Hi Michelle,

You have wonderful questions and your mom is lucky to have a daughter like you taking care of her.

I had a CT scan taken before I saw the surgeon and it was ordered by my oral surgeon who did the biopsy. The CT scan was clear, but since no radiation was planned and the surgeon's opinion was that there could be a 15% error in a CT scan being negative, his recommendation was to remove the lymph nodes. I could not argue with his reasoning. In fact, his protocol is to not even take a CT scan and always remove the nodes. The more you read here, the more you will see that there are many, many ways to treat this disease. Unfortunately, no one has all the answers.

I might add that the radiation oncologist agreed that radiation was not needed for me based upon the size of the original lesion, the staging and the results of the pathology report of the tongue and lymph nodes.

Please keep us posted and keep on picking our brains.

Jerry