Hi all --

It's been a while since we posted -- Barry is now 10 weeks from the end of his treatment and continuing to progress well. He's had post-treatment follow-up exams by his outside ENT surgeon, his RO at Hopkins and today, a Hopkins surgeon. All said everything looked good (in fact, today the surgeon said "excellent") -- the caveat is that these are only physical exams and Hopkins waits until three months out to do a PET/CT scan. Before that they are concerned with false positives due to inflammation. This is scheduled for the 29th so we will of course have to keep fingers and toes crossed until then. If the scan is clear, he will most probably enter a new HPV-16 vaccine trial early in 2006. If the scans are not clear, options vary from re-scanning in a month to doing surgery immediately. Guess we will cross that bridge if we get to it.

Meeting with his swallowing therapist next Monday to gauge progress -- Barry is eating a lot more variety of foods, including baked chicken, sausage, hash etc. but still nothing really dry, crisp or spicy. That will come in time we hope. His taste is pretty much back to normal with some odd exceptions -- like he doesn't like the taste of cheesecake now.

Still doing swallowing exercises (these are getting easier but not all that quickly so still some healing to take place) and the TheraBite. Will also see the dental onc a the end of December for next follow-up (mostly to check teeth and also, salivary function).

Hope everyone has a good holiday, and best wishes for 2006...

Gail and Barry