← Return to Husband diagnosed with tonsil cancer: looking for tips and support

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@hrhwilliam

Cancer is rather negative as well. Most cancers have a root cause. They don’t happen by chance. When the cancer cells are removed by surgery this may not or likely does not remove the root cause.
Most of the time our immune system handles cancers and keeps them from developing into dangerous masses. Today we have medicines which have been vetted to destroy the virus that causes SSC HPV16+ as well as several other common cancers.
Statistically half of all doctors are below average. With that in mind I simply asked what was the thinking here with surgery only. I am trying to understand.
Oh, by the way, I see that you are new here to the Head and Neck group. Welcome. As you see, we are fighting for our lives here at times. We are trying to learn what we can from each other as most often our medical care teams have never actually experienced what we go through. MS patients often say “You don’t get it until you get it.” Same can be said for the after effects of radiation treatment to the head and neck.
I am a barking dog sometimes but my goal is to be a calm horse with what I learn. Forgive my methods.

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@hrhwilliam I hear what you are saying. I'm wrestling with this exact thing. Chemo was deemed out for me and with radiation I was told they would watch me. They did a CT which was clean and I'll do PET CT at 12 weeks. Based on pathology, everyone seems confident of this path. But I'll say it does concern me. The logic used was that at my age of 45 and based on the pathology, it would be wise to try and do observation at this time. But you don't know what you don't know so I'm putting a lot of trust in my doctors. Been reading a lot of studies on the topic and it seems like there is disagreement amongst the various areas. The surgeons seem to want to try surgery only in low stage cases but radiology wants to continue with decreased radiation on those cases. So far, radiation is proving to be the safe way to go as it pertains to recurrance. But there are solid surgery only groups as well. Ugh makes my head spin lol