Speed Bump

As I mentioned yesterday, I had my second appointment with the ENT today (if you don't know what ENT stands for by now, that's just tough). This morning at 9:00 I strolled into the hospital hoping for good news. If you remember, I had mentioned that I was expecting the doctor to say that I needed surgery and that the surgery would indeed be scheduled during today's visit. For being so new to the Fraternal Order of Cancer Patients, I am really starting to pick this stuff up quickly. I was right on both counts. His prognosis is that I need surgery and he even picked a day for it. June 28. I wish it wasn't so close to the 4th of July, but what does one do when his own cells are revolting against him? I'll just have to make it my own Independence Day. Independence from cancer??? Now THAT sounds like a great idea. I'm just glad that I'm living with the technology of 2005 instead of 1776--although it would have been fun to have a hand in the American Revolution...but I digress. (By the way, if you haven't read David McCullough's new book 1776, you really should because it is excellent.)

So all is going as expected until the ENT doctor tells me that the surgery will put me out of commission for 1-2 weeks! What was all this "couple of days" talk earlier? I knew that had been too good to be true. It gets better. If any of the 40 lymph nodes that are removed show up to be cancerous, then I most likely get to undergo radiation therapy, too! Talk about a double-whammy.

Let's go through this quickly:

1. I have a sore on my tongue and am told it's a 10% chance of being SCCA (Squamous Cell Carcinoma for all you newbies to my site)

2. I expect surgery to end this madness, but no, I have perineural invasion (don't ask). I learn that the chance of me having perineural invasion was negligible, but for the sake of argument, let's say it's 1%, which is probably generous.

3. I expect to have radiation to eliminate this monstrosity.

4. I am told, no, we are not going to do radiation. We will do surgery instead.

5. Now I'm hearing that the possibility of surgery AND radiation. Can I have fries with that?

As I've said many times before, quite possibly the hardest part of all of this is NOT KNOWING. It's a good lesson, however, in just letting go and not being insistent upon controlling every aspect of your environment.

One of the things that at some point I will want to know, although I don't know now, is the odds of me developing cancer in my lymph nodes. I'm sure it was small. As it stands right now, I'm the 1-in-1,000 guy without the lymph node issue factored in. Maybe I should play the lottery.

However, I do need to emphasize that they are not certain that I have cancerous lymph nodes. The PET scan showed up as inconclusive to one doctor and a weak positive to another. Better safe than sorry so we are going in. Hopefully this will just be a speed bump in the road to recovery. There is still hope that I can avoid the radiation, it may just take some divine intervention.

I realize that this entry is sort of all over the map, but I make no apologies because I think it is a fair indicator of the rollercoaster ride this is.

Before closing, I must point out that the Oregon State Beavers are in the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska for the first time in over 50 years. This is a big deal, folks. Their first game is against Tulane on Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern. They are clearly facing an uphill battle, but they have already beaten the odds to get where they are. And somebody's gotta win, why not the Beavers?