I know exactly how Kate Middleton feels. The words “You have cancer” strike directly at the heart of a mother.

In 1999, I was 41 years old with children ages 5 and 7 when I learned that I had extensive breast cancer.

My first thoughts were for my kids. How to tell them? How much to say? How could I protect them from the coming onslaught of surgeries, chemo therapy, radiation treatments, and repeated hospital stays? What if I died before they were old enough to remember me?

There were no books to give the girls, no tried-and-true methods for helping them cope with a mother’s serious illness. All of those resources came later. I had to figure it out on my own.

Because it was physically painful to hug them and I knew it would be worse after my mastectomy, I gave them stuffed animals to hold in lieu of hugs from me.

I found a way for them to help with my treatment. Every afternoon we cleaned my shunt by injecting heparin into the twin ends of the shunt — conveniently, one for each girl. They learned how to open and close the valve, how to affix the injector, how to carefully clean all surfaces before and after handling them.

We talked about the elephant in the room, and I bought a large leather-covered elephant to display in our home, a symbol of our commitment to hide nothing from them. At the same time, we were careful to use age-appropriate language for each child.

We recruited their teachers and the school administration to help. The day of my big surgery, the school got a call as soon as it was over and their teachers promptly told them that I was fine.

Cell phones didn’t exist back then, and I’ve never been the kind of person to whip out a camera. I don’t even know if there are any pictures from that time, because I’ve never looked for them. I don’t need photographic evidence to jog my memory.

There were funny moments as well as the scary ones. After I’d visited her kindergarten classroom wearing a dark colored scarf and hoop earrings, one of Ellie‘s classmates asked if her mom was a pirate. I don’t think I ever wore those earrings again.

Although my diagnosis was grim (thankfully also wrong) whenever the girls asked if I was going to die, I was as honest as I could be. I usually told them that everybody dies, and the doctors were doing everything to make sure that I did not die anytime soon.

I will never forget the day that I told my oncologist that I wanted to live long enough to be at their bat mitzvahs. He reached over, patted my arm, and said, “I’m planning for you to dance at their weddings.”

I am eternally grateful to him, and still sad that he didn’t live long enough to join me at their bat mitzvahs; at age 56 he had a heart attack and died in the middle of the night. I still think about you, Dr Stephen Goldman. You were a shining light in a dark world.

I wish Kate Middleton a refuah shleima, a complete healing of body and spirit. And I hope she too gets to live long enough to see her children grow up.