Jim, I re-read your posts, and I wish I could come to you and drag you to the place where you could get the answers you need! You need to go to the cancer center, where they will have a team approach. You will meet with a radiation oncologist who will TELL you what he thinks you need, based on their experience, and he will KNOW what sort of machine you will need, and what side effects you can expect.

IMHO, you are wasting valuable time muddying your own waters, without adequate information to use for a proper decision. A positive node, especially one that showed signs of spreading, is an indication for more aggressive treatment. My doctor did not order radiation for me BECAUSE none of my nodes were positive, but if one had been positive, I would definitely have had radiation. That means that the cancer has already begun its spread beyond your mouth, and there is no way to tell whether or not other nodes have been seeded. You had some removed, but not all, by any means, and you already know that it had made demonstrable growth outside the affected node.

I know that I don't know you, but I've been reading on this forum for a long time, and I can tell you that you can't "watch" this stuff to see what it's going to do. You won't see it until it's too late. And that's a terrible way to live.

Please forgive a stranger's strong words, but please listen to the more experienced voices around you and at least go to the cancer center with all your test results and your surgical reports, and let their team give you their advice based on their experience and training as cancer specialists. An ENT can be a wonderful doctor, but his work includes cancer only occasionally. Please don't worry about your relationship with your ENT. Tell him that you feel the need for an opinion from the cancer center, and he will understand. I promise you that. I'm surprised that he didn't suggest it anyway.

Keep us posted.