The 2 a.m. Google Search I Learned to Put Down
It is 2 a.m. and you are typing something into Google that no parent should ever have to type. The cursor blinks. You hesitate. You hit search anyway.
If you have been a cancer mom, you know this scene. The bedside lamp is on. Your partner is asleep next to you. The hospital bag is by the door. Your child is finally, mercifully, asleep down the hall. And you are scrolling pediatric oncology forums and survival rate statistics on a phone screen at full brightness while the rest of the house holds its breath.
I did this for the first three months of my son's treatment. I want to tell you what I have learned about it. I want to tell you, gently, why I do not do it anymore.
What I was actually looking for
When I was searching at 2 a.m., I told myself I was looking for information. I was not. The information was already in my care team's hands. The hospital had given us thick binders. My son's oncologist had answered every question we had asked, and several we had not.
What I was actually looking for, at 2 a.m., was the feeling of doing something. I was looking for a sense of control over a situation in which I had almost none. The Google search was an attempt to be useful in a moment when there was nothing useful to do but rest, and resting felt impossible.
I think this is what most 2 a.m. searches actually are. Not research. A nervous system trying to soothe itself with the illusion of action.
What the 2 a.m. search actually does to a cancer parent
It floods you with the wrong information. Childhood cancer outcomes have changed dramatically in the last twenty years. Many of the statistics that show up in a midnight search are based on data from decades ago. The world has moved. The numbers have moved. The forum threads that show up are sometimes from families navigating different diagnoses, different protocols, different countries, different decades.
It pulls you away from the present. The child you are searching about is asleep in the next room. The reading you are doing is about a hypothetical future that may or may not arrive. While you are searching, you are not in your life. You are in a tab.
It makes the morning harder. A bad search at 2 a.m. is paid for at 7 a.m., when your child wakes up and needs cereal and a hug, and you have not slept, and your eyes are puffy, and your child looks up at you and notices.
What I do instead now
I write the question down
If a real question shows up at 2 a.m., I keep a small notebook on the nightstand and I write it there. I do not search it. I bring it to clinic. I ask our care team. The answer I get from a person who knows my child is always better than the answer I get from a search engine.
I close the tab
Sounds silly. It works. I literally have a rule that the phone goes face down at 10 p.m. Whatever feeling shows up after 10 p.m. is not a feeling I am going to feed with internet research.
I read something that is not about cancer
A novel. A magazine. A book about food, or birds, or anything that lets my brain be somewhere else for ten minutes. I sleep better. I parent better the next day.
I name the feeling without acting on it
If I wake up at 2 a.m. and I feel the pull, I name it. "I am scared." "I am bracing." "I want to do something." Sometimes that is enough to let the feeling settle without a search.
A note for the parent reading this in the middle of the night
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. and you have been searching, I see you. There is no shame in it. Every cancer parent I know has done it. Some of us have done it for years.
The thing I want to offer you is this. The information you actually need is in the relationship you have with your care team. The reassurance you are looking for is not on the internet. It is, sometimes, in the act of putting the phone down and letting your nervous system catch up to the fact that your child is, in this moment, okay.
Tomorrow you can write the question down and bring it to clinic. Tonight, you can rest. Both are okay.
If there is a specific question you have been carrying, please bring it to your care team. They want to hear it. The questions cancer parents bring to clinic are the questions that improve every cancer family's experience after.
Dina
Mom of Max | Founder, Maxwell’s Toy Shoppe
Childhood Cancer Advocate 💛
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