Donnajean,

I think for every oral cancer survivor, re-learn how to eat/swallow is a must. Swallowing difficulty can be caused by both surgery and radiation. When I mentioned my problem to the radiation onclogist, he said one of his patient actully has to eat from PEG tube for his life because the surgeon has removed most of the muscle that performs the swallowing fuction.
I guess the radiation cannot do such damage.

Since John just had his surgery on Feb 6, the healing process is still ongoing as well as the physical changes in the head and neck region. For me, it has been 6 months since my surgery, there are still a lot physical changes going on.