Its a balancing act Sallyanne. You need to be confident you have a treatment to wipe out the cancer and not have it come back. The idea is to do it with enough power to knock out the cancer but not so much power to cause you long term or unnecessary issues with side effects. With a stage I your doctors are probably thinking (or their protocol tells them) that radiation is enough, but when you are the patient, you might just want to make sure and feel more is better.

The trouble is, that "more" means more side effects from radiation (the cetuximab or chemo makes radiation work better therefore doing more damage to you and the cancer) as well as side effects from the cetuximab or cisplatin themselves.

The thinking is that cetuximab doesn't cause the same level of side effects as cisplatin, but so far no one knows if it is as effective as cisplatin either.

Alex had this dilemma when the docs recommended cetuximab reasoning it wouldn't give him as many toxicities. We rejected their recommendation, opting instead for proven efficacy over perceived safety. Like Charm, we were concerned that if the cetuximab failed, it would do so completely, and we were more prepared to deal with deafness, numbness, palsy and goodness knows what else than the alternative.

It sounds like your doctors think your condition would normally warrant radiation only and the addition of cetuximab is an added extra. So, even if it doesn't work, you are no worse off, except for a potential increase in side effects which one would hope would resolve in time.