My Brother Chis finished up his second surgery yesterday with mixed results.

They re-entered the site above the vocal chords and made sure they had clear margins (swelling made them close early in the first surgery). They also removed the dysplasia in his mouth with clean margins. They also did a neck dissection and were happy with the visual look of the lymph nodes they removed (pathology to be in next week).

So at that point all was looking good. The surgeon was closing up when he noticed a small tendril along a nerve and sent that to the path lab. It showed up as cancer. Surgeon is now telling us Chris has a stringer that came from the original tumor that has grown down a nerve. Unfortunately this nerve wraps itself around the voice box.

While we wait for the opinion from the tumor board at MDA I thought I would ask the board if anyone is familiar with radiation to the voice box. We are worried that they may want to do a complete removal of the voice box. The doctor mentioned this as a possibility and eluded to the idea that radiating the voice box can have its own issues.
Any help here would be greatly appreciated