Finally making some progress! I got my cardiology appt. moved to this past Friday and had a "stress echo" which was entirely normal. Today I saw the ENT at Baptist downtown. I liked him very much. He went over the CT images with me and said the only involvement the mouth lesion might have with the submandibular gland is that it may be near the opening of the duct-- even I could see on the CT scan that it looked like it was pretty far away from the submandibular gland!! (Thank God I didn't agree to let the other guy remove it!) This ENT is not at all concerned about the lymph node. His plan is to go through my mouth and do an excisional biopsy of the mouth lesion and then remove the thyroid all in one surgery. Unfortunately, he will be out of town next week and so is not doing any surgeries this week (since he would not be able to follow up on them). The week after next my family has a biannual family reunion in W. VA. He says it is fine to wait and do the surgery the week after that, so we are looking at the week of 7/19.

This ENT did say he could do a FNA of the mouth lesion in his office today, but since he wouldn't be able to do anything about it even if it were positive, and after all the pain I had with the radiologist's attempts, I opted to just wait for the surgery.

By the way, Shands did call and give me an appt. for July 30! I am just going to keep that appt. in case the biopsy is positive-- then I can go see what they would recommend!

I'll keep you posted on the date when I know more!

Susan