When I was in treatment at first my RO gave me the "short" answer to all my questions. That was seldom enough information, so I had to keep re-asking the question, sometimes in different words, sometimes by just saying I needed more detail in his answer. He eventually started answering my questions in a way that actually helped me. I asked him why he did the short answer thing, he replied that MOST of his patients don't really want to know anything about their cancer or it's treatment. They just want to come in, get treated and leave. They wanted to have as little actual involvement with their disease as possible. Since they are the majority by far he starts off with the short answers on everyone. The interested patients show it by their persistence and he switches into a more helpful mode.

You can benefit your own situation heavily in conversations with your doctors by coming across like you are an educated patient and a good advocate for your own care. Using the proper medical vocabulary in your questions and statements and talking to him/her at a professional level is how you show them you have taken the time to learn about the disease, it's symptoms and it's treatment. If the doctor was giving you the short answers this is one way to get him out of that mode.

If you already consider yourself adequately educated about oral cancer and it's treatment, that's great. If you don't feel adequate in this area, then the OCF website has lots of valuable information to educate you. It's all there for the reading.

The previous two paragraphs assume that this is the right doctor for you to be talking too in the first place. Others have said already that you need to be talking to an ENT experienced in oral cancer. Not all ENT's have this experience, many non-specialists have even less experience in this area. Someone mentioned above that dentists seem to be catching on to oral cancer better than some doctors. I too have found that to be the case, but that doesn't mean your dentist knows enough. If you want to determine your dentist's knowledge level about oral cancer that's fairly easy. Go to Youtube and search for oral cancer screening videos. There are some good ones available. Once you know what a proper screening looks like you will also know if your dentist (or doctor) knows what they are doing. It will make it much easier for you to determine if they know what they are talking about. I haven't checked recently but if memory serves OCF was going to make some screening videos available on their website.

I hope this information helps and that I haven't totally misunderstood what you are asking. Keep asking your questions, someone here has seen just about anything you can imagine and can help you with it.

Good luck,
Tony