Hi. My name is Amy. My Mom is 61 years old and was recently diagnosed with tongue cancer.Prior to the cancer, she was a totally healthy women. She found a white spot on her tongue 21 years ago. It was tested and came back negative. She has had it check thru the years and recently she had a tumor develop on her tongue. Her oral surgeon had a biopsy done on it and it came back Cancer. We were all shocked and didn't know what to think. Her doctor told her she could have surgery to remove the tumor. She did not hesitate and on April 10, 2008 she underwent a 10-12 hour surgery. The doctors removed half of her tongue and 2 lymph nods. There were a few smaller ones they left because they were to small to get out. They said the radiation and chemo should kill them. On May 21, 2008 she started her treatments. She has a feeding tube so that she can get the protein and calories she needs to stay strong. The doctors were very hopefully that after 7 weeks of radaition and 3 shot of chemo she would be fully recovered.
Well on Wednesday of last week, we found out that the small nod they didn't remove is growing very aggressively. Surgery at the moment is not an option. So now My Mom has to have raditaion 2 times a day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. She is also having a new drug the day of her chemo treatments.That is in addition to fluids 2 days after her chemo treatments. It is extremely hard on all of us. My Mom is our strength and rock.
To top all of this off, I am 18 weeks pregnant with my second child. We found out I was pregnant about 2 weeks before she found out she had cancer. I have a 5 year old son currently and its hard not to let him see me cry. My husband keeps telling me to keep my stress level down because it is not good for me or the baby, but it so hard. I am more worried about my mom. Right now she is my top priorty and I know my health and my baby's health should be.
All we can do is keep praying that God will give her the strenght to fight this horrible disease. And that she will be in remission soon.

Amy, I'm so sorry this happened to your mom and to you at a time when you should be focused on happily anticipating a new child in your life. Please put some emphasis on taking care of yourself and your baby right now no matter what is going on with your mom. I am sure that is what your mom would want too, right?

Did you really mean to type "2 lymph nodes" above or was that supposed to be a twenty-something number which, from what I've seen, is usually more like the number they usually remove?

I share your hopes that this new treatment works for your mom and she's in remission soon.

Nelie

Thanks Nelie for your kind words. As far as I know, they removed 14 nodes in all and 2 came back positive. Now the other smaller one has grown into a aggresive tumor.

Amy there are over 20 nodes on each side of our neck so if they removed only 14 they left more than 1. It is not that rare that I have seen others on this site say a node continued to grow during Tx but I'm sure her docs are on top of it perhaps adjusting the focus of the radiation beam to better attack the problem node. If she started radiation May 21st she has only had 12 days out of perhaps 35 so don't give up hope. I was a Stage IV, like your Mom and I'm here to post about like many others. Did they tell your Mom what they think caused her cancer?

They believe it was smoking. She quit 21 years ago when the white spot on her tongue appeared.
Since then she has been getting check ups and everything came back good, until she had an tumor on her tongue appear. That was the end of March.