Hi
I'm not a doctor but I would think this was not a reoccurrence. My husband also had stage IV base of tongue cancer. The way they found it was he had a swollen lymph node. The internist thought it was an infection treated it as such, a couple of months later a general ENT looked at it did a biopsy, came back negative, five months later at my husband's request the ENT did another biopsy, came back negative but this time he did a CT scan acted like he wasn't that concerned but there was another unrelated issue that he was concerned about so he had him have an MRI, flags went up and he had us see a surgeon who initially didn't say it was probably cancer but you could tell that's what he thought. After many more tests he did another biopsy, came back questionable for squamous cell, went under to take out his tonsils (only because he couldn't see any obvious place) once on the table he touched the base of his tongue with his finger and off fell a little piece which he biopsied and that was it. We're thinking the first doctor didn't hit the right spot (there was blood in his sample).

After his treatment there still was a little hard knot that could have been scare tissue but the surgeon wasn't going to take any chances and said he needed to have a neck dissection to make sure. The neck dissection was performed about two months after treatment. By then his neck was just about healed from the radiation. The nodes came out clear but the there was still microscopic cancer cells in the periodnodal tissue. He said he believes he took it all out. He was happy he decided to do the neck dissection and so were we.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is it was probably not a reoccurrence. For some reason the radiation and chemo didn't kill it and we are happy we had the surgeon we finally ended up with. Its been almost 8 months since the dissection and nine months since the end of treatment and the check-ups have been good. We have learned to take one day at a time.

Good luck,
Teresa