Barbara,

The time between diagnosis and the start of treatment doesn't sound that unusual to me, based on what I've seen here from many other posters. I know I had about 5 weeks between my diagnosis and surgery, and another 5 weeks between surgery and the start of radiation. The time leading up to my surgery included several types of scans, visits with several H&N specialists and a meeting with the Dana Farber team to discuss what they thought would be the best overall approach in my case. When I asked my oral surgeon why he didn't just remove the entire tumor as soon as he knew it was cancerous, he said there was a risk of causing more harm if he just forged ahead on his own without having more tests done and getting the tumor board involved first. I can't argue with the results.

I would encourage your husband to try the numbing agents if they can help him get more food down. The ones I had were really only effective for about 15-20 minutes, so there weren't extended periods of time where I was at risk of biting my tongue. Also, I really wasn't trying to ingest much of anything that required chewing - my whole diet at that point was very soft, squishy stuff that could just be mashed around and swallowed with as little effort as possible.

There are quite a few posts on the forum from people who have tried acupuncture for salivary function. I think if you search for them, you'll find very mixed results. Personally, I've gotten quite a bit of help with saliva by using Salagen (oral pilocarpine). Some others here are using Evoxac and prefer that.

Cathy