Bill, you may find some differing opinions on this board regarding the IMRT/Conventional radiation, with some saying the IMRT isn't as effective because it takes a more surgical/pinpoint approach rather than just painting a whole area with radiation.

I've had the IMRT option, and the side affects are much reduced from what I can tell. Was in the hostpital getting fed introveneously the last week of treatment, the burns to the tongue just got to painful even for ensure. But that healed rather quickly and was back on solid food in 2 weeks, to relatively normal diet in 4 weeks. You could actually see the stripes as burn marks on my tongue where the radiation had been pinpointed. But, I finished my treatments on Thanksgiving day, was eating stuff like soups, pasta, well cooked veggies by the Christmas parties mid December.

As far as using a "broad brush" approach on my neck, I had the usual scorched skin from above my jawline to my collarbone, with the most radiation centered around the tumor area. It's all in the talent of the techinicians, radiation oncologist in my opinion.

Something else to ask about is possibly HFRT, called Hyper-Fractionalized Radiation Therapy. They split the one a day dose to 2 a day, one in the morning one in the afternoon, separtated by a time of like 7 hours. Supposed to reduce the side affects even more, but the daily dose winds up being higher and supposedly more effective some how.

By the way, Gary, sounds like you're doing well, hang in there.