Ben - did you get your biopsy back yet? Do you know the differentiation? What were your margins? Have they have they booked you for your rads? Set up your mask fitting? Given you the information about what you should be doing prior to radiation. Start eating as much as possible, if you are taking vitamins of any kind, make sure they don't have high levels of certain anti oxidants if they do stop taking them. (my hospital provided a pamphlet with information about the antioxidents) This can interfere with the radiation. Have your vitamin d checked. if you are fair skinned buy a good non oil based cream and start applying it to your neck and face skin... (hospital also told me this... And provided suggestions for certain brands) Have they sent you to a dental oncologist to have trays made? This kind of thing is really hard on your teeth and you should be xrayed, and any teeth you're not going to keep hopefully for the rest of your life will have to be pulled - radiation kills your saliva - and saliva is what gets rid of plaque for the most part , you will have to use floride trays for the rest of your life (not expensive 60 for the trays - 25$ for a huge bottle of flouride that lasts 3-6 mos) having a tooth pulled after radiation is a nightmare. It involves up to 30 dives in a hyperberic oxygen chamber to help promote healing as one of the side effects of radiation can be ORN (osteoradiation necrosis - not somethi you want to mess with as a number of people here have lost their mandibles because of it - your hospital might have an in house dental oncology clinic where you should be examined and decisions made re your teeth - mine did - most CCCs do I think - after my mask making it was stop one) if they don't have a dental oncologist - then get a referral to one. you should have a hearing test prior to treatment (cisplatin - most likely one of the chemos - or the only chemo depending on the dr. And hospital - can cause periferal neuropathy and hearing loss) and a head CT/MRI/PET should be done (one of the three) so they can set up where the radiation field will be - usually its a baseline CT prior to radiation. Stock up on a high calorie high protien drinks - ensure - boost - carnation. You should be able to eat up to week three, but things will eventually start to suck taste wise. Good luck there's so much to think about! Hopefully they're moving quickly with this.l the usual time between surgery and treatment start is under 6 weeks. The higher the staging the sooner it should be. Once you've healed from surgery they should be ready to go. Did they reconstruct your tongue at all? My tumor was 2.4 cmx1.4 they removed a chunk of tongue with the smallest margin being 6mm and reconstructed it with a flap from my wrist. Normally if it's something that is large (beyond a superficial amount of tongue taken, they reconstruct it immediately) I'm just asking because that would affect your healing time. we're here if you need to know anything else or just vent. Drs. Do what they do, but the fall out from all this stuff generally affects the patient so if something's up and your not sure if it's normal, chances are someone here had experienced it! Take care.