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[quote=Anonymous]On mother's day my family (DH, me, and kids in early ES and younger) were FaceTiming with my MIL and she asked how my mom is doing with cancer.

Issue 1) DH shared personal health information about my mom with his mom and sees zero problems with this.  We don't live near our parents but our moms live less than 2 miles from each other and have several acquaintances in common.  DH's response when I asked him why he thought this was appropriate was "well its so widely discussed on all of these texts, I didn't see what the big deal was."  The texts are with my moms siblings (not even the partners of her siblings) and my mom's children and their partners.  So yes there are a lot of texts but its a very private group.  Also, "my mom asked how your mom was doing, so I told her she has cancer.  That's how she's doing." As if the mere fact of his mom asking a question entitles her to personal information about another person.

Issue 2) DH and I had agreed we weren't going to tell the kids until we had something more concrete to tell them (like grandma has cancer, and here is treatment vs. what we know now which is just that she has cancer and the doctors are tying to figure out what kind and what to do).  Also, we may be seeing my dad next month (my parents are divorced).  There is a long, ugly history between my parents.  I didn't want to risk having one of our kids slip up and mention something about grandma's cancer to my dad, and I didn't want to start dragging my kids into the messy adult world of "don't talk about grandma around grandpa."  Apparently when we discussed this DH had already told his mom and it didn't occur to him that his mom might bright it up in front of our kids.  It turns out that DH also thought it was dumb not to tell the kids, but said he agreed with me because he didn't want to argue about it.  DH generally thinks its ridiculous that he (or anyone else) should remember not to talk about my parents to each other.  Come to think of it, DH generally thinks any restrictions on him are ridiculous. Anyway...

Issue 3) I was shocked when MIL brought this up.  I lied and said "oh she doesn't have cancer, the doctors are just doing some tests to see what is going on."  Do I need to send MIL a message saying "hey, sorry for the confusion.  my mom does have cancer. DH and I had agreed not to tell the kids until we knew more, and I wasn't aware he'd told anyone. Also, while my mom has been very open with her children about this I don't know how much or little she is sharing with others in the neighborhood, so please let her be the one to share this news if and when she wants."  Or, should I leave this up to DH to address?  I'd have to tell him because it won't occur to him otherwise.

Issue 4) Now when I tell my kids their grandma has cancer I have to also explain that I lied to their other grandma, and why.  I'm not coming up with any good ways to do this.  I made a quick decision to lie to my MIL and while that wasn't great I'm honestly not sure that telling the kids at that moment that their other grandma has cancer would have been any better.  Maybe it would have been, it would at least have been over.[/quote]

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