Sorry you've had to join us but welcome...

I was diagnosed in May 2013 but less than 12 months later have finished treatment and life is pretty much back to normal for me... despite it being undiagnosed for over 6 years (due to a hospital error). I was Stage IVa.

My experiences and from reading these forums is that people react differently. I certainly didn't expect my life to be this normal less than 12 months later.

My thoughts were that I wasn't supposed to have this cancer growing inside of me and I wanted to hit it with everything I could - I was only 39 years old when diagnosed and the mum of 2 young kids and a business owner whose business employed others - I wasn't going to be beaten.

I jumped at the chance to have it all surgically removed (BOT - base of tongue surgery and right neck dissection), and then blast it with chemo (cisplatin) and rads concurrently... just had a follow up CT scan 2 weeks ago and all is clear.

I found surgery the toughest to start with, trouble swallowing, etc but within 2 weeks of that was OK enough. Chemo I suffered permanent hearing loss so didn't finish the whole course but it hasn't affected me too much long term. I've got permanent ringing in my ears but you get use to it. Radiation started off easily and I only lost about 3-4kgs but after the course of radiation finished I lost another 10kgs.. I am still now 13kgs lighter than when I started treatment but I'm now counting that as a benefit (got to look at the positive side of this disease). Definitely the other hardest bit was the very last week of radiation and 2-3 weeks after it had finished. So sore, not being able to eat and hardly even drink but knowing that you had to. I don't think I was generous enough to myself with my pain medication but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Get lots of people's experiences but try not to be scared by them either. I'm a bit of a control freak so wanted to know the range of experiences of everyone and found comfort in knowing I was in the lower range or higher range of these when I was going through treatment.

My BOT tumour was less than 2cm so yours is larger. Find out with the surgery what effect, if any, it will have on your eating/talking.

Sorry for the book... it's no walk in the park but face it head on, organise support in advance and know that all of us in these forums will also be here for you.