How do they know if they got all of the cancer/ if radiation is necessary? Is a PET Scan? Can't they do one of those on Dad to see if they got all of the cancer with his surgery? His surgeon said he got clear margins. He said there was one part of the tumor- he called it a finger- which extended close to the margin, but when they scraped a bit more tissue out of his mouth, there was no cancer left in the tumor bed. I get the premise of the chemo and radiation-- that they want to kill anything they missed with the surgery, but how, if he got clear margins, none of the 19 lymph nodes they tested had cancer and the tumor hadn't yet involved blood vessels or lymph tissue, would there be any cancer left to regrow?

Dad was diagnosed 2/28/18 w Stage 4, N0 Verrucous carcinoma (VC) an uncommon variant of SSC
Mandibulectomy and free-flap reconstruction 5/30/18
Diagnosis changed to SSC.
Began treatment of 30 rads and 5 Cisplatin Cycles on 7/18/18
Decided not to do any more Cisplatin after the first one.
Finished treatment on 8/31/18.
3.19 Abscess & Recurrence wide mouth resection
4.16.19 Scapular Flap Reconstruction surgery
9.6.19 Clear CT!
8.6.20 Clear CT!