Hello, my name is Donna. My mother has just been diagnosed with tongue cancer, stage 2. The doctor at Univ of Penn is going to remove part of her tongue, the lower end. Going to do a skin graft and left and right neck dissections. He said she will be in the hospital for about 5 days and then come home with a nasal feeding tube and a temp trach. I am going to be her caregiver-the majority of the time. I am trying to help her come to terms with all of this. One chief question she keeps asking is that if they remove 20-30 nodes out of each side of her neck what will it look like after? She thinks she is going to sound terrible with a horrible speech impediment for the rest of her life. My mother is a 63 year old, vibrant, beautiful woman on the inside as well as the outside. She is not a vain person but she is frightened that she may look drastically different....can anyone help me with this? I feel so overwhelmed I am not sure what I am writing is even making any sense or coming across as I hope it will. I want to help her and I just don't know how.