I want to thank each and every one of you for at least shedding a positive glimpse. Most of my problem is, outside of your messages, I haven't found too many survivor stories for stage 4. Hell, I don't even know what lies ahead for me yet and how on earth I'm going to be able to cope.

I don't want to be lengthy here, but need to just let some of this stuff escape out of my head to people who have been through this to offer me some suggestions. A month ago, if you would have told me that I had Stage IV Cancer, I would have thought it CRAZY. Man, I was excersizing, eating healthy, and although I hadn't quit my filthy habit of ciggies, I had really cut back and limited myself to moderation. Never was much of a drinker.

It wasn't me that noticed the lump on my neck, but my husband did when I was bending over scrubbing the tub. The next day when I went into the Urgent Care clinic, I thought what I had was simply an infection. Three hours later they had imaged me, xrayed me and took blood. Then they told me to see a specialist a week later. He did the FNA in two spots on my neck and scoped me through the nose. I mentioned that for the past couple months I had really high anxiety. REALLY hish. Night sweats, heart palps, insomnia. Then he assigned me a primary care doc for those needs. (that's a whole different story) Basically I had to get through a Christmas from hell.. catching a flight to Sun City AZ at 4 am with all five of us for four days and four nights in an uncomfortable place with relatives that didn't make me comfortable. Enough to make your skin crawl. Either due to the disease or the stress, I began throwing up and slept about 3 hours a night on a poor quality mattress. If you saw anything on the news about airplane travel, my little family experienced it all... lost baggage, flight delays and wondering how we were ever going to get home. January 3rd, my husband accompanied me to the appointment where he pretty much just told me I had cancer and sent me on to a specialist. He did give me a nonrefillable prescript for pain. The pain in my head has gotten rather intense. What started out as a small lump has tripled in size over the past two weeks. Two days ago, the specialist at University of Colorado gave me the TxN3Mx diagnosis and explained what the numbers meant.. and told me it was stage IV.

Tomorrow I have to see a radiologist. It's like BAM BAM BAM. I'm on a runaway train and someone else is laying the tracks. January 18th is the exploratory surgery to fill in the rest of the numbers of my diagnosis. They knock me out for two hours and scope me to see if it has metasasized and put in the feeding tube. I've heard so much bad news lately, I just don't expect any good news to come of it. After having spent thousands of dollars on dental care last year, the thought of losing my teeth is a fright. I keep asking myself where exactly do I draw the line?

Before I start sounding like a whiney baby, I want you all to know how truly grateful I am that this board is here. The other websites are so laden with medical language I can't interpret them.

I admire each and every one of you that managed to beat the odds. Part of me harbors some sort of guilt in this diagnosis for having been a smoker. Hindsight is always 20/20 but man it sucks to have to pay this high of a price. I keep apologizing to my spouse for being sick. I also count my blessings that he's here for me. The extreme guilt eats me up too, but there's nothing that can be done about it.

Oral Cancer doesn't have nearly the forums or websites devoted to information and message board support that some of the more "popular" cancers have. Doesn't that sound strange? I'm actually kicking myself for not acquiring a more politically correct cancer.

I'll go now. Thanks be to all of you.

Jen