Gino,

I think you are confusing me with Minnie. I had a stage 2 tumor and no mets at all--micro or otherwise, alhough I did have some other signs of an aggressive cancer so I went ahead and fought it all the way the first time.

I think you are misunderstanding what your history of smoking does to your risk of recurrence. From everything I have read, it makes it worse, not better since oral cancers in nonsmokers may be caused by HPV and there is some data that HPV-caused cancers have a higher cure rate. Also, the history of smoking means the whole of your mouth has been potentially exposed to an agent that caused your cancer, this is sometimes called "field cancerization" and may increase the likelihood of a recurrence somehwere else in the mouth. I say this as an ex-smoker myself. But if you are unsure about this, ask them at MD Anderson.

I agree that the comment "if you die you won't have to worry about forgiving yourself" was a bit much. There was a period of a couple of weeks when the information I had was unclear about whether I needed radiation or not and the decision process was hard and scary enough as it was, and inducing a strong fear response really does nothing to help people think it through carefully and seek more information, as both Gino and Amy are obviously trying to do.

Nelie