Welcome to the board. I would have posted a response to you sooner, but we have been at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX having my husbands' TWO and half year check up. Everything still looks great, what a relief! Anyway, My husband's cancer was very similar to yours, and he was 37 when diagnosed. At the time we had a 8 year old son, 10 year old daughter and a 13 year old son. (Similarly to you) My husband found his by surgery to see what the lymph node was, then they searched and found the tonsil cancer, took it out. That was all the surgery he had. We then went to MD Anderson where they told us had we had just a needle biopsey of the node and found it to be SSC, they would not have even done any surgery, but gone straight to radiation. At MD Anderson he underwent 33 radiation treatments. It was hard getting through, but we made it, and now two and half years later, life is wonderful. He does still have some dry mouth, but not real bad as he took amifostine (a drug which protects the saliva glands) during each radiation treatment. If you have any questions along the way, just post it and the wonderful, knowledgable people on this forum will respond. Hang in there, you can make it through and come out on the other side as we did.
Julie