I'm not sure that the General Board is the right place to post this message but I will for lack of any better idea.

I want to stress something for folks who may not yet have started treatment that I was not aware of and am now finding out about the hard way. My cancer was BOT right side and necessitated 33 rounds of radiation. I am now in the midst of a delimma as I am needing to have tooth #32 (lower right wisdom tooth) extracted. I am learning that it would have been much better to have done this prior to my treatment for obvious reasons. Perhaps I would have been aware of such had I known about and had been familiar with this forum at that time. The tooth that I am about to lose acts as the rear anchor (as I call it) for a four-tooth bridge, all of which I am now going to lose. The real "kicker" is that I went through all sorts of procedures on this same tooth in preparation for this bridge only weeks prior to my cancer Dx. That's neither here nor there as there was no way to know at the time that I was about to be declared a cancer patient. It also seems that there is no way to really determine if the radiation caused the problem I now have with this tooth or not. It may even be that the tooth would not have held up regardless. The point is that most likely this tooth, along with the 5K bridge work, should have been removed prior to my treatment.

I am not trying to assess blame in my situation but only want to make everyone aware who might be getting ready to begin treatment. I think it would be most important that you have a dental eval ahead of time even if your planned treatment team does not mention it. Over the months I have monitored the postings here it seems as though many people do have such an evaluation. It was never mentioned to me prior to treatment even though there is such an Oral facility at the same facility where I received all of my care and Tx. Perhaps the duty was on me regarding this issue but such never occurred to me as having never experienced anything regarding cancer personally or within my family. It may now be much more complicated and involved for me now to deal with this issue when it would have been much simpler beforehand.

Bill D.