Hey mate - life holds no guarantees - the thing is that applies whether you have cancer or not. You have to move forward with as much hope and love as you possibly can. My advice is to be protective of your mental health, and really do your best to fend off the anxiety as much as possible (easy to say, I know).
I was 44 years old at the time of diagnosis, invasive head & neck cancer, 6 months to live, 40-60% chance of curative chemoradiation. Three young sons - the youngest was 4 at the time I was diagnosed.
It's a shit show, there's no pretending. And there's no guarantee you beat it, and if you do beat it, it wants to cripple you. Cancer doesn't just want to take your life, it wants to break your heart, destroy your hope, take EVERYTHING. Don't let it.
You're still alive, and there's every chance you'll push through this, mate. I had a 50/50 shot, 6 months to live, and i'm still kicking.
But yeah, my advice isn't to set yourself up psychologically. You'll shatter at the first news of recurrence, or hiccup in the healing trajectory. My advice is to work on your ability to accept - Zen up. Again, I know it's easy to say - but in my opinion your mental health is equal parts under attack - cancer isn't just a disease of the physical health.
If you overlook that, you can wake up years after treatment, having survived, and realise you slipped into a depression. You never told your kids about the disease, your wife half-blamed you for it (or at least it felt that way), and when it was over just wanted to move on and forget it, even though you couldn't. You felt isolated and alone while sick, and that feeling stuck to you.
I think your kids probably deserve to know - but you could downplay the prognosis. Kind of vaccinate them a bit against worry & grief - give them at least a small dose of it now .. otherwise if your health did decline it would hit them like a truck later. And they'd also have to deal with the 'santa claus isnt real my parents lied to me' aspect of withholding critical info, you know ?
Sorry mate, just my two cents. I think our situations were very similar, and the thing to take heart from is that people pull through. You'll get a lot of encouragement, be told you're a warrior, that you're going to get beat it .. and when you're in the trenches, that positive stuff feels like lies. But .. the fact is .. you're still alive, and there's every possibility you'll come out the other side of this, buddy.
But don't forget there are no guarantees for any of us, even the smallest child, bathed in the light of the love of their family, newly learning how to laugh, clap, sit up, crawl ... that little infant doesn't know how long they have, it could be hours, days, weeks (or hopefully a couple o hundred years). That's something we all have to deal with.
If you allow the anxiety to take hold, it will be hard to dislodge, I promise. It's insidious, it'll dig roots. Push it back a little now, and it'll be to your benefit ten years from now when all this shit is a distant memory.
And trust me, that's possible. I used to fret about my cancer almost every waking moment.
Now I think about it maybe once every few days (in relation to myself), although I do think about it constantly (in relation to others, like yourself .. and especially kids - which motivated me to get involved with a children's cancer charity)
All the best.
