Hello all, I've got a few questions for those of you who did chemo concurrent with radiation.

Basically, what was it like?

Here's my set-up. I did IMRT the first go-around, and they radiated my mouth and upper neck with IMRT. Not sure why they didn't do the whole neck, but my recurrence was just below the field. Argg..

Anyway, I had a radical neck dissection in June and they are recommending a second round of IMRT to the lower neck and are recommending chemo along with it. They are siting the much publicized new studies released that talk about chemo helping reduce rates of local recurrence and in some cases appear to help with survival too.

I guess the thought of having chemo for some reason spooks me pretty good. Radiation a second time does, too, but not as much. The list of side effects for chemo goes way beyond constipation and some hair loss (which is occuring naturally for me anyway, it seems). Will I lose my hearing, kidneys, liver, etc? Yikes.

Any way, just curious to know what folks experienced with chemo, what side effects are most prevalent, etc. Anything to watch out for? Anything I can do to help myself ease the side effects? They said I would get chemo treatments every three weeks, either two or three times. Wonder why so much time between treatments?

Thanks again for any help folks can provide... All of you are gems...

Eric


Tongue cancer (SCC), diagnosed Oct. 2003 (T2 N0 M0). Surgery to remove tumor. IMRT Radiation 30x in Dec 2003 - Jan. 2004. Recurrence lymph node - radical neck dissection June 2004. Second round of rad/chemo treatments ended Sept. 2004.