Anita

It can not hurt to contact Clark's doctors to get his tumor tested for HPV. Be persistent. I had to work my way thru the medical team since my ENT surgeon and RO explained they would not have changed past treatment nor even future treatment based on my HPV status so it wasn't "medically necessary". My MO however finally agreed based on my psychological plea (but it would help me sleep better if I knew). Lucky for me, my CCC had changed its protocol and was now doing HPV tests routinely and I would be one more data point so I didn't get charged anything. (Catch 22: most insurance won't pay for individual tests that are not certified "medically necessary" although they pay for mandatory hospital procedures assuming they are necessary)
I did not mean to confuse the issue by mentioning blood tests, that was just an example of a highly standarized test, uniformly administered and evaluated ( at least for cholesterol, WBC, creatine, etc all the things they tested me for weekly during TX).
But I'm glad I did since it gave Brian the opportunity to explain that HPV needs to have the tumor tested and there is no relevant blood test to see if the cancer was HPV.
So call the doctors up and ask to have the tumor tested for HPV with at least PCR or the better one Brian posted: in situ hybridization.
Charm