Hi,

Let me introduce myself. I�m Susan, caregiver to my husband who had T4N2bM0 oral cancer. He was diagnosed last April (2010) with cancer on the floor of the mouth that had invaded the left jaw bone. He had surgery in May to remove and rebuild the jaw and floor of the mouth (using bone and skin from the leg). The surgery was followed by 30 radiation treatments and three cisplatin treatments. These ended nearly four weeks ago. He is 56, never smoked, casual drinker, no HPV - but a life long organic chemist. We live in a town called Normal, and our address is the only thing in our lives that has been normal since this journey began.

Hello, Slash -

Good luck with your husband's recovery.
Humor helps, and your normal comment made me chuckle.
You will find plenty of friends here who also had to get used to the new normal.

Marlene

Welcome, Susan to OCF. Im glad you have found OCF. There are several members who have had a mandibulectomy. Ive had one last year. The recovery takes a very long time. I cant imagine going thru chemo/radiation after that kind of operation. The operation was bad enough! Your husband must be a very strong person. Best of luck to him with his recovery and also to you as a caregiver. Our caregivers are very special people

Susan,

Your Husband is more normal than you think as we have seen an increasingly number of patients that present themselves just like your Husband, HPV- without a smoking history. Still the same cancer and still the same dreaded Tx though but as you can see we all made it out of that dark tunnel just like he did.

As he recovers which can take every bit of 2 years please ask as many questions as you can think of. Tell him to try and be patient during this period and tell him to consume around 3000 cals each and every day.

Humor one of the things that keeps us sane. A couple of weeks after he came home from the hospital I took my husband to the ER worried that he had pneumonia. He didn�t but he did have a blood clot in the calf where they removed the fibula. The next time we saw his surgeon, the surgeon was reading the radiology report, �no flow identified within the right peroneal vein.� �No,� said the surgeon. �There is very good blood flow in the peroneal vien. It�s just that it�s inside his mouth!�

Susan, GC to husband

docs can be very silly. I wish you both well on his healing journey. I had it in my tongue and they removed half my tongue and 40 lymph nodes from my neck.
I am about a month and a half out from radiation and feeling a bit better, but still a lot of healing a head of me.
I was a lot like your husband, only younger. Genetics has a lot to do with this disease too. I was 25 when diagnosed and they claimed genetic predisposition to be my cause.
Hope all is well with him now and that he is healing up well. First scans after all treatments are the things to look forward to, mine is in mid october. Does he have one set yet? Usually they do it 90 days after rad and chemo are done.

He had the five week post treatment CAT last week and it came back NO CANCER! The 90 day PET is the first week in November. It, too, will come back NO CANCER! Just like I hope yours does.