Thanks everyone for your advice. This Wed. will be 5 weeks after last radiation treatment. I was part of a study at Hopkins that uses low doses of radiation. I still had 36 radiation treatments and 7 chemo treatments with carbo because I had some previous hearing loss. I did have a lymph node that was removed and tested positive with SCC. The first ENT never did a scope on me before he removed and biopsied the lymph node which in hind sight makes me scratch my head and wonder why that was at the VA Hospital. That ENT sent me to the oncologist at the same VA who told me straight off if I could get treatment at John's Hopkins that I should do that because they had IMRT and this VA did not have that particular type. So I went to the ENT at Hopkins and the first thing she did was a scope and found the tumor on my tongue base immediately. She then did a biopsy of the tongue base and told me that it was cancer from
HPV 16+. After all my treatments I'm now wondering if they got it all and what are the possibilities of it coming back? I signed back on here and I see a lot of people talking about recurrence with
HPV 16+ so I guess now maybe I wish I would not have checked this out. I read somewhere that the recurrence rate after treatment for people with
HPV 16+ was almost zero but I guess they haven�t been on this site. I am getting my feeding tube out tomorrow thank God! I called and told them I have been eating solid food for over a week and that I was ready to get the tube out so they agreed to remove it early. I have my first follow up on the 6th of Nov. I guess I should consider myself lucky. I read some of the other post here and see what others have gone through and are still going through and I feel very sorry for them. I just turned 47 and even though I know I should feel lucky so far about my treatment I am still feeling depressed. I start back to work next week and I�m not really sure I ready to go back but maybe it will help with the depression. So much on my mind and so much of this stuff to process. It is a bit overwhelming. I am not sure if I get the PET scan at 3 months after treatment or 6 month? I�m sure they told me but I was just so happy to finish my last treatments I think that info went in one ear and out the other.
