Thank you Cheryld - the Dr called around 4pm. He said:
That is a cancer, and it�s the same type I thought it was, it a Squamous cell carcinoma. There are three kinds of Squamous cell carcinoma. There�s a poorly differentiated, a moderately well and a well differentiated cancer. The poorly differentiated are much more aggressive. Your�s is kind of a middle ground, a moderately well, so it�s not the most aggressive of the three. But it�s also not the least aggressive of the three, it�s right in the middle. They do respond well to chemotherapy, radiation therapy. The way I looked at it when I did the biopsy, it was too big and too wide spread, in my opinion, to do surgery on it. I just don�t think surgery is in your best interest. We�d have to remove so much of the tongue, I don�t know if you�d even be able to eat very well afterwards. You�d might have to eat with a tube after that. Every time you ate it would make you cough.
So we�re dealing with a base of tongue cancer which is the most common type of cancer that we see. Where we need to proceed from here is we need to do a PET scan to scan you from the top of your head all the way down to your feet.
That is so we�ll know if it spread. The lump I feel in the left neck I feel fairly certain that it spread. This will tell me if that lump is something else or whether its cancer. Now when we do a PET scan it will not only show tongue cancer, it will show if you have a cancer in your intestines, in your liver or any other kind of cancer it will pick those up too. So it�s a real good scan, it�ll pick up any cancer you may have in your whole body.
We need to make sure it�s no where else and I do not think it�s anywhere else. I think it is most in the neck.
The PET scan is not only to look for cancer, you are also put in a special position and we use the way you are in the position when you do your scan to do your treatment.
In other words your scan will also be used for your treatment.
I wouldn�t recommend you leave town. So I want to make an appt for you to see oncologist as soon as possible. Should have an appt tomorrow sometime.
*** Note: I just remembered I was diagnosed as having skin cancer back in Jan 2014 and had it removed. The bleed happened in March.
