Wes Szwedo

On November 29th I received results from a biopsy of my tongue and it came back positive that I have Squamous cell carcinoma or oral cancer. I have met with a team of Doctors at Cancer Treatment Centers of America and the plan of care is to dissect a silver dollar size area of my tongue and they will make a long incision down the right side of my neck to remove approximately 20 lymph nodes. The surgery will take about 4 hours to do. The lymph nodes will then be sent out to the Pathology lab and the results will be back within a week. The stage of cancer will be determined by how many lymph nodes are affected or if the cancer is outside of the lymph nodes or the margins. If the cancer is contained within one lymph node, no radiation or chemo will likely be needed. If there are 2+ affected lymph nodes or it is outside the margins, I will have radiation 5 days a week for at least 7 weeks. They have told me the first few weeks during radiation are not too bad, but as time goes on it will get worse making the last few weeks the most painful. After surgery, I will have a feeding tube for 1-2 days. If my nutrition levels decrease, it may be necessary to have a feeding tube which I am hoping to avoid.