Hello family, My apologies that I have been absent from this wonderful group for so long. At this point I would like to make a commitment to be here in a supportive role for anyone who might need it.

I'm wondering if anyone can relate to or have any suggestions for the following. I'm 10 years post treatment. Back in October I developed some nasty throat pain. It came on suddenly. Moved into my ear. My doctor said he had seen a throat virus going around that had been lasting about 12 days. Mine lasted a month. He said it might have taken longer because of the radiation damage in my mouth and neck. It eventually went away. Welllll..... No it's back. I'm really hoping that this pain and discomfort aren't going to just become the "new norm" for me.

Has anyone else experienced this ? It started in my throat, at where my tonsil had been. The pain moved into my ear. When I yawn I can feel it "snapping". It even hurts into my eyeball now. It's pretty constant pain but the extreme degrees of it are quite sporadic.

I welcome any thought or advise on this. Thank you.

You posted this six days agao. No replies yet, So I will pitch in. I would go see my ENT Oncologist right away. How long has it been since you had a PET scan? I was misdiagnoesed on my reccurrance, was told it was stomatitis when it was stage 4 cancer. Go get it checked.

Anything like this that has not resolved in four weeks really needs to be explored further and not written off. I have transient things like this happen often but they seldom last more than a month. I’m 22 years out from initial treatment and while I have not had any recurrence, I have a constellation of other severe issues. Look on the OCF web site under complications of treatment and most of these apply to me, from a necrotic mandible 27 years out from radiation, to dysautonomia, that impacted my swallowing so I’m now on a PEG tube after all those years of eating normally, and caused the loss of my voice among many other things.

So having this evaluated by a new ENT that sees cancer patients as a head and neck surgeon, (not the ones that see kids with their issues), would be something I would encourage. This could be something else but erring on the side of not having it develop into a late stage find would be my choice.

Thank you Brian. I'm 2 weeks into this pain. It has improved a bit. I'll give it one more week and start making appointments with my oncology team at MGH / Tufts. I'm sorry to hear about all the troubles you've had and God bless you for you amazing work with this foundation.