Dear Tower,

Like Dan and Gary, my husband's local ENT missed some big things. I truly think he meant well, but he simply had not seen enough cases of oral cancer to know all he should. We wasted valuable months with this one doctor. NO matter what Scott's symptoms, he managed to reassure us that everything was fine. I bet he saw Scott two dozen times that summer. At one point Scott's jaw/ear area was so swollen that he looked like he had mumps on one side. The ENT scratched his head and said it was merely something called "carotid dynia" (inflammation of the carotid artery) and sent us home. I called another doctor we were familiar with and got her out of church on a Sunday and explained our fears! She took me seriously and ordered a CT. She then told us to pick up the scans and take them to Scott's ENT to discuss the results (she would not tell us what she thought). We took those scan results to the ENT and he said, "Well, dammit, I don't know how to read these things; you'll just have to go to a different specialist. I've done all I can do." It was days later at the specialist's office that we learned there was a HUGE recurrence--a tumor the size of a small orange. I guess the local ENT was too ashamed to tell us how very wrong he had been.

Christine