Cheek pain after radiation treatment for base of tongue cancer

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brigboo67
brigboo67 Member Posts: 24
in Head and Neck Cancer #1
My mom is three months out from the end of radiation and chemo. She had stage 4A base of tongue cancer that had spread to lymph nodes on both sides of the neck. It was HPV positive. Her petscan in August showed a complete response to therapy and no residual tumors which was great!!! In the past couple weeks she has been having pain in both sides of her cheeks by her cheek bones. She is worried the cancer is back. She asked her oncologist about it and he said it was treatment related. Has anyone else had this pain in the cheeks after treatment?

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  • Hondo
    Hondo Member Posts: 6,636 Member
    #2
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    Hi brigboo

    Yes sometimes swelling can happing after treatment stops and makes things sore, or there could be some nerve damage. If you are worry about it have her ENT check her, another way it to check and see if you can feel any lumps in any of the lymph noise in her neck. If not I would not worry too much about it.

    Hondo
  • longtermsurvivor
    longtermsurvivor Member Posts: 1,842 Member
    #3
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    ditto...
    to what Hondo said. If it is on both sides, it likely is related to radiation. There are a lot of salivary glands in the area, and partial/complete blockage of the ducts is common enough with radiation too. Lots of reasons to hurt after radiation. Most of them not cancer. It certainly needs mentioned, maybe more than once if it is bothersome enough, to the treating physician.

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