Ben

Okay, this time no songs from movies & Broadway plays popular years before you were even born. Instead, a dash of cold water[quote]The concept of �cure�

In medicine, a disease is considered cured when it�s been successfully treated and does not return. The concept of �cure� is difficult to apply to cancer because undetected cancer cells can sometimes remain in the body after treatment, causing the cancer to return later (referred to as a recurrence or relapse). Many cancers are considered �cured� when there is no cancer detected five years after diagnosis. However, recurrence after five years is still possible.
[/quote] This is an excerpt from an explanation of statistics from Cancer Network
Cancer net: understanding statistics

I hope you clicked thru Brian's link to the OCF web site's discussion on staging an how meaningless and misleading cancer statistics are to us as individuals.
Just in case, here is a direct link to just the statistics discussion on OCF OCF - understanding statistics
Please read that first.
Now you can take this link to the American Cancer Society web site statistics with the appropriate grain of salt.
ACS - survival rates for oral cancer
You can see from the chart where your doctor may have gotten the 71% figure. It even has a concise definition of the 5 year rate used in statistics
[quote]The 5-year survival rate refers to the percentage of patients who live at least 5 years after their cancer is diagnosed. Of course, many of these people live much longer than 5 years.

Five-year relative survival rates, such as the numbers below, assume that some people will die of other causes and compares the observed survival of people with cancer with that expected for people without cancer. This is a more accurate way to describe the impact that a particular type and stage of cancer may have on survival. [/quote]

Bottom line: You are young, healthy, motivated and getting TX. You didn't smoke or drink. You had surgery and can still eat and swallow. You can beat this.
Charm