I was positive for
HPV+ tonsil cancer on one side and in nodes in both sides of my neck. Back when I went through treatment there was no robotic surgery for this, but even today if you have extension of a tonsil cancer into the nodes, the treatment is seldom surgery alone, and radiation becomes part of the equation.
You don’t mention how you were discovered or where you are getting your plans for treatment from, and that makes a big difference. If you have one doctor and that’s a head and neck surgeon, you are going to end up with a surgical solution. People do what their training tells them. Depending on the extent and location of your disease, that may not be the best sequence of events. Not working with much info here, so I’m just tossing thoughts out. But if you went through a tumor board made up of lots of different doctors with different training, and as a group they decided what to do, you may do things in a different order or some of them not at all.
If radiation is part of it, and it’s going to be at the same level with or without surgery, some in the tumor board might say, we are treating the same place twice, and that makes no sense, so let’s do the radiation and if that gets it all, just save surgery for anything that is still in question at the end. This is where you see the difference in big comprehensive cancer centers and smaller regional hospitals. At a CCC no one gets treated without a multidisciplinary tumor board setting the treatment plan.
So please post again and filling some of the blanks and I will try then to tell you what is normal. I just want to give you the best info knowing exactly what your situation actually is.
