We have been down the osteoradionecrosis road for about 3 years now. My husband Steve was diagnosed stage 4 SCC 2009 and they hit him with just about everything they had. Thankfully the cancer is gone and he is 3 and a half years cancer free but the side effects of the treatment have been tough.

He has had debridement after debridement of the dead bone. He's done 80+ dives of HBO. He broke his jaw in the end. All he did was have a morning stretch and heard a pop and that was it. This was in May 2012. Since then he has had a pic line for antibiotics due to an infection in the bone. He had this in for a couple of months. He has also had a very large metal plate inserted that runs from just in front of his left ear to the just the right side of his chin. That lasted for 2 months.

He has had an exposed metal plate now for 3 months as it came through the skin and has gradually come more on show over this time. It is now at a point that we can see the screws either end that are holding it in place. He is scheduled this coming Monday to go in to have his leg bone grafted into his jaw. They are taking muscle from his leg with veins as well to attach a new blood supply to the bone. The veins will be attached to the veins in his neck. He may have also a bit of muscle removed from his chest as they are thinking the skin and any tissue in his neck region is like wood (Doctor's words), from the radiation and last surgery, so they need to cover the new veins with a flap to protect it.

His jaw held off for the first couple of years. We knew there were issues but we were put on a waiting list to have it seen to. So not happy with that we moved to somewhere that we knew had the tools to proactively treat it, with HBO. Unfortunately too much damage had been done in the mean time. This is all on the left hand side but he has had a small fracture on the right side of his jaw and debridement there as well.

So my advise to you is to do what you can now, to stop any further issues. Maybe not as extreme as a jaw reconstruction as Steve is about to have but maybe they could start with HBO. Our doctors have always said "gently, gently" in the hope that they could stop this without major surgery. Sadly it didn't work but they gave it their best shot.

I'm glad you are not in pain and can still do things normally. I'm a strong believer in HBO and the healing powers it has. If its an option for you again down the track I'd go for it. All the best to you