Hello,
Our family is enjoying the break from Doctor appointments and tests. We find out the PET scan results on Wednesday.
We have talked to several oral cancer survivors in the past few days, they are giving us a little hope. My sister works at a pharmacy and today they had a temporary pharmacist who is a OC survivor who had large tumors in his mouth similar to my dads and 13 lymph nodes removed in 2001. He called my dad and told him his story including some of the painful treatments but was proof that it can be done.

Good to hear your dad got to talk to an actual survivor. How is the family getting along? What did yall decided to tell your dad? I've thought about you alot the past couple of days and prayed for your strenght as you support your father.

Thank you.
We are only telling dad positive things, if he wanted to, he could go online and look this up, I'm glad he does not, it's overwhelming. I remember when my husband had lymphoma I never told him anything negative. I basically lied for the six months that he was in treatment. If he knew all the side effects of the chemo drugs, he would have been terrified.
So far the siblings are treading lightly on the subject of dad. Until we here the plan from the ENT, we are not saying much of anything and we all trying to absorb all this information. Thank you for your prayers, yesterday I brought dad some Holy water from Lourdes, so far I have shared it with several friends and family members who needed blessings.

Hello all,
The PET scan shows cancer in the cheek (3cm), throat(4cm) and a few small nodes in the lungs. He was very confident that radiation and chemo would handle the situation. Can this type of cancer be eliminated without surgery? I was not there with them at the appointment so I have a thousand questions. The ENT did tell them that chemo and radiation would not be easy and their days would be full of appointments. My mom is just so glad to have a bit of good news. Yesterday, I could hear the desperation in her voice.

You have to consider all options. Radiation and chemo are the primary tools, but if all else has not resolved the issue more tools have to be added. At this point I would want to know what the doctors feel his options are. Clearly in all these locations, surgery alone will not resolve things. It is possible that a change in chemo might help the lungs, but what works there does not always work in other areas. If their prognosis is dire, and I hope it is not, it may be time to look at clinical trial drugs and options.

Can anyone tell me why the doctors are choosing not to do surgery? I will not be meeting the ENT so unless I pressure my siblings to ask these questions, I will not know and can only speculate. I think the tumors are to large. Are there fast growing SCC tumors? I understand that no one here is a medical doctor and cannot give advice, I,m just wondering from anyone's personal experience.

My only experience has been that I had 2 suspected nodes in my neck and they found a small primary at the base of my tongue. I had 3 previous cancer docs tell me that they wanted to do a RDN or a PND but Moffitt said no surgery before concurrent rad/chemo but maybe afterwards. Their reason to me was that the rad should kill the cancer and they saw no benefit to postponing the killing treatment while I healed from surgery.

As far as the spots in the lungs, my MO once told me that if I developed any they would try another round of chemo before surgery was considered and it would also depend upon their location in my lungs.

The use of surgery is always balanced with the compromise in quality of life that it will cause. Base of tongue cancers for instance are never treated with surgery except in extreme cases, as the ability to swallow, speak and more are compromised forever.

Hello and thank you for answering some of my questions. My parents went to the oncologist today, they want to do a biopsy on the lungs to make sure they know what they are fighting. The CT scan shows four small spots on three of the lobes. They will be starting chemo shortly after that. A combo of three; taxoline, cisplatin and 5FU.
The Doc was very straight forward with my dad and told him this will be very hard on him. (He also has diabetes) He will be in the hospital for five days for the first infusion. My brother did not like her bedside manner and felt all this information was to much for dad who broke down pretty hard after that appointment.

Hello,
The radiologist-oncologist decided not to do any radiation on my dad at this time. From what I understand, they just want to get some type of hold on the metastasizing cancer cells and see if he responds to chemo. I think the areas in his mouth are just to large. The doctor could not look any of my family members in the eyes.