Hi - my husband, age 57, was diagnosed in March with floor of mouth cancer. It had invaded his mandible, and by the time we were able to get surgery scheduled, a small amount was also found on his tongue. The mandible had to be removed all the way up to the "L" shape section on both sides.

He had a modified radical neck discetion, and reconstructive surgery on the same day as the removal of the cancer. We were told by the docs that there was a 5% chance that the reconstructive surgery would not be successful and we won the lottery on this.

The fibular flap failed. The blood flow would go in, but not go out. After 4 days of waiting to see if it would correct itself, the docs went in and removed the tissue (leaving the bone) and did a pec flap. 14 days later he was in the hospital with an infection from a fistula. The tissue was OK, but the bone, at the chin area, started to deteriorate.

He has been on an NG tube since May 21 (surgery date) and is scheduled to have a PEG tube put in on Aug. 7. His six weeks of radiation are due to start on July 31st.

The surgeon wants to do another free flap after radiation. The radiologist didn't want to do radiation treatment at first because of the issue with his bone, but radiation can not wait any longer.

I guess my question is -- What is going to happen next? My husband has to keep a bandage over his chin because there is always fluid leakage. This leakage started when the infection set in and has not stopped, even though the infection has cleared up.

The radiologist was worried about another infection and the problem of having to stop and restart treatment.

Has anything like this happened to anyone else?

What happens when another free flap is done? What happens with the pectoral muscle that was already cut to make a flap? Where would they take another free flap? What are that chances that a 2nd free flap would fail?

We have a reconstructive surgeon that does not communicate well at all. At my husband's last appointment, when discussing the bone problem, the surgeon only said to him "we can fix that". It was later, when we saw the Radiologist that we learned that the surgeon's idea of "fixing" was to do another free flap. We were floored -- we thought it would be a fix -- not a redo.

Overall, my husband is in very good health (excpet for the cancer). His diagnosis was Floor of Mouth SCC - T4N2M0.

He had 70 lymph nodes removed from levels I, II and III. Seven of those were positive (both sides of neck affected), but the Head & Neck Surgeon said he would not need Chemo. That is one other thing I didn't quite understand.