Good morning LWP - Yes, I too welcome you to the family. Right here is where you will get the best information possible for fighting this beast as well as keeping your sanity while doing so.

The shock and confusion you felt on initial diagnosis is the same all of us felt. Unless you already knew someone who had oral cancer chances are you knew nothing about it beforehand. That feeling of being hit hard in the face upon diagnosis, we felt too. Fortunately, and like you, we found the forum and immediately started benefitting from the warmth and support that exists here.

You have a steep learning curve to negotiate over the next couple of weeks before treatment begins. Go to the OCF website and start reading all the pertinent literature there on diagnosis, treatment and any other area you feel you need to know. Get a spiral notebook because reading that stuff is going to generate a thousand questions you will want answered; questions for your doctors (surgeons, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists (chemo) and question you want to ask here on the forum). The next week or two will be a busy time for you, but by its end you will start to get a handle on what's happening.

Only other piece of advice I will give right now is to try to not overly worry about this stuff. What form of cancer you have, what caused it, who you got it from (if it's HPV-16), how hard is the treatment, will I have to stop working, etc. Worrying about those things won't help anything, all they will succeed in doing is keeping you awake at night, unable to sleep.

Instead, spend your time in more productive ways; learning about the beast from the website and forum, reading a good book, watching a good movie, visiting with friends and family. Start eating now; eat a lot, all the good things, the fattening things, the tasty things. You are going to lose some weight during treatment, so it won't hurt will help to have some extra weight before you start.

Get started learning now, come back to the forum when you have some questions or need some reassurance that you are in fact going to be okay throughout this ordeal. We got through it, you will too.
Tony

Tony, 69, non-smoker, aerobatics pilot, bridge player/teacher, avid dancer (ballroom, latin, swing, country)

09/13 SCC, HPV 16, tonsillectomy, T2N0.
11/13 start rads, no chemo
12/13 taste gone, dry mouth,
02/14 hair slowly returning
05/14 taste the same, dry sinuses, irrigation helps.
01/15 food taste about 60% returned, dry sinuses are worse in winter.
12/20 no more sinus problems, taste pretty good