Don,

First off we all have those nagging recurrence thoughts post Tx and unfortunately IMO nothing can be said that will lessen them. Time is the only healer here. I also don't think anyone can answer your questions other than Father Time.

Your cancer was caused by HPV and HPV+ SCC has been proven to respond better to the existing Tx than HPV- SCC and therefore the recurrence rate is lower and the survival rate is higher but 100% of neither is achieved.

The scientific community doesn't know enough about oral HPV to provide you with these answers but after talking to a HPV research Phd from Moffitt Wednesday she did tell me that our body does not build up an immunity to HPV from an exposure (think of the cold virus) so we can and do acquire it multiple times through out our life and we clear it most of the time. The virus can go dormant but not in the sense of hibernation or inactivity but more like not causing problems if that makes sense so we can test positive for the virus for years even decades without causing cancer.

Moffitt is now doing a study on the effectiveness of the Gardasil vaccination on "mature" patients hopefully to prove that it still can be effective past 26 or even post HPV+ SCC.