Judy, Welcome to the board. You will find it to be a place of great compassion and knowledge as you begin your journey with cancer. My husband was only 37 when diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil which had spread to three lymph nodes in his neck. Like your husband, he had never smoked and only had an occasional beer, so he really had none of the risk factors. It was a very big shock for me, like you, because my husband was so healthy like yours. It is hard to imagine how someone so active and apparently healthy can one day be told, you have cancer, what a shock. We have three children, they are 15, 11 and 9. It was hard explaining to them what was going on, but we tried to keep an open communication going with them and to explain things to them in terms they could understand. My husband's cancer was two years ago and while we went through treatment in Houston, Texas for six weeks, we lived there and my Mom came and lived with the kids here in Mississippi. It was a very trying time, but we made it through and you will too. Try to keep your chin up and remember that you are going through a temporary treatment plan that will hopefully give him a lifetime of cure. Thinking this way helped me get through the dark days and nights, and now we are on the other side and things are going great for us. So hold tight and if you ever want to email me personally, please do. As far as the lymph nodes being painful, my husband had a large lymph node on his neck, that is how we found the cancer originally and his was never painful.
God bless you both.
Julie