Jen, if you knew Brian you know he's not into "politically correct" anything. Thus the OCF orgainization, one of the few places those of us with oral cancer can turn to for help and information. Welcome, and feel free to ask questions, rant, whine, complain and anything else. We've all been there and understand and encourage it. Part of the process.

At this point it does no good to beat yourself up for being a smoker, seems about half of us (not me) were non smokers or would be considered low risk and still wound up with this awful disease.

The runaway train feeling is pretty common at first, unfortunatly that's the time when you need to more time to digest what's going on, but things move too fast for that. We have another saying here, "cancer is just a word, not a sentence" Sure, things will change, but many of us have probably become better persons for surviving the experience.

A lot of things going through your mind right now is natural, and you've just gone through a time of year that's stressful even without having to deal with a this problem.

I had partial glossectomy and 2 neck dissections, did the chemo/rad deal twice. Stats weren't good for me, but here I am, 18 months out from ending the second round of rad and doing well. Take a minute to stop, take a deep breath, and determine that you are going to kick this diseases butt, and not let it kick yours, and you'll be able to get through it.

Hopeing for the best for you, just know our prayers are with you.

Bob