Calling All Board Members:

Please see my detailed post in the "Treatment and Procedures" section of the forum. Dave and I have completed our fact finding mission regarding treatment options and value your input before making a final decision.

Sorry, couldn't get my message there to cut and paste here.

Thanks,

Kim

We went with radiation option 4 yrs ago. I was supposed to have 8 good years, needless to say, the radiation side effects were horrid, osteoradionecrosis, for one..........when I had surgery last Sept. docs all agreed I should have surgery from the get go........I know it would have been a lot less invasive at that time.....we should have opted for surgery 4 years ago........good luck with your choice, but I believe you`ll make the right one........follow your gut feeling.......it`s usually right....................Packer 66

Hi, July 01 my non smoker hubby had enlarged nodes in his neck, no other symptoms, had a biopsy that showed Squamous Cell in one node but not the others (after surgical biopsy it was found in ALL 3 of them) He didnt' know he had tonsil cancer until surgical biopsy, it was growing into his neck.
We had a very blunt surgeon and Onco. Told he had a 20% chance of survival in 5 years with radiation/chemo alone, and 50% with surgery then rad and chemo..............
He was only 39 so we took the safe route. The surgery took out all the cancer that could be seen, so he was cancer free (so they say) but radiation/chemo gets (hopefully) all that you can't see. That is how they put it to us.
He didn't want to go through all the treatments just to have to have the surgery anyways if it didn't shrink the tumors enough.
Good Luck, Our surgeon was worried because Dans tumor (node) was too close to the carotid atery and if it was wrapped around it, well that wouldn't be good, he was able to peel the tumor off the artery thank goodness.
Sometimes to me too many options are not good either, always worried if you made the right one.
So many on this board have had the same type of cancer, but everyones nodes, actual tumor on the tonsil have been different, so every treatment will be too.

Hi, KCDC.

I took the surgical route. I had a third of my tongue removed, the floor of my mouth on the opposite site rebuilt from skin taken from my shoulder and a radical neck disecton to remove all of the lymph nodes from both sides of my neck. This was done since the cancer on my tongue was on the left side and the tumor on the base of my mouth was on the right side. Well, all of my lymph nodes came out clean as a whistle and they were able to get clear margins when removing both tumors. I did not have to go through RAD or Chemo. My time out of work was minimal, 8 weeks and people who do not know about the cancer can't tell a thing. It took a while to being able to eat things, but that is pretty much back to normal. My speech still bothers me a little, I can't say "th" most of the time, but is only normally effected when I try to talk too fast and/or I'm tired. I lost a few teeth and part of my jaw bone, but I'm working on getting this entire thing fixed up. I did a bone transplant about two months ago in order to get enough to get implants where I lost the teeth. Sorry I'm rambling on but just wanted to let you know what the surgical root can be like. By the way, it will be two years on September 12th since I had all of this done. Take care and if you would like to correspond more, my email address is [email protected]. Anne.

Hi all, thanks for all the info on treatments and what to expect down the road. I (we) are leaning towards surgery (scheduled for Sept. 16th) here in Boston. What a great source of information and support the forum has been to both of us at this time of confusion.

Take care, Dave