Ann,

I'm sorry you've had such a long series of encounters with this disease. I'm guessing your prior treatments haven't been at major cancer centers (have they?). Oral cancer doesn't respond well to half-measures and usually is best dealt with early on with a fairly aggressive approach.

Please be sure to get an opinion from a major cancer center where you have access to specialists in surgery, radiation and chemo who can evaluate your circumstances and come up with a plan of attack. You should not have to have surgery every few months to deal with this.

A modified radical neck dissection is a fairly common procedure and tends to sound worse than it is. Many of us here have had them and found that we healed well (and quickly) afterward -- the surgeon may need to remove a number of lymph nodes to test whether and to what extent the cancer may have spread.

There is a wealth of information on this site to help you understand more about oral cancer, the risk factors associated with it, and the resources available to help treat it. Try to use what's here to come up with the questions you need to ask your doctors, and feel free to check back in here to let us know how you're doing.

Cathy