Hi there and welcome... Sorry you have to be here you sound quite young and there are a few of you here unfortunately. Radiation will be hard, but you have to get through it in whatever way possible. Use your sports etc... To help you take your mind off what's going on sometimes distraction isn't a bad thing you may not be able to work out for too long into the rads process but even a walk or two a day is beneficial to healing and treatment.

Lack of motivation is hard to overcome. I think a lot of it has to to with fear... Why should I since my future isn't guaranteed? OC forces you to put your life on hold, and focus on cancer... I got around that by continuing to do the things I had to (general care housework etc) and enjoy... I read a lot, walked my dog and tried not to give cancer any more power over my future than I had to. I even went to the gym, and on vacation after my surgery and before my treatments began. It was still hard for me to look to the future for a very long time... Even now some days... I say - if everything is okay... Then I'm going to do this... But I still make plans and do what I want - cancer can be a thief - don't let it take away your aspirations.

Sorry about the girlfriend but right now you need to focus on getting better and treatment.

There are no guarantees with cancer - you could do everything right - eat right - exercise - knock off the bad habits and it could still happen to you... It's random and non discriminatory. The best you can do is do what ever you can to try and prevent another recurrence - get treatment (at the best place with the best drs.) - force yourself to do everything possible to heal and limit the side effects - eat properly... Etc... And of course educate yourself on your treatment - once you've done everything you can you have to leave the rest up to fate. I remind myself that yes I've had cancer - I could have a recurrence, but I could also get hit by a bus, or shot walking down the street. We give ourselves the best chance for survival, and then have to look past that at some point.

I had a similar surgery, tumor, treatment as you. Because you are young, and likely have no precursors for this disease - ideally treatment is first surgery - then depending on extent of lymph node involvement - rads and chemo. It's generally a decision the dr, makes based on experience. However I am reading more and more and realizing that not always but in most cases radiation and following treatment for an oral tongue tumor seems to be the way to go. Sometimes they will send you home after the surgery thinking they got it all but what happens is some of it is hiding in a node or skin (of the neck) and it may only be a few cells but that's enough (it's also dependent on how many nodes they removed in the initial dissection sometimes they don't take out enough) - so after they send you home another tumor pops up. (I've quoted this a few times... An oncologist once said - if it comes back this quickly it's not a recurrence - they didn't get it all in the first place. This sounds like what happened to you) hopefully now they removed enough nodes that you're clear, and rads and chemo will take care of any microscopic cancer that may be hanging around. Microscopic cancer doesn't show up on scans until it clusters and becomes an actual tumor or takes over a node.

Radiation is aimed at specific areas while chemo is systemic - and hopefully mops up any cells hanging around that are bad.

Please focus on yourself and healing and set aside the other stuff for now, but do the things you enjoy as long as they don't hinder your treatment. Eat up! Try to gain some weight - rads Is hard on the nutrition aspect of healing. Take care and we're here if you need us. Hugs!