kcdc....your posts are so thorough that there is nothing I can add to your comments, they are clear, complete, and accurate.
rosie.......in stage four cancers, DAYS DO COUNT. What is worth the postponing of radiation treatments and courting further risks by delaying killing this cancer? You need to be moving forward quickly as this cancer has already had an opportunity to begin distant metastasis. This disease moves very quickly once it is in the lymph system, which is connected to all other parts of your body. Please read the page on metastasis of cancers in the main site if this picture is not completely clear to you. The lymph and circulatory systems are the high-speed autobahn for cancer cells to move to other areas of the body. A stage four patient is at extreme risk. I want to be supportive here, but in reading your first post regarding possibly not choosing the most aggressive treatments because of the side effects, I must say that your perspective seems irrational to me. This is not about side effects. Survival rates over 5 years for stage four patients are not good. That's pretty blunt, but true, said to get your attention. You need to be thinking about the most aggressive things you can do to ensure that 6 years from today the person you care about and love is still here. You will never get "enough" information to make a black and white definitive decision about treatments, you are going to have to trust the medical professionals who have been engaged to save your daughters life, and you and she need to do that now. In the last month OCF has lost 6 of our original members from a year ago, all with late stage cancers, and our membership is small in comparison to the number of oral cancer patients in the US. Please feel my sense of urgency about all this. You can beat the statistics. But you must act aggressively and definitively in a timely manner.
As to the trays, they become the most important when the saliva begins to go... that will be after a week to 10 days (approximately) of treatments. If it were me, I would start treatments and get my trays delivered during the first week. If the dentist cannot meet your schedule, get someone else. Trays take a simple 10-minute alginate impression in the chair and then a master cast is poured from stone into that impression, (30 min), finally they are made in a vacuum-forming machine by the lab tech in about 20 minutes. There is more at stake here than his schedule. Be as assertive as necessary to get what you need right now.
