A woman diagnosed with terminal breast cancer has been denied custody of her children.A judge in North Carolina denied Alaina Giordano primary custody of her children, Bud, 5, and Sofia, 11, because she is unemployed, "the course of her disease is unknown" and "children who have a parent with cancer need more contact with the non-ill parent," "Good Morning America" reports.Judge Nancy Gordon ruled the children of the Durham, N.C.-based mom must relocate to Chicago to live with their father, Kane Snyder, by June 17. "It makes no sense to take them away from me because you don't know how long I'm going to live," Giordano tells the news show. "Everybody dies and none of us knows when. Some of us have a diagnosis of cancer, or diabetes or asthma. This is a particularly dangerous ruling to base a custody case on a diagnosis."Giordano, "GMA" reports, has stage 4 breast cancer, receives monthly treatment and medical records show her cancer is not progressing, although it has metastasized to her bones. "I'm fully functional and my kids are thriving here in Durham," she tells the news show. Snyder and Giordano -- who went through a bitter custody battle -- will share custody of the children, but "GMA" reports that if Giordano stays in Durham to receive treatment at Duke Cancer Institute, "her custody will be limited to holiday and weekend visitation, the airfare for which, she says she cannot afford."Gordon, according to the news show, cited forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Brantley in her decision. "The more contact [the children] have with the non-ill parent, the better they do," she says. "They divide their world into the cancer world and a free of cancer world. Children want a normal childhood, and it is not normal with an ill parent."But Holly Prigerson, director of Center for Psycho-oncology & Palliative Care Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, says young kids want to be with their parents -- even if a parent is ill. "Cancer is not leprosy," she tells "GMA." "...That's not to say that seeing a parent so ill will not be upsetting for children -- it will be frightening -- but not seeing a mother and not receiving honest answers about why mommy is not there may be more detrimental to the child's mental health and functioning than the reverse."
