Not What We Were Hoping To Hear

We made the trip to Nashville today. We haven't been home long and I am pretty tired, but I wanted to give a little update here tonight before I go to bed. Because so many are praying for me I just wanted to let you know the short version of what we found out and I will give more details tomorrow. The news we received was not what we were hoping for. This Doctor really recommends I have radiation treatments. Because of the perineural invasion, plain English translation: because the cancer was tracking the nerves in my face, there is a chance, even though they appeared to get clean margins in the operating room, that the cancer cells could have "skipped" farther up the nerves and were not excised during surgery. There is no way to detect this, no scans or tests they could perform to be sure either way. Without the treatments this type of cancer could come back or metastasize to my lymph nodes. But it is unknown if there are any cancer cells remaining. It seems to be one of those uncertainties in this cancer journey.