Mine were maybe 9 and 12 at the time. My first surgery wasn't so bad, but then we had a recurrence and had more surgeries and radiation and chemo, so the whole thing ended up being a long scary process. (Still not quite as intense as what you are facing, but enough to give you an idea how my kids coped.) It was hard, on all of us. One thing that worked in our favor is that we homeschool, so the kids didn't have to be gotten back and forth anywhere on anyone else's schedule, except for a couple classes a week, and some nice ladies from church helped with that. Being close to me during the day helped both of them cope ... we did a LOT of cuddling on the sofa after I got my feeding tube, especially, because of how I had to sleep propped up. (We did a lot of educational TV for school that year, LOL.) My daughter went from being totally creeped out by the feeding tube to wanting to help me use it at the end, because she had time to see me treat it as a normal, if annoying, part of daily routine.

We also made time to let them visit the hospital where I was receiving daily treatments. They weren't allowed in the chemo area, and for good reasons, but my radiation appointments were short, so they came with us once or twice (my mother was my driver so my husband could keep working, and my stepdad kept the kids during the appointments) and the kind nurses let them peek in the radiation room ... they got to see the table, the mask, all the stuff I talked about. But ONLY when they were ready and if they wanted. I didn't make them do it, just offered it as an option, and after making sure the nurses thought it would be okay. Just knowing kids were allowed to see it knocks it down one level of 'scary', actually.

One piece of bad timing was a young lady in our church dealing with leukemia at the same time, for the third or fourth time in her young life. She did not make it. We had done some hospital visits to her during her illness, and when my recurrence came up, we had to be very careful that my kids understood this was a different kind of cancer, with a different prognosis ... that was hard to do, because we didn't know WHY it had recurred and we didn't want to lie or give false hope, but my chances really were better than hers had been.

My kids really got into 'taking care of Mom' which came with some special privileges. This did go along with the homeschooling and wouldn't work with a conventional schedule ... but they were worried and needed extra cuddle time. So I gave one night a week to each of them to stay up late with me. Those nights my husband got to keep for himself to do his own thing, so he wasn't always feeling like he had to keep an eye on me. We binge-watched more TV, usually, or did audio books. And we'd just talk. It's a habit we actually have kept up to this day, and now that they are both teenagers, that's priceless. At the time, it was partly so I'd know that whatever happened, we'd end with good memories. (Hey, I was worried, it was a valid attitude. And it did help.)

I can ask my kids if they have any tips for you for your son, if you want, as I'm finding my memory is fuzzier than I thought ... but if you're comfortably straightforward with your son (not scary, just honest), he'll handle it better. If we seem like we know what we're doing, that gives them reassurance. (Why on earth they can make it to that age and still think we know what we're doing, I have no idea...LOL.)