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I don't know your prognosis, but if you've gotten solid advice, and a second opinion, you probably have many years ahead of you to share with your son's successes and failures in his quest to be ultimately an independent person.
My son was 15 when I was diagnosed. I beat around the bush for a couple of weeks and consulted with several trusted friends to get the courage to break the news to him.
My advice: Be direct, tell him you have prostate cancer and that you have to go to the hospital for an operation to make it better. You don't have to start the conversation with any other details than that. What you do need to do though, is be prepared to listen to him and answer any questions he might have about you and the proceedure. Simple answers will suffice and there's no need for detail unless he asks specific questions. Over time he will probably want to know more so always be prepared to give him a brief but truthful answer. If he feels satisfied that he has been kept in the loop, he will be less likely to be stressed about "daddy". As the date draws near you should also explain some of the things that he can do to help you during your recovery. Kids are very resilient and knowing what to expect will help alleviate confusion when you get home from RP. In the long run, you will need to let him know that he too will have to vigilant about his health. I believe that this strategy will foster a strong bond of trust while you share the many milestones he will go through over the years.
I don't know the particularities of your
specific cancer, but I guess the real problem is that you have to explain to your 8 y/o son why you will have surgery.
If you would have opted for WW there would
not have been any need for explanations.
Do you have to tell an eight year old that you have cancer? If so, why? I can understand that it might be necessary if you were likely to succumb to the disease soon and not see him grow up. But this seems an unlikely scenario.
Although you have not given any details of your diagnosis, the fact that your medical advisors have agreed to your surgery indicates that it is likely that you have what is termed early stage prostate cancer. If this is so, then the chances of your passing on due to prostate cancer in the next five years is statistically as cost to zero as you can get – and even at 10 years, the chance of a disease specific death is less than 5%.
And even then, the actuality of passing is not sudden. Unlike the biggest single cause of death in the US – heart failure – prostate cancer gives men who are destined to pass on from the disease many years to acclimatise their loved ones to their departure.
So, I say again, why bring in the word cancer – that is a terrifying word because it is associated with an inevitability of death, but in most case that is simply not so with prostate cancer. Tell him you have a problem with come cells in your body that aren’t behaving – perhaps even use the word tumour, which is much less threatening than cancer – tell them you are going to remove them – like the weeds in the lawn and you’ll keep an eye on things afterwards to make sure the weeds don’t come back.
If you are one of the unfortunate men for whom surgery does not provide a ‘cure’ you’ll still have plenty of time to decide how to tell your son, who will then be 10 or 20 years older
