanks from Kensington Palace, auctioned special signed copies by sporting icons, been supported through radio, the press and hopefully soon to be TV. The book has its own Facebook page and website, and the book can be purchased on Amazon and Waterstones.
We even had our local Waterstones branch stock the book. Sorrelle and I are trying to do a little good. Sorrelle now happily autographs copies of the book and together we attend meet the author events. The most pleasing thing for me is that Sorrelle is developing those life skills of compassion and kindness that our world could do with more of. I self-published the book and at the end of June we will be releasing the audio book to accompany the hardback, paperback and eBook versions. It’s taken time, a sizable financial commitment and energy to get to this point. Would I change anything or not do it again? I wouldn’t change a thing; my passion is providing whatever support and awareness I can in this field. In addition, for the last six years, Sorrelle and I have continued to visit the ward every Christmas with gifts for the children, our personal acknowledgement as to just how difficult that time of year can be for families who have to be on ward during the period.
If you are a family reading this my heartfelt wish is that this journey never visits you and if it should that you are able to last the course, bear the heartaches, celebrate every win and reach the day when your grandchild or child ring the bell, you have my word no sound will be as emotionally deafening. I would like to finally add on a personal note that should you find a need to speak with someone please seek them out and talk, if there is no one then please and genuinely contact me. The greatest lesson I learned in being there for my family was that I had to (no matter how privately) take care of myself too or else I would be useless for my family. It’s that old parental cliché I guess, we only break down when everything is ok. We then think about what could have happened and break down. A reminder here, it didn’t happen. Lift your head, dry the tears, raise the smile, embrace your family.
It is worth the fight, it has to be, it’s all we have.
Take care and thank you for reading,
Author Events 
Leave a comment