Tom, my brother had a similar instance of the stage number increasing pretty dramatically. His tumor grew pretty quickly (he could feel the difference) between the initial diagnosis and subsequent treatment. He went from Stage 3/4 (that is three-quarters ... yes, that is what he was told) to Stage IV in a short time. At the maximum, it was 6x4x2. I don't know if that is considered big when it's on the tongue, but it looked huge to us.

His treatment ended last December. He started a new job in April (I think) and feels great now.

For me, I focused on learning as much as I could and I tried not to think of the "numbers". I started asking Joe a lot of questions about his treatment until he finally told me that he just wanted to talk about "normal", everyday things ... what I was doing at work, what vacation I was planning, where he planned to go scuba diving, etc.

Jean