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Anyone had neck dissection surgery? What are your tips?

Posted by kecm @kecm, Sep 14, 2022

Neck malignant lymph node cancer recurrence
I have a recurrence of lymph node cancer in my neck and am trying to determine if I want to risk complications from the surgery. Has anyone had this neck dissection surgery? What went well, and what did not go well? Would you recommend doing it, with a flap proposed, or not? Thank you.

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Mentor
Sue, Volunteer Mentor | @sepdvm | Oct 10, 2022
In reply to @kecm "How did you feel when you came out of anesthesia? How long for recovery?!!! Thank you." + (show)
@kecm

How did you feel when you came out of anesthesia? How long for recovery?!!! Thank you.

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The neck dissection was not the hardest part of my surgery, so really the other issues obscured that part. Swallowing was a little hard but more due to the facial paralysis effects on my tongue than the neck dissection. I was eating soft food 3 days later, only delayed by my nausea from pain meds. I did a lot of treatment to the incision with scar meds afterward, like Mederma, and did some stretching exercises suggested. The dry mouth issue is the only ongoing one, and there are plenty of treatments for that to help. I am using Biotene xylitol tablets currently and that gets me through most nights.

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kecm | @kecm | Oct 10, 2022

This is very helpful - !!! Did you have a flap performed with your surgery?

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1 reply
kecm | @kecm | Oct 17, 2022
In reply to @rlp63 "I am sorry to hear of your diagnosis. I will pray for your decisions and successful..." + (show)
@rlp63

I am sorry to hear of your diagnosis. I will pray for your decisions and successful treatment. I had tonsil cancer that had moved into 2 lymph nodes back in Dec of 2019. They talked about doing surgery to remove but because of the fact that it was a tonsil plus 2 lymph nodes I would still have to have radiation. Because the surgery would not prevent the radiation my doctor advised to skip the surgery and get started with the radiation. My surgeon felt good about the possible surgery though because he could move my lymph node around by hand. He said that because he could move it back and forth by hand it meant the cancer had not sunk roots down into my neck (if that makes sense and those might not have been his exact words) which would allow for a clean removal. I don't know your situation and hope that you have a good surgeon. I would ask if you are going to still have to have radiation and if so what advantage does having both surgery and radiation give you. My situation was the surgery would push the radiation back about 4 weeks for wound healing and then I would still have to have nearly the same amount of radiation. Making the surgery not beneficial. If the surgery would have prevented radiation I would have been all over that. Good luck and I hope this helps you with questions you may want to ask your doctor/surgeon. Prayers for you.

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I initially had this throat cancer in 2020 and had the full radiaiton treatments and chemo. Now that it has come back, I cannot do radiation again, plus it will now complicate the surgery. First I must have a lung biopsy, as something is going on in my lungs. We hope it is simply inflammation.

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larson1540 | @larson1540 | Oct 17, 2022
In reply to @kecm "I have decided to have the neck dissection surgery on October 27. It is my only..." + (show)
@kecm

I have decided to have the neck dissection surgery on October 27. It is my only chance for survival. I had 7 weeks of radiation and chemo for this in 2020, which makes the surgery more difficult due to the scar tissue throughout my neck. I am anxious about the surgery and complications but have decided to stay positive and go for it. Thank you for your comments.

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I hope you are doing well, I had exactly the same treatment as you.. only many years before... year 2000. for me the surgery was not bad, it was the effects of radiation,,, after 22 years, I still have extreme difficulty swallowing food due to very little saliva. I have learned to live with it .. Need to take many supplements to make up for what nutrients I cannot ingest orally ... I did have three feeding tubes during this time and now I can drink what I used to put in the feeding tubes. X-rays shows I have a shrunken stomach so my intake is very small amounts several times a day. I truly hope you are doing better than I since your surgery was 20 years after mine. take care

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Mentor
Sue, Volunteer Mentor | @sepdvm | Oct 19, 2022
In reply to @kecm "This is very helpful - !!! Did you have a flap performed with your surgery?" + (show)
@kecm

This is very helpful - !!! Did you have a flap performed with your surgery?

Jump to this post

No, there was no flap. I can't help you about that.

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dreaminasecond | @dreaminasecond | Oct 30, 2022

My mother has a neck bisection? In 1989 with MD Anderson in Houston and she’s 83 . As someone earlier said MD Anderson.

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piedpiper | @piedpiper | Nov 26, 2022

I had a neck dissection for removal of a squamous cell cancer of the parotid this year. Now undergoing proton beam therapy to the area. I realize that proton beam therapy is relatively new, but does anyone have experience regarding the long-term consequences of proton beam therapy? Are they different than the long term effects of X-ray or photon beam therapy?

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