"My question: Why don't they go back in and cut some more of the tissue???? Has any one heard of this?"

Mike, the same thing happened to me with margins and they DID go back and cut out more. This was because at the time they weren't sure I would need radiation.In the second surgery, the additional tissue showed no cancer so basically there just had been no margins the first time but probably no cancer remained. Anyway, I ended up having chemo and rad because I had an aggressive tumor in other ways. But I'm also glad I did because my ENT, who is a very good doctor, said he was pretty sure he had removed more tissue all along the spot where the margin was not clean but it sounded like there was some possibility in his mind that in the second surgery, he hadn't captured all of that margin.

As for mortality statistics, coming from another person with lost of training in research and stats, and I think it would be hard to get good data on people who continue to smoke and drink versus those who don't in part because many people wouldn't be honest about reporting it. But lots of the stats that are out there are also not representative in other ways (for example, they are from a time when adding chemo to rad wasn't standard therapy and as you've already heard, that addition causes a large improvement in outcomes). Listen to what your doctor says about your chances and don't pay too much attention to the overall survival stats out there.

Nelie