Palm,

Your FIL sounds very similar to my scenario, however my medical team wanted to shrink/kill my tumor before surgery so that the surgery was "less invasive".

After 3rounds of cisplatin and concurrent radiation my tumors in my face (which originally took up almost the right half of my face) and lymph nodes were well below malignant levels. My surgeon called and asked me if I still wanted to do surgery...looking back I know I made the right call in having the surgery done as it lowered my chances of a recurrance...it did however paralyze the right side of my face and severely affected my speech and swallowing.