Boy Michael, I am sorry that you went through all that -- the tube has been pretty smooth sailing for Barry except for about 5 seconds ago when our puppy managed to jump up and hit him *right* on the incision area with her little hard paw! He went off hunched over like Quasimodo, saying weakly, "I don't want to play with you any more right now...."

He had his first chemo today -- I will post more on our "in treatment" site (new topic we're starting today as he is no longer "about to start...")

Regarding your feeling that there may be "something there" -- we asked our medical onc about the rationale for not removing ("debulking") some of Barry's base of tongue tumor before the chemoradiation -- it is surficial, that is, it has not invaded into the tongue muscle -- and she said about what your oncologist said, the radiation/chemo treatment plan is designed to take care of all the cancer, that further surgery would not give any better result.

Gail