Wow! I just had that exact same surgery done in January for the same reasons. It was hellish for over two weeks, but even a day after the surgery I would have gone through the entire operation again. Imagine the day after the surgery sleeping for 4 hours with your sinuses packed with guaze, an incision from where one tonsill was, across the roof of your mouth all the way to where your other tonsil was, and yet still getting the best night's sleep you could ever remember going back to when you were a kid!
I was in the same range of breathing stoppage per hour, with duration of up to 20 seconds. The sleep study showed I was oxygen deprived and hardly getting any REM sleep. I wish I knew more about it when I was his age and took care of it then. I looked into it when I scheduled a physical and told my doctor I was nodding off almost every day like a freaking narcoleptic.