Christine -- Gordon is being treated at a cancer center on the NCI list.

Gordon -- Don't worry about stepping on toes. You are your own best advocate; good doctors understand requests for second opinions, and it is your right to seek one (I believe most insurance plans cover them, and some may require them before major surgery). You can ask your doctors whom they would recommend -- it could be that one of them trained at MD Anderson or Memorial Sloan-Kettering or Johns Hopkins (to name three of the top cancer centers in the US) and has connections there. Or you can simply contact one of those centers and make an appointment yourself.

(And Christine is right: If your current docs balk at your request for a second opinion, flee!)

You may be told the same thing that the docs at Emory are telling you, or you could learn of different treatment options. There are several people on these boards who have traveled great distances from home for treatment -- OCF founder Brian Hill went from the LA area to MD Anderson in Houston, and I recall one poster who traveled from California to Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC.

If travel would be difficult for a second opinion, I see that Hopkins has a program that gives one after reviewing your records and your current physicians' recommendations: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/kimm...d_neck/second_opinion_program/index.html Might be something to check out.

Good luck!