Twinkletwinkle, here, catch, have a big hug from me.
Re telling your 8-yr-old, there's no mad panic for you to say anything today. Give yourself the chance to get your head round the shock, talk to your partner (apologies for the assumption) so you can both work out for yourselves what you tell him and how. The book is very good, and will give you something to use in the conversation.
When I found out my kids were a lot older than yours (12 and 14 for the youngest two), but still kids. I encouraged them to ask anything they wanted to ask, and tried to preempt questions they might have, but I was surprised by some of their questions. Expect the questions they ask to be very child-centric. I know your son loves his mummy very much, but he will be worried about what this means FOR HIM, and who's going to do things FOR HIM if you're not well enough to. So have a think about who will take him to and from school if you're not feeling up to it on some days, who will take him to football practice or any other out-of-school activities he does, who will get dinner ready, that kind of thing. He'll also need to know about the hair thing at some stage, but kids are very resilient and you may find he's completely unphased by it and that also depends on how you deal with it (cold cap, wig, hats, scarves etc).
A couple of practical things you might want to get sorted.
Get your presecription exemption form sorted out. Your GP's surgery can do this very simply, they fill it in and stamp it, you sign it and they can even send it off for you.
Give the Helpline a ring. They're fab. Doesn't matter if you just end up blubbing at them, they've heard it all before and won't be bothered by it.
Have you seen the oncologist yet? The onc will be able to tell you precisely what your regime is. There are different treatments and schedules, so yours will be planned specifically for you and may involve surgery (different types, and can be before or after chemo), radiotherapy (but might not involve rads), chemo (lots of different types and schedules), hormone therapy if appropriate (not everybody has hormone-receptive tumours), etc etc etc.
Take a browse round the Publications part of the site, there are some very good leaflets that explain what might happen.
Get a notebook and write down any questions you come up with.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SILLY QUESTION. Ask anything you like - none of us knew any more than you did when we started and the only way to find the answers is to ask the questions.
BE KIND TO YOURSELF. An atom bomb has just gone off in your life, you can expect to feel like it!
And come back and use the forums as much as you find helpful. You may find it sensible to restrict yourself to certain parts of the forum. With the deepest respect for those who have posted in the sections, when I was first diagnosed I just found it far too upsetting to read threads in the End of Life section, for example.
Macmillan is another good source of information, but don't google indiscriminately.
And here, catch, have another big hug from me.
CM
x
