David,

Yep, I meant you :-). The reason for the surgery is to avoid altogether or at least minimize radiation and chemo because I have had so much chemo already for my other cancer and because they are worried about exacerbating my gvhd (graft versus host disease) with the radiation. The doc from University talked to me on the phone quite awhile and said basically what you did about current thinking in HPV+ tumors, which all makes good sense to me if it weren't for my extenuating circumstances. He was not offering new or different choices than I had already heard or any new data regarding my options. Surgery isn't a choice I made lightly, and if I couldn't have gotten TORS, I wouldn't haven chosen that route for the primary.

What I am going to do is talk with the radiation oncologist at Johns Hopkins again to reaffirm why he wanted to avoid radiation on me. The medical oncologist was also very specific about wanting to avoid chemo in my case.

I'm STILL interested in hearing any new information from patients' personal experiences that any of the doctors may have failed to mention.