Hi all

I've been following this message board now for a couple of weeks, and found it of great comfort.

I have been suffering with a sore throat now for over two months, and have extensive ulceration over my right tonsil and soft palate behind my uvula. I've been to my doctors a couple of times, who refered me on to ENT after my second visit. I was surprised and slightly shocked when ENT passed my referral immediately on to a Head and Neck Surgeon, who I saw a couple of weeks ago. He looked in my throat and said I should have an urgent MRI and biospy. Unfortunately, urgent means in a couple of weeks and I'm waiting to having the tests later this week.

I've been through a range of emotions over the last couple of weeks - from being uable to sleep, unable to work and certain I must have a cancer, to getting to a stage where life must simply go on.

I am young (31), I 'think' I can see places in my throat where the ulceration is healing, and thirdly the ulceration has now spread to a completely separate place on the left tonsils. Whilst none of things can rule out this being something simister, I am using these to rationalise my fear. I have suffered with long unexplained sore throats before (possibly GERD) and this could just be a particularly bad bout of it.

I wanted to write a little bit about the psychological damage that trying to self diagnose a sore throat can do. When I was most worried, I tried to research my sore throat on the internet but I found this to compound fear and anxiety (as others seem to on this forum). I write of my experiences below, and would plead others not to extensively research their sore throat -- if you are worried go see the doc!!!

1. I started looking at pictures of sore throats. This is a bad idea. There is a wide range of poor and mislabelled images on the internet. I guarantee, you WILL find a picture of a sore throat that looks like your own labelled as oral cancer.

2. You'll read about the symptoms of throat cancer, which are wideranging and largely non-specific. You will have some of the symptoms (if not most on the list). Most of the symptoms are obviously linked though --if you have a sore throat its likely it will be painful swallowing! This will do nothing to help you. Oral cancer seems to be able to present in a plethora of ways,

3. You will come across a large number of articles about HPV, and oral cancer being an STD. Whilst there seems some published scientific articles between oral HPV, oral sex, oral cancers etc none of this is at all helpful to your situation. This makes you think that your sore throat (which from looking at the pictures is certainly cancer(see 1)) is entirely your fault. You feel guilt and shame, even if there is no rational reason to do so. Of a similar vain to above, you'll read that sore throats are more coomon in immunocompromised people such as those with HIV. Just don't even go down this line.

4. You will read blog forums of people freaking out about their sore throats. Symptoms and scenarios will sound similar. The fact that these posts are normally never followed up byt the original poster tells you its very likely their throat got better.

I don't want to sound patronising, but urge anyone not to extensively search the web. If you're looking for reassurance, then you will not find it on the internet. I've learnt this at my own expense, and was not able to sleep for the best part of a week because of it.

So, back to my situation. I'm still playing a waiting game. I have 5 more days until the biopsy, and then 'about 2 weeks' to wait for any results (surely urgent should mean a bit quicker than this?). I guess there is a chance this is going to turn out to be something sinister, but for the moment life must go on and I remain positive.

Thanks to anyone who took the time to read my post. I hope you are in good health and positive frame of mind too.

J