Okay, update time.

I had surgery April 8. They cut out a strip of the right side of my tongue, 1cm x 3cm x 8mm deep. Clean margins. They did a neck dissection, removing 3 or so nodes plus a salivary gland, with pathology results negative. Had I not had an MRI before going to City of Hope, they would not have done the neck dissection. The enlarged gland that showed up was probably enlarged from the original biopsy. Most of my recover is a result of the neck dissection because the tongue thing was so easy. My surgery was three hours instead of one. But we know for sure, so I'm not too out of whack over the process.

I have nothing but praise to say about City of Hope. The folks are great and they did an excellent job on me. My surgeon and his assistant were a great team.

My first diagnosis was to remove about 1/3 of my tongue and then 6 weeks of radiation. After some research, I went to City of Hope for a second. They knew almost from the first exam that my cancer was very early stage, and probably would not require radiation.

I'm a lucky duck for sure, and my dentist caught this early. City of Hope is great, and cancer is their business. The Head and Neck guys are busy, have a lot of experience, and followed almost to the letter the info I also got from Anderson.