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@ijones98280

Hi. My diagnosis for tonsil cancer is as follows: P16 positive cT1N1M0 at this point.

I just finished chemoradiation last week and feel pretty rough. These days I have a lot of anxiety about what the docs are telling me vs. what I read on google about survival. My medical oncologist says that my cancer is HPV related, but I don’t think that the tumor tested positive for hpv, so I am a little confused.

I would appreciate any input from anyone who is going or has gone through this…

Ian

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Replies to "Hi. My diagnosis for tonsil cancer is as follows: P16 positive cT1N1M0 at this point. I..."

Hi @ijones98280 Welcome to the head and neck cancer group. HPV related or 16P as it is known seems to respond well to treatment with little repeatability. It can sure feel like the end of the world sometimes, especially right after radiation treatments where we typically continue downhill for a couple of weeks before we finally see daylight. And even at that, it takes months/years to get up to a new normal level.
Dr. Google is simply the last place to go unless you know the web sites you are looking at are reputable. Most of the actual medical sites such as Johns-Hopkins, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, etc will give you the best information.
Read some of the posts from this group tracing people back a year or two to see how they handled recovery. If you have questions, start a discussion or glom on to someone else's post and you should get responses from many of us who check these pages regularly. We are or were actual patients so our experience can be helpful.
Good luck. Courage.

Does anyone understand what exactly P16 + means?
I am struggling to understand my diagnosis.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts…