They also wanted to do as many regular family things as they could. Jill was determined to go ahead with Sydney's third birthday party a month after her illness was diagnosed, but she was so sick from chemo that friends did the decorating. She was able to travel to visit Eric's family in Indiana for Dylan's first birthday party soon after, and photographs show her, completely bald, beaming beside her son. Later that day she was too sick to watch his first haircut in her in-laws' front yard, but Eric was with him.
"Any of the holidays we kept as normal as possible," Jill says. After her stem-cell transplant, doctors had warned her she might not get home in time for Thanksgiving a few weeks later, but she did.
The Wolfords -- Dylan, Eric, Sydney and Jill -- kept to routine during Jill's chemotherapy.
(Karen Tam For The Washington Post)
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"I was determined I was going to sit at the Thanksgiving table," she says.
And the Wolfords adhered to daily rituals as much as possible -- including Jill reading to the children at night. She even called from isolation to share stories with them. The only time she stopped was when mouth sores made it impossible. And even when she could only manage small doses of Barbie, Jill would lie on the floor for 10 or 15 minutes to play.
Eric and Jill explained to the children that Mom had cancer, a big sickness that would take big medicine for her to get better. And when the children had a sore throat or stomachache, they were reassured that a small sickness in one place could easily be fixed with small medicine.
Both Eric and Jill say they tried hard not to let their stress and emotions overflow onto the children. For Eric, that meant late-night shopping. Once Sydney and Dylan were settled and he'd helped Jill with any medication, he would head to Wal-Mart, the closest late-night spot, and wander the aisles for hours.
"Jill liked to tease we had the biggest supply of light bulbs and batteries on the block," he says. "To me, it was that kind of thing that helped alleviate some of the stress and subsequently not relay that back to the kids."
The Wolfords' efforts to maintain consistency in their children's lives aligns with what experts say kids need when going through a health crisis with their parents.
Dottie Ward-Wimmer, a senior therapist at the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing in Washington, says crises "don't have to be permanently damaging, depending on how we handle them."
"It is not what happens, it is what we do with it that can make all the difference," she says.
