Quite a long journey, and difficult at her age, but it's wonderful that her attitude has remained so positive. I hear these stories of extremely invasive tumors all too frequently. One of the particularly sad things about oral cancer, is the lack of discomfort and overt symptoms that people have in its earliest stages. Without a sense that something is wrong, the disease has time, months even years, to prosper and spread deeper and more extensively into the structures of the mouth. Only when we get the American population to recognize that an oral cancer screening is an annual necessity, just like a PAP smear, PSA test etc, and the dental professionals routinely doing these exams, will we start catching this disease at the early stage one and two levels. When caught early, not only is the survival rate very high (80-90%) but those that do survive have much less morbidity, the damage as a result of the various treatments to rid themselves of the disease.

Your mom sounds like a real trooper to have gone through all this and emerged with her spirits intact. I applaud her, and wish her a speedy recovery.