Denise - I don't know that I am much help, but I am going to try. Dan's surgery was in a different area - major gland - parotid. His margins were not clear and from what we understand the rest of it cannot be taken with surgery because it runs into the skull??? Honestly still don't clearly understand that. I know this was one of the big indicators for aggressieve treatement (rad and chemo). In Dan's case the CT Scan showed swelling in a lymph node so they did a neck dissection on that side and removed 30 nodes - 4 cancerous. It seems though that a ND is not a "given" - it very much depends on the doc and all the circumstances. I am sorry you have to wait so long to meet with the doctor. We had to wait a couple of days between things and even that was horrible. I will tell you though that Dan was very very very worried about the "looks" aspect of all this. I finally just had to get a little tough and tell him that right now we can't be worried about looks - lets worry about living and then if we need it will worry about plastic surgery when we've beaten the cancer. I think we have been very blessed though. Our ENT surgeon had plastic surgery training as well and he did reconstruction during the main surgery and Dan looks great!!!! If you aren't looking for it you can't tell he had surgery and the surgery was recent - 2/5.

Your mom is lucky to have you and you sound as if you love her very mcuh. Just keep holding her hand adn we'll all keep praying!