Dear Lola,

I am crushed to hear of your recurrence. It's frustrating to be so young, with no known risk factors, getting 7 years out, and then the rug gets pulled out from under you.

With my first battle with the beast, I was lucky that I had no nodal spread and didn't need rads/chemo. I enjoyed a little over a year of being "cancer free" and then the get the bad news of having it in my tonsil. The doctor was not expecting cancer at all because it would have been considered to be a totally different type of cancer. It's still a mystery, but the tumour was HPV negative!

Well, I went through the hellish rads and chemo...had everything thrown at me. It sucked, but I'm grateful to say that my first post-treatment scan showed NED! So, there is plenty of hope for treatment of recurrences. You are still young, so they can treat you aggressively. It seems like what you have here is very treatable, with a high cure rate, even though you don't know the staging.

Best wishes on getting rolling with an effective battle plan so you can look forward to life again.

One question, and I apologize if it's too personal. With the loss of your mother, do the doctors think there is any genetic link, especially since you seem to have no risk factors? Did you mom have risk factors. I'm very sorry you lost her to this disease, especially at such a young age.

With great care,
Kerri