[quote=ChristineB]Welcome to OCF! So sorry you are going thru a scare right now. Waiting is horrible and since you havent been biopsied yet there probably will be more waiting in your future.

Here are some statistics about recurrences. First, they are not as common as many patients believe. Alot of members who post frequently may have had recurrences thats due to the one timers going back to their regular lives. The info is 10 years old. I am unsure of how often this gets updated or if any more recent studies have been conducted. Read the post by OCF's founder Brian Hill.

Recurrence Stats (Old OCF Forum)

Try to keep yourself busy so the time passes without too much stressful thinking "what if". I know its not easy to avoid thinking that way. If you find yourself going there, try to check the clock and say to yourself "ok...I will ponder this for only 5 minutes" then change the channel.

Best wishes! [/quote]

Thank you for the link, Christine! In reading through the posts, I recalled a few things my ENT had said at a previous visit. He said that even though he doesn't know of any correlation between oral cancer and other future cancers he's seen women that had oral cancer with supposedly unrelated cancers later in their lives. It kind of threw me a little, as he's a very positive, but thorough and honest Doctor, and he hadn't mentioned it previously. (This was less than a year ago that he said it.)

At the time of my tongue cancer, he did not have it/me tested for HPV. His reason was that I already had cancer, so why get tested? I understand and accepted that reason. Having gone through genetic testing for BRCA mutation and dealt with the results since then, I now wonder if that is something that should be done. If nothing else, just for more information. Is it becoming more standard to test for HPV with oral cancers? Is it like BRCA mutations where if you have HPV your risk of oral cancers (along with cervical & any others liked to HPV) is higher? If that has been proven, what is the increased risk?

If you haven't figured it out by now, I've always had an interest in data, statistics, research, and logic. That's why I'm asking the questions.

Thank you for your patience. I'm sure you've answered them a lot of times already!