Hi, Mandy
The OCF Website provides Treatment Guidelines on this page: http://oralcancerfoundation.org/treatment/guidelines.htm
You want to find the type of cancer you had (Oral Cavity) - you can click through the standard of care treatments recommended. Whether or not neck dissection is generally recommend seems to depend on a number of factors, including the thickness of the tumor. You may want to print out the pertinent pages and ask your doctor about it.
One of my young friends - at the time a resident in pediatric oncology - told me that there are no dumb questions regarding cancer when my husband was going through his workup for treatment. There is nothing wrong in asking your doctors about the treatment. Bring a (mean) friend or family member (or a least a list of questions) when you see your doctor next.
Best wishes!
Maria

Yup to what david said. Cancer can seed to different places. If it comes in contact with a blood supply (which ultimately it has to to survive) it can spread to anywhere. It does have it's favorite routes. With head an neck cancer it's often the neck nodes. So what is likely to have happened is you have a primary tumor. It seeds to the nodes (one or two cells sit there dormant)

There is a theory that the Primary tumor is the boss, but like bad employees - when the boss is gone the employees begin to do their own thing.

There is also the possibility that during surgery some of the cells break away and end up in the nodes (the lymphatic system cleans the blood so it makes sense anything unusual in the blood would end up in the lymph nodes).

Regardless - this is why most surgeons who know oral cancer and deal with it all the time - tend to take a certain number of nodes as well. Particularly if the pathology comes back saying this is an aggressive cancer and it's non HPV.

This is why doing the minimal when treating cancer doesn't always sit well with me. No one every complained of having too much treatment... only too little.

hugs

had my first ultra sound since surgery,they are not happy with a node in my neck,have to have a pet scan now,my ultra sound asnt even read when I had my appointment with my ent I asked him what what the results where of my scan,he looked surprised and said he had better check.also have a sore spot on my tounge and under my teeth,but they don't seem concerned about those

The sore spot could be from your tongue rubbing on a tooth. If it doesnt improve in 2 weeks then it needs to get rechecked.

When will your doc get the scan results to review with you? Keep on them, dont let it get brushed aside and just filed into your chart.

its to far back on my tounge to touch my teeth,my tounge was a bit sore when I had the buccal tumour removed,the ct scan and mri would of picked up a tounge cancer as well wouldn't they