After 18 yrs. I have beeb diagnosed with cancer again. My fear is what do we do now. I recieved more than the allowable dosage of radiation before. So now what do we do. I realize chemo is and option, but just what does that mean. I have been trying to do some research on this and am not feeling very uplifted by the information I have found. Can you help me out.

Hello goingagain

Sorry to hear about your having to go through all the anxiety again. You may find these past posts about chemotherapy helpful. Some of the patient stories on the MCF website also describe the chemotherapy experience. Let me know if there is anything specific you wish to know.

Best wishes
Vinod

Hi,
This is definitely squamos cell carcinoma. I have been diagnosed by my original doctor and have been sent on to a board of specialist here in Augusta, GA. So far the complication has been that surgery will be too invasive, since I have already had surgery before and radiation therapy. The suggestion has been made that I undergo a new procedure of twice daily radiation treatments in combination with a once daily chemotherapy treatment for four weeks. One week on and one week off. Have you heard of this treatment and do you know what the success rate is? Do you know of any other options that may be available to me?

Thanks for any help you may be able to give me.

Hello goingagain

This article on Hyperfractionated Irradiation with or without Concurrent Chemotherapy for Locally Advanced Head and Neck Cancer describes the use of twice daily radiation therapy in combination with chemotherapy. Here is a link to a review of this paper which provides more detail and might be more helpful. Hope this helps.

Best wishes
Vinod

As it turns out the Tumor Board I met with has decided I should have another partial glossectomy, since the cancer is not in the base of the tongue. In addition to this they will remove lymph nodes from both sides. This seems to be a pretty hard surgery to recover from, however they feel this is the best treatment plan. They say surgery is the best option with tongue cancer. Since I have already had a radiation therapy with an amount of 6000. It has been 18 years, but the surrounding tissue could not take enough of a dosage to kill the cancer, even with chemo. Therefore we will do surgery and later come back with a lower dosage of radiation in combination with chemotherapy. In your opinion is this the best option I have?

thanks

Also I forgot to ask about taste buds, I noticed after the last time I had this done, my taste in food altered quite a bit. Now that they are removing the front part of my tongue how will that effect taste.