Hey Eric, I had exactly the same treatment it sounds like you're having. 35 rad treatments, 3 cisplatin treatments every 21 days and then neck dissection. I can only recount what my experience was as some of your questions and concerns are beyond my knowledge. The new studies seem to indicate best results with chemo/rad in concert, so I went that way and recommend it to anyone with similar cancer. The chemo was not that big a thing at all. They give you lots of anti-nausea meds before the chemo. I did have a bad reaction to one of the anti-nausia meds, I don't remember which one, and they can't tell beforehand which will give you a problem, but they just switched me over to another med and then no problem. Also, they put me to sleep when the chemo was started, so ask for the same. I had no problems with the chemo part of the treatment at all. It was done in the hospital and I was out in 24-36 hours and back to work the following Monday (I checked in Thursday, had chemo Friday, and was home Saturday or Sunday early). The reason for the chemo and rad together, as I understand it is two-fold, the chemo softens up the tumor and makes it more suseptable to rad and it will also search out other cancers in the body and destroy it. Like small undetected microcells which have metastasised to other places. That was one of the things I was particularly interested in as I smoked for almost 40 years and expected lung cancer to be the one that got me, not tonsil. So I thought it would be a good idea to get something that would fight undetected cells in other places. I did have some hair loss, but you couldn't tell as it was minor in scope and what was left covered any loss. Again, I had no ill affects from the chemo. The rad, on the other hand, liked to killed me. Of course, as they say, we are all different. I pray that this time around all of the cancer will be destroyed and you will completely beat it. Let them do their thing and don't worry about the chemo so much, it wasn't a big thing with me. Turn it over to the Lord and He will comfort you.