Your husband is only three weeks out from his surgery. Not to mention other treatments. Lymphedema, or the collection of fluids in the surgical area would be normal at this time. My own swelling under my neck and chin didn't go down for almost three months. As I said before, ask your doctor if he feels this is normal, no one here is going to be able to tell you that that amount of swelling that he has, in some abstract definition of if it is a lot or a little, is normal or not. But swelling after this type of surgery is commonplace, and is to be expected. Lymphedema cannot be drained. Your body has to develop new ways to process it. This will take time, a lot more than three weeks. Obviously you want to be sure this is not an infection. But only your doctor and a blood test are going to determnine that. Lastly, a note to everyone who reads these boards. You have to have a realistic idea of what is going to happen after these treatments. To have the lymph nodes etc. removed after a neck dissection is going to throw your heads ability to process lymph fluid out the window. It will take months for new pathways to develop for these lymph fluids to be able to move on. Swelling is to be expected. Soreness and tenderness to the touch is to be expected. Pain is to be expected. Numbness is certainly to be expected that may last a lifetime, since they are cutting through nerve bundles to do the procedure. Weight loss??? Hardly anyone I know that has been through this is eating the 2000 healthful calories per day that it takes to keep their weight normal, let alone build back weight lost during treatments. Donnajean, can you say that your husband is eating more than 2000 calories per day, every day? If he isn't, which I doubt...he is going to lose weight. This doesn't mean that he has Cachexia!!! Look to the most logical answers first. If there are logical reasons for something to be occurring, then the likelihood is that those ARE the reasons, not some other, more rare disease or ailment. As to others who care to speculate without considering these more likely scenarios, you are undoubtedly causing anxiety in others, that you respond to. If we cry wolf at every symptom, especially those that have more likely causes, who will take your comments seriously when you actually hit the nail on the head?

Brian, stage 4 oral cancer survivor. OCF Founder and Director. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.