Hey Michael, I posted on your other topic about the surgery vs. rad first issue. I don't think it's as clear cut as you have the impression it is from your two visits. But as you said, it's neither here nor there since you already had the surgery at this point.

Thank you for asking about the breat cancer, I haven't talked much about it here in part because, thank God, it has an excellent prognosis--it is Stage I and a very nonaggressive tumor as breast cancers go.

In January, two days after I got the biopsy results and learning I had tongue cancer, I was scheduled for a regular mammogram. Imagine my surprise (and deer in the headlights look, I'm sure) when the radiologist told me I needed a biopsy on somehting the mammogram turned up. I managed to squeeze in the biopsy before my tongue and neck surgery (it was stereotactic biopsy which requires lying compltely still face DOWN for about 1/2 an hour--would have been pretty diffcilt after surgery), and got the nwws it was indeed breast cancer right after the surgery. Its completely uinrelayted to the mouth cancer.

So two weeks later I had a lumpectomy and sentinal node removal--and in that same surgery (and I'm pretty sure this could only happen at a small hosptial with a single tumor board for all cancers that meets weekly) my ENT came back in and took a little more of my tongue to be sure the margins were clean from the first surgery because one had been very close(they turned out to be clean --no more cancer found there).

I got a post-surgical infection (very unusual apparently but it had to happen to me) from the lumpectomy and also at the node site that had to be sdrained and then wet-to-dry packed daily for over a month in order to heal. This is one of the reasons my rad and chemo didn't start as soon as I would have liked. They wouldn't do the chemo when they thought the breast/node wound good get infected again.

So as soon as that was healed I started rad and once I heal from this a little more I have to go back in for rad to the breast. Probably late August or early Septemeber that wil start. Fortuntely, a couple of docs who I trust have told me the delay in rad treatment for that cancer should not prove to be a problem at all. It doesn't have the same urgency as oral cancer. And it will seem like a walk in the park after the oral rad! With the lumpectomy, node removal and rad as well as Tamoxifen, I only have a 5% or less chance of recurrence for that cancer. I just wish the stats were so good for the oral cancer!

Finding out I had two cancers at once was pretty overwhelming for a while but the rbeast tumor was small and deep--not one I felt on my self-exams or one that even my surgeon could feel. I keep thinking that if I *hadn't* gone for that mammogram I would have probably gotten healed from the rad. for the mouth and just begun to feel like the ordeal was over before the rbeast tumor got boig enough to feel--and by that time it would no longer have been a stage I cancer most likely but soemthing more scary. So I'm really glad that I went for that mammogram and caught it early.

As for how I'm feeling now, I have a topic in the post-treatment section on mouth gunk where I've been giving some updates.

Good luck with the oral surgery and the decision on treatment. I'm sure you'll keep us updated here.