Telling the kids

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Hi all,

We found out that my husband has locally advanced prostate cancer a few weeks ago, he is due to have surgery next week.

We are quite young, he is 55, and I'm 47 and 4 of our kids are still teenagers living at home, 3 of them are mid exams and we wanted to hold off telling them until afterwards to minimise the impact but as the surgery has to be done with some urgency, we are going to have to tell them before that.

We've told their schools so the practicalities of mitigating any impact on their results is sorted, but I just wanted to see how other people have approached this in a couple of ways:

1. How much information? As having the op will effectively cure the actual cancer, how much detail have you gone into? We've decided that we do have to tell them that it's cancer, but not sure how much detail to go into. We are aware that they will immediately Google it, so we want them to be well informed, but stage 3 cancer in lots of other circumstances would be less likely to be 'cured' just with one surgery, so don't want to scare them.

2. On the subject of googling, are there any teen friendly resources to explain the treatment and recovery? Clearly, a lot of the literature is about ED and penis rehabilitation, and although they are all old enough to process this stuff, I'm not sure I want to traumatise them any further by masses of googling about their parents' sex life!

Any advice on any of this would be welcome.

Thanks

Mr U 39 minutes ago

You are in a bit of a fix but is the treatment not able to be postponed a little bit, a few weeks? I’d ask for a second opinion on the timing of the treatment.

Whatever you tell them they will use there own ways of working out what you don’t tell them so I would have a regular weekly health review where you can tell them what’s going on and they can ask anything they like. I would advise them if places that do have the right information. The first thing to tell them and it’s in all honesty and that’s that is a slow cancer. Probably the slowest. Then it’s time to listen.

Asking here is great and the online brochures are fantastic and so are the NHS leaflets online. But this place is also ok for advice, through you. That could then build up the confidence in honesty they will need. But don’t promise anything. Things change and treatments get better every year so we just don’t know what’s around the corner.

A fund raiser might work too. It’s a better way of getting together on this couples disease. Cakes or sponsored walk whatever it is go for it.
You will have to brace yourself for a hubby that’s newly castrated and emasculated. It’s grim and mentally grim x10.

But we are her to help. To support all your family and especially your hubby.

Take care.

LimoncelloSpritz 3 minutes ago in reply to Mr U

Thank you for this. No, we've delayed it a little already to get halfway through their exams, and they are reluctant to delay any more, given its spread.

I like your fundraising suggestion, too, to pull us all together. It's all so new, we have moments where it hits us what it's going to be like after the op, but it still seems very surreal, and I imagine that whatever we are bracing for, we won't be prepared for the reality of it. I think it will help to have somewhere like this to come for support.

Thanks again, I wish I didn't need your advice, but I am very grateful for it.

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Telling the kids