There were six childhood lymphoma families involved in the study. All
came from two- parent families and three of the fathers participated in the
interviews. Only two of the families resided in the metropolitan areas, with
the remaining families travelling from other towns in the state (n = 3) or a
town just over the Queensland/New South Wales border (n = 1). Two of
the families were staying in hostel accommodation provided at the hospital
and one family was unaware of the hospital accommodation and so was
staying in a local private hotel. At the point of enrolment in the study, the
age of the child patients ranged from 2 years to 13 years (2 years: n = 1; 9
years: n = 1; 10 years: n = 1; 11 years: n = 1; 13 years: n = 2). The types of
lymphoma with which the children were diagnosed included non-Hodgkin
B-cell lymphoma (n = 2), anaplastic large cell lymphoma (n = 1), and
Burkitt’s lymphoma (n = 3). One of the children was an only child, while
the remainder had siblings (one sibling: n = 4; two siblings: n = 1). The
siblings ranged in age from infancy to sixteen years. All of the fathers were
employed on a full-time basis and all of the mothers were not in paid
employment and were caring for the sick child in hospital