Michelle,

My husband just finished radiation and chemo on January 16, 2005. He too has an unknown primary with a tumor in his left lumph node <6mm, stage IIIB. His first pet scan showed a hot spot on his left tonsil - but the biopsy came out clean. They think the primary could have regressed when it spread to the lymph node. I have been trying to find more info on this also. What I have read, in layman's terms, they can predict where the primary should be by the location of the tumor in the lumph node - because of the way the drainage occurs, etc. My husband just finished radiation of the entire throat and chemo. It was really rough toward the end of treatment. He opted not to get a feeding tube which I believe now was a big mistake. He ended up in the hospital right after treatment ended. We are now on a liquid nutrition through IVs during the evenings. He is just starting to show improvement daily 1 month after treatments. We had another pet scan last week and will find out the results on Feb 27. Praying the treatments worked. The doctors will decide after the results of the pet scan whether or not to perform the neck dissection. There are new studies looking at monitoring rather than neck dissection. The radiation doesn't start out bad but last few weeks are very rough. Just keep counting down with him after the half way mark.

Hang in there!