Thanks Mark...that's been my suspicion, that he should also see a radiologist or, at least, an oncologist. I'm not 100% confident that plastic surgeons, although perfectly competent to do a lip resection, are the ones to manage the cancer case as a whole. Now, I only have to get Dan to believe me! We are in the Boston area, so we have a good choice of hospitals here. Right now, he's checking out surgeons at Mass General and Lahey Clinic. IF, there is anything at all funky (something on chest x-ray or unclear margins), I'm going to try my hardest to get him to go over to Dana Farber...I KNOW he'll resist, so I'll need to accumulate ammunition for my sales job.

I don't really care whether he acknowledges smoking as the likely cause of his SCC...as long as he continues with his quit. I DO care that he's been so desperate not to blame tobacco that he's even tried to blame me! I have herpes, I have for 20 years. After 5 years, he's still got clean blood titers, so we've been doing a good job of avoiding transmission. He NOW wonders if my HSV-2 infection isn't the cause of his cancer. That just plain upsets me! I'm well aware of the connection between HPV and both cervical and oral cancer and even the, newly found, connection between a joint infection of HSV and HPV in connection with cervical cancer. 1) There's no evidence of a link between HSV-2 and oral cancer and 2) Even if there was, he doesn't have it, I do! Ugh...that's the end of that rant...I'm just waiting for this denial phase to pass...it's painful.

Thanks for the advice on radiation, I'm going to try to accumulate enough scary statistics to at least convince him to consult a radiation oncologist.