Hi Karen,
Like you I too had a tonsil cancer. The salivary gland in the vicinity of the right tonsil is toast but a few other glands have started to work and continue to improve. I sometimes forget my water bottle now.

The decision to get IMRT was mainly based on the quality of life issues post Tx. I was also a perfect candidate for it. At the time I was being treated there were just a handful of radiation clinics offering IMRT. I was very fortunate indeed that my HMO gave me a choice of Stanford or UCSF for treatment, both NCCN member institutions. Today I may have been forced to go to a regional radiation clinic with little experience in IMRT. UCSF just happened to be a major teaching and research hospital and one of the pioneers of IMRT technology. The machine I was treated on was a research machine. All 6 of their current Siemens Linear Accelerators have MLC now (multi-leaf collimator), in other words IMRT.

I had to lobby my doctor to receive IMRT. I was originally scheduled for XRT and literally in the "11th hour" (I had received instructions on booking my XRT treatment), I sent the doctor numerous white papers about IMRT. He studied them over and to his credit, acknowledged that he hadn't heard of IMRT and re-wrote the order, clearing me to go to UCSF. He is a head & neck surgeon, not a radiation oncologist. This all happened a little over a year ago.