Before Danielle Frodyma reached the age of 10, she told her parents she would cure cancer. While she hasn’t discovered the ultimate cure, in recent years she has focused her efforts on helping initiate conversations with children about cancer.
Frodyma’s first book, “Cal Clobbers Cancer” will be available this summer. The children’s picture book tells the story of a superhero cell, named Cal, that attempts to fight cancer cells. The book from the Wahoo native will be available for purchase by early July on Amazon, Frodyma said.
While creating the book, Frodyma worked to share the science behind cancer while also simplifying the concept enough for children to understand without being overwhelmed.
“When you’re growing up, you hear ‘cancer’ a lot,” Frodyma said. “When you’re younger, you don’t really understand what that entails. People are upset and you kind of feel the stress around the whole topic, but I never really understood it until getting a little bit older.”
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As a teenager, the "cancer cord" struck home for Frodyma when her grandma was diagnosed with brain cancer. While she was able to understand her grandma’s death, Frodyma said she had to learn how to explain cancer to her nieces and nephews in a non-frightening way that still conveyed the seriousness.
“How do you take something that’s so complex and kind of boil it down to just the bare minimum for a child to understand? It’s a very scary topic, so how do you make it maybe a little less daunting?” Frodyma said.
Cancer continued to stick with Frodyma after her grandma’s death. In her undergraduate studies, she worked in a cancer research lab and later graduated with a doctorate from the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where she studied cancer research. Now, Frodyma works as a senior medical writer for Porterhouse Medical.
In 2020, Frodyma’s close friend, Grace Morrison, lost her dad to lung cancer.
“It was really confusing for us because we just didn’t understand,” Morrison said. “We’re being told he’s getting better, but he’s still in the hospital and he’s not.”
Bob Chvatal was a pillar of the Wahoo community who is remembered by friends and family members as a hard worker who always volunteered to coach sports, lend a hand and served at the volunteer fire department.
“He never took time for himself and that’s kind of what led to, I think, his diagnosis of a stage four lung cancer versus a stage one or stage two,” said Missy Chvatal, Bob’s wife. “He put himself on the back burner.”
Missy and Bob had five children together, but had yet to earn the title of grandma and grandpa when they learned of Bob’s diagnosis. However, Bob learned while in the ICU that his son and daughter-in-law were expecting.
Bob died in February 2020, and the following day, Missy said her son found out they were pregnant with triplets.
Now, Missy has five grandchildren, all of whom have yet to learn why their grandpa is no longer with them. Frodyma said it’ll be a conversation that will be left to the remaining family members.
“One day, they’re going to have to tell them Grandpa Chvatal passed away from cancer and that’s going to be a difficult conversation,” Frodyma said.
In writing “Cal Clobbers Cancer,” Frodyma decided to dedicate the book to Bob Chvatal to help start conversations with children about cancer.
As a mother herself, Frodyma said her 3- and 5-year-olds have recently been growing curious as to what mom does every day at work. Those conversations, along with constantly reading children’s books to them, have helped pave the path toward creating a book to portray cancer to a child’s mind.
For nearly six months, Frodyma worked on creating the superhero cell that would save the body from destruction. Already, the book has helped Frodyma’s children ask more questions about cancer, their own bodies and the cells that keep them healthy.
“It was definitely a delicate balance of let’s make this accurate, let’s make it factual, but also, let’s not make it so dense that a four- or five-year-old is not going to understand it,” Frodyma said.
Missy knows the feeling all too well from trying to walk her children through cancer while explaining what it means and how to keep positivity up while fighting the battle.
“You just at times feel very lost as a mom on how the best way is to do that,” Missy said. “As a parent, one of your main jobs is to protect your children … and sometimes what you're protecting them from makes you not want to talk about it and to shelter and shield them.”
Missy has since learned through her own experiences that children need to have a safe place to have these conversations. With the help of Frodyma’s book, Missy said this can begin to answer some of those ‘why’ questions.
“I was 25 and I could barely understand it,” Morrison said. “ I don’t think this is a conversation that will ever be easy for my brother and sister to have with their children.”