Hello Terry and the Group,

I was diagnosed the 1st week of April this year with stage 4 Base Tongue SQC... would have never known I had it if not for two lobular tumors that floated from the mother ship tumor up in to my throat cavity visible enough and large enough to be photographed ay 1stwith a camera phone...

The main tumor and its two cling ons were removed on May 1, along with a double dissection to remove the lymph nodes on both sides... one side, the same side the mother ship tumor was on, had malignant nodes, had three very angry nodes,one which had grown to a point it was ready to burst or at least split so that there would have been a nasty clean up job...

after about three weeks of recovery from the surgery I began 30 days of radiation and 6 equally split chemo treatments to coincide with the 5 day week of radiation...

During the first weeks I experienced a brush with thrush and it was a precursor of the throat inflammation to come.

During the fourth week I also experienced a day where my fever spiked and my platelet count / neutrophil and a few other key indicators led to a postponement of my 4th chemo treatment... that day I was scheduled to have chemo I instead was admitted so the doctors could watch to see if the fever spikes, all around 100.5 to 103.could be controlled by a battery of antibiotics...

the fevers eventually subsided by the 8th day I was in the hospital and I was sent home without a definitive explanation for the fevers except that the body was not tolerating at that point the cysplatin and I was sent home to rest and see what the next week brought...

I did not miss a beat on the radiation and while I was experiencing the external "sun burn" and related sores and the expected internal sores and inflammation in my base throat and sinus drain area...my numbers were sufficient enough to have another go at the chemo treatment... I might add I had experienced each week the usual fatigue and hard sleep expected after the chemo treatments and other than the fever nothing else was abnormal...

We tried in late week five of six radiation treatments to catch up one more chemo treatment... it seemed to go well on the Thursday but by Friday evening I was spiking fevers again this time in the 102.5 to 103.5 range... I spent another 8 days of watching and trying antibiotics to control the fevers... with much the same results... I finished my radiation treatments and it was decided to pass the last chemo day although note that if you are tolerating the Chemo, its job is to pump up the radiation effect...

I am now at home one week ot from all treatments other the a regin of every other day of hydration to assure my numbers return and / or stay in the common zone...

I am experiencing the usual dry mouth and mucous that comes on with the radiation and chemo treatment and since you stay hot with radiation for 3-5 weeks, I am doing the same things I did while receiving treatments and will wait until I cool off enough to get the Pet scans and test to see what was accomplished... I would not have changed the course of treatments one bit... I feel that the staff at the university Hospital that I am going to are top notch and noted nationally for their success and procedures...

the tumors were removed by a robotic procedure, in the reserved time of 6-10 hours allowed for such a comprehensive surgery... I was fortunate in that my tumor was ecotopic (sp) tumor (growing outward) not endotopic (sp) that grows into the muscle...

and I am PHV positive all in my favor...

when I asked the question you're, basically a root cause... I was assured that this SQC base tongue tumor is almost epidemic in men in their 60-70's.

I am a non smoker, was casual drinker, beer mostly and had no family history...

Good luck and keep searching, while I wanted to search, luckily I was placed in the hands of the best in the nation for the procedures needed and I have only had that confirmed throughout the process...

Joe E