Hello my name is Brenda and my husband was diagnosed with oral cancer in January of 2001. He was 35 at the time and has never smoked or drank and a very active person. It started off with a cyst on his face they removed it and discovered it contained cancer. The next step was they removed his right tonsil trying to find the primary source and couldn't so then they did a radical neck dissection. All was to be fine and we got on with life as normal.

Then December of 2001 another lump appeared on the right side of his face. Again it was cancer and this time at stage 3. They found the primary source of Darren's cancer at the base of his tongue after doing some thorough biopsies. So 35 treatments of radiation and 1 full week of chemo. He was to have more chemo but he ended up getting hospitalized due to dehydration and then mucusitis followed and that was awful. So Darren's oncologist didn't want to give him more chemo much to my unhappieness about the whole thing. Darren finished his treatments and then on one of his followups a CT scan showed a spot on his upper right lobe of his lung. The doctors thought for sure it was cancer and his oncologist told him to go home and enjoy his life as it was now rather than do anything. Darren looked at her and told her it wasn't cancer and that he was going to do something. As it turned out it was scar tissue. So he started to get his life back around October. He bounced back rather quickly and went back to work fulltime the first of February.

Then around the end of March he was carrying our 4 year old on his shoulers and felt a lump on his left collar bone. He knew it was cancer because as he put it he has never had a lump before all this. He went for a PET scan which only showed two spots one on his collar bone and the other near his adams apple. On April 23 he had another radical neck dissection on his lef t side and Dr. Trites his ENT doctor also removed his right lobe of his thyroid gland as well as some lymph nodes from his upper chest. This past Tuesday we got the results and it isn't good. All the lymph nodes he removed from Darren's upper chest contained microscopic cancer as well as the 2 spots we knew for sure and the right lobe of his thyroid also contained cancer.

Dr. Trites also explained that they found cancer in the channels connected to the lymph nodes that contain cancer. So this goddamn thing is spreading. My heart was broken for Darren. Dr. Trites is talking chemo but Darren's oncologist advised me that the chemo Darren had cisplatin and 5fu was it there would be no more chemo.

I am so scared we have two small kids a boy 4 1/2-Jacob and a little girl 2 Grace. They adore their father. Darren is so good about this all. He has never complained one day about anything. We have been married for 10yrs and not once has he been cranky moody and just happy all the time. He loves life and everything about it. His moto and believe me he follows it to a tee is don't sweat the small things don't look back or forward just enjoy each day. He has never said why me and in fact he says their are people worse off than him. I wish I could be so calm.

So you see I am scared this is all going to end badly. We meet with Dr. Davis Darren's oncologist next Friday. Has anyone had it spread like this and if so what treatments did you have. Darren is also to have a bone scan.