Thanks for the info. I guess all this time I just assumed it was not unusual but now I am thinking that there are some questions I ought to be askin' the docs.

A strange thing was that the last day he was in the hospital as we were leaving for the last time, one of the residents pulled me on the side. She told me that one of the reasons they didn't do surgery is because the tumor was so close to some artery or something like that which meant that surgery was very dangerous. I have never been able to understand why she told me that since none of his doctors ever mentioned anything like that.

I did notice from talking to the people at rad that he had rad tx's for almost twice as many minutes as many of the other patients. It came up several times because of the scheduling issue. I always wondered about that as well. He had a blue cross at the bottom of his throat where the collar bones come together. Right were the little dip is in the top part of the chest just below the neck. The Rad techs told me it was a secondary tx area so the txs were in 2 parts everyday. One that covered the neck and jaw area and one that covered the area where the cross was. It was the only mark they had to put on him as the other marks were on the mask.

Anyway, thanks for your insight. It is always helpful.

Cindy