Hi All,
I've not posted for a while but have been following your messages. Good luck Raymond with the surgery, you'll be back to form in no time i'm sure.
I have the enviable option of radical neck dissection to the right side but only if the left nodes are not active! CT scan shows nodes have shrunk from 4.5 cms on the right and 16mm on the left (clavicle) down to 11mms each. Nobody can determine whether they are still cancerous and active (although they haven't grown at all in the last 2 months) or not as they are too small to biopsy.
The jury is still out on the value of having a PET scan done to try and decide on a course of treatment. Does anybody have any suggestions? My radiologist is lukewarm about having a PET scan as she feels there would be more questions raised than answers given i.e. that it has "possibly spread to lungs already" as suspicious left nodes were so low down and that treatment is not possible with anything but palliative chemo later on. My surgeon however, feels that a PET scan might determine that the left side is ok and that salvage surgery to the right might then be valuable. I don't want to dither and miss the boat but it seems to me that the lymph nodes responded quickly and almost comlpetely to rad/chemo and that i'm just left with scar tissue but who knows?
I finished radio on 21st March and would like to reasure those of you who are just finishing up that 4 months on i feel almost "normal" except for dry mouth and a little tiredness, hang in there!
Many thanks for listening and for being there,
Frances
PS Does anyone have advice about whether to leave unused tube in - just in case? Doc is reluctant to remove in case i'll need it sometime in the future but i haven't used it for months! Apparently it's not so easy to put in a second time!