[quote=sunderwood1111]Thank all of you for your responses. They are greatly appreciated. My stress level has dropped after reading them. I really just want to be on the other side of this thing so I can get back to my life. From what I have read oral cancer is a real sneaky little bugger, so many recurrences it seems. Or maybe its just that people who get the all clear don't post here anymore. Well in any event thanks again. Have a stellar day! [/quote]
I know what you're talking about. I was on this forum daily for a while and from reading posts it just seemed like I should pick out my coffin and be done with it. Not that I'm saying that is ever anyone's intention. I mean lets face it. When you're first going through this you're not exactly thinking clearly and I can see now that I sought out worst case scenarios.
But once I got better I slowly stopped coming on to the forum. Partly because my oncologist said I had read a lot of misinformation and it clearly wasn't helping me as I wasn't utilizing it properly. And partly because I felt better.

As far as the neck dissection goes for me the operation side of the whole process was the easy part. I will say I have less strength in my neck but nothing dire.
My oncologist also said that the 50% survival rate is ridiculous because you can't generalize people whose only commonality is that they had similar forms of cancer. She said in my case there is very little chance, less than 1% of it returning.