Well we saw her ENT today. He is at UCLA. He used to have an office in Santa Monica and now its at UCLA so its quite an episode to go there. My mom, sister and I had to laugh because we were there right about lunch time and they were setting up for a conference in the waiting room so they kept making us move all over the place and at one point they wanted us to stand out in the hall where we couldn't even hear if they were calling her name. When we finally got called into the room her ENT came in and started feeling around asking if it hurt here and there etc...then we asked about the scan and he said "did you already do it?" and so he went to check it out. Then he took us over to the computer and showed us her scan and described everything in detail. It was really interesting. He said that if he hadn't been her doctor for the past 6 years and he hadn't performed her surgery that from the scan it may appear to be a recurrant tumor but he does not think it is....(can I say I've never felt so relieved) My mom gave him a huge hug!

He showed us that where her swelling on her jaw is there is a muscle and the muscle is swollen therefore giving her the hard lump that is on the side of her face. I told him that he should let his residents know about the muscle. Had we known that it could have been the muscle and not a tumor we probably wouldn't have gotten so petrified. I made him promise that in the future he will not send her to residents when it is something so serious. He said that since the muscle is swollen it is causing her to have difficulty opening her mouth. He thought it was strange that she was having trismus over 2 years from completion of radiation but after going over her history of infections just about every 2 months he said it was very possible. Since my mom started her antibiotics a bit too far into the infection it is taking a bit longer to heal.
He finally confirmed that the bone is dead so he said that she might not want to hear it but that she could possibly need surgery. I would be a similar surgery to Minnie's (removing the dead jaw bone and replacing it with a bone from her leg) but in all honesty I know the short term would be difficult and he said he would not mention it if she wasn't so young but in the long term it will improve her quality of life. Although she has said in the past "no more surgery" she actually agreed to have it if necessary.

So here is what he is going to do. He is going to wait until next Wednesday to make sure the swelling has gone completely down and then he will determine if he feels the surgery is necessary. He said since she continues to get infections in the bone after a period of time the bone may eventually shatter and her jaw could break. He said there is no reason to biopsy because there is no area to biopsy. So we left there totally relieved.

Thank you for all your help and prayers. I will post more when I have the details next week.

Hugs,
Dani