My sister Julie has scc affecting tonsil/tongue and lymph node stage three. She will be starting her last six radiation treatments next week. She also did six sessions of chemo. My question is when she is finished they are going to retest for the cancer with PET/CAT I think is what she said. This is the test that they did when they were first looking for the cancer and did not find it. Is there any other ways of checking this??? They ended up finding the cancer with biopsies.

Also Julie and I have been talking about increasing her pain medication. She is a toughey and does not like the idea of drugs. Now that the last treatments will be more focused on a specific area I'm assuming that it will become more painful. Not sure what patch she is taking but it is 72 hours and just one. She asked me how will she know if she needs more? At this point she has had some break through pain at night about 20 minutes at a time. Not unbearable as she puts it.

Since I'm here I have been curious about how many of the people in this forum are or were smokers. We have both quit.

Thanks for your support in advance,
Kellie