Thanks for the update, Connie! Your husband is so determined to slam the door on his cancer and go back to his usual lifestyle. He is one of very very few who at only 4 months post rads is physically able to return to his former lifestyle. Almost all OC patients are still struggling at that point. Even at 6 months most are struggling with the dry mouth and taste changes.

On your signature it says your husband smoked/chewed tobacco for 38 years. Any patient with that long tobacco history is in denial if they think their tobacco habit didnt have something to do with getting OC. Even if he is HPV+ he could still have gotten the cancer from all the poisons in the tobacco. Unfortunately the cause of peoples cancer usually isnt anything cut and dry with so many variables with environment, nutrition, lifestyle, and his own body chemistry. I was a long time smoker who knows it was the cigs that got me and I quit cold turkey never to take even one little puff again. Anyone who continues to use tobacco after having OC is tempting their fate, but sadly that is their choice.

As far as the PET goes, it can pick up any irregular spot over about 2 cm. After treatments, its next to impossible for any doctor to give a guarantee the patient is 100% cancer free. All it takes is one teeny tiny cell to be missed for the cancer to begin regrowing after rads. The rate of growth will vary greatly so its not possible to even predict how far out someone is before that missed cancer cell will have grown to be picked up with the scan. Its up to your husband if he doesnt want to to get the scan or continue to be monitored by his OC docs. Its usually 5 years doctors will continue to see their OC patients before they can consider them to be cured. For me, it wasnt easy to accept I wouldnt ever really know for certain I didnt have cancer. After much thought on that subject I decided that I wouldnt waste any more of my time with the "what if" thinking and worrying about recurrences. Worrying has never cured anyone and cant change test results so "what if" thinking is counterproductive. It wasnt easy but I put it all behind me and moved on to rebuild my old life, what I could still salvage of it. Thanks to Brian and the kindhearted and encouraging members of OCF who have helped me significantly my life now is very different than how it was before OC. In many ways its so much better now!!!

Glad to hear you are doing well and taking good care of yourself