Mental obstacle

I haven't written in an age!

It's December. I've started recieving OU emails on an almost daily basis. My course materials are despatched on 13th January. That's like...six weeks.
My Christmas shopping is complete. My 7ft Christmas tree is arriving this week. The access arrangements with the boys' father are sorted.
Oh, and my eldest is having his tonsils out on the 30th.
Erk.

You see, everything else takes a backseat when you have surgery looming. He is 2 and a half. He seems quite grown up, compared to his baby brother. But he is not. He is tiny. He can count to 13. He can speak reasonably coherantly. But he has no idea what is looming.
He's already anxious about Christmas - A MAN IS COMING DOWN THE CHIMNEY? EH? - even though he simultaneously is excited. His favourite thing is Mickey Mouse. He's only just sleeping in his own bed every night and still regularly falls out. He is still in nappies.

And they are going to induce a coma, intubate him and stick a scalpel down his throat.

It's worrying on so many levels for me, and I can't let him see. He has no idea. He gets scared when he has to go to the doctors anyway (he's had tonsillitis 15 times in two years) and isn't fond of hospitals. He's never been operated on before. It's best that he knows nothing. And I will be there, every step of the way, as will his father. I have had a tonsillectomy myself, I know the procedure well and I am not especially anxious about that objectively. But he is my baby. Subjectively, I'm shitting myself.

Meanwhile, his breastfed, clingy baby brother will have to be looked after by family while I'm stuck at PCH for two days.

It's not going to ruin Christmas, and I shall be bloody glad to get rid of the infectious, insidious things for the new year. But it's a massive mental barrier blocking my ability to ready myself for study, or indeed anything else.