Wendy,

I'm sorry for your troubles. You received sound advise, and can add that the U.S. News Report has an annual listing of top rated hospitals, including specialities such as Cancer, and Ear, Nose and Throat, if you want to look there too, which shows John Hopkins. MD Anderson and others, and those listed by the NCCN and NCI. As advised, many will need your records. I get copies of everything anyway, for future reference, including a cd disc of my scans, surgical, and pathology reports.

As far as radiation with less damaging effects, you may be speaking of Proton Radiation, where there are about 25 locations in the U.S., but they're usually not for a broader radiation field, if that's needed, as it would take some time to set up and deliver. Sometimes it's used in conjunction with another type of radiation also. There is a new type of Proton delivery called Intensity Modulated Proton Therapy, IMPT, but there may be only 6 locations in the U.S. that has this, including MD Anderson. This can do a number of areas like IMRT radiation does.

There are other types of precise radiation such as Cyberknife, a type of Stereostatic Radiosurgery, Brachytherapy, a type of internal radiation, but again the radiation field is not as broad, but may be used with another type of radiation such as IMRT, as a boost dose.

Another new type of treatment with a photosensitizer, is Photodynamic Therapy, PDT, where the tumor is only a specified depth. This type of treatment allegedly does not interfere with future radiation treatments, but all these, and other type of treatments are at top rated, experienced, and high patient volume cancer centers in that particular field.

For all my cancers, I had a whole body PET/CT scans too either alone or in conjunction with another type scan. A PET/CT can detect cancers as small as 5mm while a CT or MRI is around 1cm. I had one that was 3mm that was detected by PET/CT