It's incredibly unlikely that your son will be without a mum. Even if it is cancer, and the odds are probably strongly against that, the most common forms of thyroid cancer are very rarely life-threatening and when they are, it tends to be because the patient is elderly.

For people under about fifty, the survival rate is somewhere up around 98% or 99% or possibly even higher. The worst case scenario is likely to be that you have to have your thyroid and maybe some lymph nodes removed. I think it is only between 1% and 4% of papillary thyroid cancers that spread outside the neck and even in those cases, the odds are very much in your favour.

I know it is hard to avoid imagining worst case scenarios. I was in your position about three and a half years ago. In my case, it did turn out to be cancer. I was diagnosed in November 2019, had my operation at the start of January 2020 and was back at work by early February and...that was that really. I had my thyroid and something like 57 lymph nodes removed. I had a 6.7cm cancerous tumour and there was cancer in 8 lymph nodes and...I've had no problems since beyond a bit of tingling in my neck.