Back from the ENT

Actually two updates.

The first one was that Randall ran over to the Family Practice Clinic this morning. We don't really qualify for much there, but then they aren't set up for what I have, so that's not surprising. What we did do is qualify for another pharmacy discount card (I use that term for lack of another one) and also a low co-pay sort of thing for a doctor in their system. I will call for an appointment, but that will be weeks away and more of a GP sort of thing. Not really related to what's going on with my tongue.

OK. Now for the big update.

Saw Dr. Lehr, the ENT, this afternoon. Very nice man. Very good at listening and very willing to work with low income patients and people with weirdass pain medicine issues. He took a look at my records, poked around in my mouth and said that he agreed with Dr. Mundy (the Fentress Cancer Center doctor I saw last week) that surgery was the best initial option. He also agreed with Dr. Mundy that the lymph nodes were probably not cancerous, but that he'd recommend removing some and testing them. He's calling this early stage 2 cancer, and that's a whole lot better than it could be. Any discussion on radiation or chemo would have to wait until after the surgery (let's all hope radiation isn't needed because they'd have to pull all my teeth!).

So, what will happen next is their office will set up the surgery and call us (probably tomorrow or Wednesday). What they're looking at is it should be scheduled for a Monday, probably before Christmas and I'll stay one night at the hospital.

As a sideshow, of course, there's the ear/throat problems that I've had for a long time that has gotten worse during the last sixth months. That is still up in the air. It might be related to the cancer and it might not (my personal thinking is that it isn't, but that's me). However, Dr. Lehr has prescribed antibiotics for that since the problems did respond back in October to antibiotics. I suspect we'll tackle this issue later since it's not the critical one.

So that's where we are. I'll post again when I know more about the surgery date and such. Overall, though, this is VERY good news and we're all relieved at what we've found out.