Welcome to OCF, Mark! Im so glad you found our site to help you get thru your upcoming treatments and recovery. It can be a long, difficult road for some while others sail right thru with barely noticing any side effects.

A couple very important things you need to be aware of when just starting. If you are given chemo, specifically cisplatin make sure you pay attention to your hearing. If you do not know what kind of chemo you are being given, ask the nurse for its name before she gives it to you. If you notice even a slight hearing change report it to your doc immediately. Do NOT get another dose of cisplatin if you notice any (even minor) change in your hearing. Cisplatin is known to cause high frequency permanent hearing loss. Also if you can, if you are getting chemo hopefully its given weekly instead of the 3 "big bag" method.

Your intake is one of the biggest controllable items that plays a major role in how easy you go thru everything. Every single day from now thru when you hit your first year after finishing rads you need to take in at the very least 2500 calories and 48-64 oz of water. On chemo days drink extra to help flush chemo out of your system to try avoiding having kidney issues. It sounds like ALOT of calories but its not! Your body is burning up calories at a greatly increased rate trying to fight the cancer and rebuild the damage cancer (and soon treatments) have done. Even days where you think to yourself... I cant hit 2500, getting 1500 today will be ok.... NOPE!!! The playing catch up turns into a never ending downward spiral where every single day patients think they will do better "tomorrow". Their "tomorrow" never comes! Its just not possible when you are feeling progressively worse as treatments continue to pull yourself out of that downward spiral. I went thru it and ended up being hospitalized twice for malnutrition and dehydration. I felt soooo bad I actually thought I was in the first stages of dying which of course I wasnt, I was just dehydrated and in a severely weakened state. I cant stress enough how vitally important your intake is!!! Calories 2500 daily or more are more important at this point than a perfectly balanced diet.

If your throat becomes sore and you have trouble swallowing make sure you speak up and tell your doc. Any ideas about trying different things ask your doc first. Some patients need a feeding tube, some do not and theres some who get a temporary nasal tube as they're close to their "crawling out of the tunnel" point where they finally begin to feel better. Roughly 10% of oral cancer (OC) patients going thru rads will sail right thru with only barely noticing any side effects. The patients who do so well are those who pay the most attention and do the best with their daily intake. If you can take in 3000 or even 3500 calories its perfectly ok, that will only help make everything a little easier for you. When the going gets tough, try drinking your calories with shakes and smoothies.

As far as greys go (thats what we call radiation doses around here), I was given 72 which I was told is my lifetime max. Over the years, Ive heard this echoed many times from many others here. But, in certain cases OC patients can go thru additional rounds of rads. Its done on a case by case basis, not every patient can have additional rads.

As far as losing teeth, have you been to your dentist? You should have gotten a mold made for fluoride trays of your teeth you can use to protect your teeth while going thru rads. Any questionable teeth that arent in the best shape need to be removed prior to starting rads. You do NOT want to push it off until after rads!!! Rads are very hard on the teeth. If you havent already started, you will need to begin brushing and flossing after every meal and pay careful attention to your teeth, seeing the dentist more often as in 2x a year. I really hope you already have your fluoride trays and gel to use as not using it will probably mean you may lose teeth down the road. Also using a waterpik on its lowest setting with warm water and some mouthwash at least daily will reach places a toothbrush and floss can not.

Im sure there are a million more things I can pass along but I probably overwhelmed you with so much info. Sorry about that!!!

Best wishes next week!!!