Brian,

Glad you found this site and sorry you are going through this. Your story including the military sounds like mine except all of my cancer is left side, tonsil and lymph nodes. All of my 20 years in the military I never heard of anyone having HPV until now. Now that it is known what I have, I have had at least 6 people come up and say they have HPV or have went through what we are going through. It really pisses me off because it is kept a secret. I hope after I beat this I can do something to change that. I wish you the best and if you ever have any questions let me know I am about a month or so ahead of you in this journey.

Hey folks,

My ENT left the enlarged lymph node in, I see more than a few of you had the neck dissection. His reasoning was location, sitting right next to some serious blood vessels and nerves. He said radiation can get anything in the node.

He told me prior to the surgery that he was goings to take a bunch of small samples from all over then if those come back neg, go
after the tonsils, if they came back neg, go for the node. Once the tonsil came back pos for SCC he stopped.

This seem normal to you folks?

Brian

My local ENT and local hospital was not able to do anything advanced either. They did the tonsillectomy and freeze test but that was it. I would recommend that you ask for a referral to a hospital that specializes in head and neck cancers. Once I did I had a radical tonsillectomy done with robotics and a neck dissection. I could have chosen just radiation and chemo but I wanted to make sure I was clear in the tonsil area and that the lymph nodes were gone. I also learned from the surgery that I had extra capsular spread which they didn't think I had before the surgery. I had one doctor tell me "do you want to go somewhere they may have one patient a year or do you want to go somewhere that works with head and neck cancers daily". I asked for the referral.