NED, eh? Congratulations!

Congratulations! I had three neck dissections, two radical, and one was to remove two cancerous Lymph nodes, which turned out to be not the Lymph noses, but free of roaming cancer for lack of better words, which surgery was done as an outpatient. I did not need any draining tubes, and just a stitch of two. Sounds rather easy than it is, but the ENT's are highly skilled. MSKCC moved up in ENT this year, I think even higher marks than Mt. Sinai, who was tops for years, still is. I used to live on East 66th, and East 58th. I miss there, and stuck in suburbia or rather Siberia now. Good luck.

Great news BUT WHY IN THE WORLD would you want someone to cut you open for NOTHING???

Andrew, Congrats on the great news!!! Hope your recovery is coming along and you are getting back to your regular lifestyle.

Is this surgery optional? Many who have a neck dissection done have problems with the side their surgery was on with lifting their arm. Something to do with the muscles that are cut??? Not 100% certain exactly why the arm issues. It is a bit unusual to have this done after everything has been finished. But if you are in a study going on thats probably why they wait to do it after you get the all clear. Please keep us posted on this.

Neck dissections are even controversial in N1, N2 disease. Sounds like a "Planned Neck Dissection" where it's done no matter what the outcome is from treatment, which has better outcome than an unplanned neck dissection, but not sure about the timing. I think it would conform to getting the whole treatment package done within 100 days, or 10 weeks for better outcome. Your at the finest hospital for treatment, MSKCC, and will be interested in the outcome, as I was for your hypoxia PET testing. Good luck with your decision.

Thanks everyone. I wasn't very clear about what the surgery would involve. I can decline the surgery if I want and I know there have been patients in this clinical trial that have declined the surgery.

From what I have been told, it is not a traditional neck dissection in any form (radical, modified, or selective). They use the term nodulectomy. The side effects would be very minimal if any as only a small area would be cut. There are of course risks with any surgery, which are important to consider. It would likely be a ~1 inch incision and would only remove the 1 lymph node (or whatever remains of it now) that was cancerous. I think the idea is to ensure there aren't any random cancerous cells remaining in that tissue. I will ensure I get more details once I hear more information on their recommendations as these details are from my memory when I signed up for the clinical trial.

In any circumstance in life, I'd prefer to not have surgery if I could avoid it. I went with a clinical trial that reduced radiation dose to my neck, so its not clear to me that there is no reason to at least check for cancer in the node. I'm very happy with how quickly I bounced back and recovered. It's hard to say if that had more to do with the reduced dose of radiation, my age or maybe just luck. I can't draw much of a conclusion with a sample size of one.

Rosy, I am hoping for the best for you when you get scanned. It sounds like things are going well for you in recovery. Hope everything continues to improve.

Andrew, did you have your tonsil removed?

I did not have my tonsil removed or a neck dissection. The surgeon was concerned with margins after seeing a PET/CT and recommended chemoradiaton instead of surgery + radiation (with the possibility of chemo if adverse features were found).

what? A second round of radiation?

Cheryl, sorry if I was not clear. My last post was in reference to Portland's question. I didn't have surgery (tonsils removed or neck dissection) before chemoradiation. There is no plan for additional chemo or radiation (and hopefully there never will...)