Thank you all for your helpful replies. It is so nice to have this forum. We haven't met many other patients at the cancer hospital (which is a CCC), and the ones I've met in the waiting room do not have head and neck cancers. So this is so nice.

I think one of the reasons that the doctors didn't volunteer as much information is because my husband is a doctor himself. He is actually in his first year as an med onc fellow! (Oh the irony!) So I think they assume a lot of things, even compared to non-doctor patients...since they are all doctors except me! I have made all of the doctors involved explain things to me in non-doctor language so that I am sure to keep up. And I did go in with my notebook and my phone with all of my questions.

As you mentioned Cheryl: at least one silver lining in all of this is that I hope it will make him a more sympathetic and helpful cancer doctor himself in the future. How many med oncs have gone through all of this personally?

I don't think this CCC has a dental oncology clinic so we are on our own for that one. He didn't have any cavities or any dental issues to resolve before he started, so I think that is why no clearance was required.

He is still feeling crummy from the cisplatin. He has had several patients on cisplatin, and they usually come back and say that they felt bad for a few days, not much like eating, but that the side effects were well controlled. I think he is learning first hand what "well-controlled" means from the patient's point of view. It is true that he is not vomiting, but he feels really sick to his stomach and is barely eating. He is also just feeling exhausted. It can be difficult to convince him he needs to eat when he is a cancer-doctor-in-training himself and he should KNOW to eat whatever he can, but it is certainly different when he is the actual patient. He also said that every now and then the cisplatin makes his patients really really sick, and luckily that isn't the case here. I just wish he would eat more!

My husband reminded me last night as I was telling him about the forum that the Rad Onc did bring up the dentist issue, but I was the one who had to make the appointment and get him to actually go to the dentist!

He has no PEG yet, I don't think they've been weighing him this week yet. He is actually eating some shells-and-cheese on my insistence so I hope he will continue to feel better and eat more. He is receiving a bag of fluids and anti-nausea for three days after the cisplatin, and they seem to be helping a lot.

Thank all so much, we will keep on trucking and see how it goes.