After much wrangling and many phone calls, we're all set to go to MD Anderson next week. We fly out from Phoenix on Monday and have appointments on Tuesday.

The tough part is that the radiation oncologist that came recommended to us is on sabatical and not taking any new patients. So we're going to someone unknown to my Phoenix oncologist.

I feel good about this decision as I want to get the best minds on my case. My beef with MD Anderson, though: they may be good at treating head and neck cancer but they are pretty lousy in public/customer relations. I don't how many phone calls we had to make just to get through to humans instead of voice mails. People were always "gone for the rest of the day" or "out of town this week." Or we got: "there is only one person who can answer that question and she's not available right now, but she'll call you back later..." Etc.

I guess that's the trade-off when you go to someplace large and well-known. It's just tough because my ENT for example bent over backwards for us. He'd push pathologists to get test results to him early so we didn't have to sweat. He'd call us from his cell phone after surgery. He'd race over to his office from the hospital on his mountain bike when we heard we were in town, etc. Call me spoiled...