I'm on the same boat as MGoldstein. My mother has also been diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma (tongue). Her PET Scan and MRI could not determine how far the cancer had spread so she went into the surgery room under anesthesia without knowing what the outcome will be. The Dr. examined her and quickly concluded that she needs chemo and radiation first as the tumor was too big to be removed at that time.

It's been two weeks since then. She will have her first radiation session tomorrow. The FACTS page on this website makes oral cancer at this stage seem a lot scarier (i.e. cure is half the times impossible) than the impressions I've gotten from my mom's doctors. They said that she's in Stage 4 a, still a curable stage, that the tongue responds well to radiation/chemo therapies, and that success rate of treatment is at LEAST 50%, closer to 70-80%. I'm not sure if I'm taking what they said more optimistically than I should for my own sense of reality has shifted.

If her cancer advances to stage 4b, I'm told she will not be cured. How fast do these things advance?