Hi Gina,

Seems like you're diagnosis is very similar to that of my wife, and similar age as well (she is turning 34 this year).

We, like you were initially told that it was a small tumour, isolated and between a Stage I - II.

However, further scans showed that due to the location of the tumour, it was considered T4a & the involvement of multiple nodes ended up being a N2b.

In your case, I am suspecting they had already scheduled in a neck dissection irrelevant of the lymph nodes being affected, and hence have not scheduled in fine needle aspiration to check if those lymph nodes indeed are affected by cancer.

As per your doctors advice, the only difference the lymph nodes will make is how you will be treated after surgery. In the instance that they see perineural invasion, extra capsular spread or one or more lymph nodes affected, they will most likely want to include chemo in the mix with radiation to your regime.

Please remember that the staging is mealy a number - and every case is unique. My advice to you from now onwards is go and enjoy every single type of food you can imagine and go nuts because it will be a while until you will be able to enjoy food. Furthermore, you will have read throughout the forum that nutrition is the single most important factor once you start the treatment phase as it will determine how quickly you recover from the treatments.

I have documented my wife's journey in a separate post in the "Currently in treatment" section of the forum and would encourage you to have a read as from what I can gather, the cases are very similar.

Hope that helps

Jay