Hi Anne-Marie --

First, INSIST that your son get PROPER pain management NOW. The standard of care for head and neck cancer treatment and post-treatment includes pain management (often opiates, as noted above) -- waiting two weeks for some "team" to come up with a plan is ridiculous, there are clear guidelines available from NCCN and also, the extensive literature on cancer care and it doesn't take any two weeks to find these out.

Secondly, there is quite a bit of existing peer-reviewed literature demonstrating HNC post-treatment disability -- one of the more recent is Taylor et al (2004) where they found over 50% of treated oral cancer patients were too disabled to return to work. The abstract is at:
http://archotol.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/130/6/764

You can also follow up papers in which this work was cited and also, do a google for "diability and head and neck cancer" for other papers.

These should help bolster your argument with SSDI.

Gail