Janie

One more thing to do: get a TSH blood level test done on your sister NOW, before the radiation and chemo. Radiation for Base of tongue cancer often damages the thyroid even though they try to avoid it. The problem is that the lab results for "normal" levels of TSH are so huge as to be worthless individually. It is very important to get a baseline TSH level now because the goal is after radiation/chemo/surgery to have the same TSH level as before. Since the normal range goes from 0.5 to 4.5 for some labs, you can see it does not help at all to get the TSH checked after TX. It can be a big problem later getting the TSH right if you do not get a baseline now.
Charm