Hi there, Thank you for the responses. I really appreciate that. I did make an appointment with the ENT today. It is this Friday. He is one of the same ENTs that I saw before. I live in a very small town in Central Louisiana and the doctor choices are very limited. This ENT is not the one who was mean, but a rather nice guy who is supposed to be a good doctor. I don't know if he specializes in oral cancer, but he has many patients who have it, so I assume he deals with that a lot. He did the scope down my nose ( I think it was 4 or 5- maybe 6 months ago) but it did not have the little recording camera on the end of it. Does that matter? Is there a specific type of test that I should request? Will that scope test definitively show oral/throat cancer- or not?
As for the steroids I was given- it was NOT anabolic steroids. I want to clear that up. The IV steroids were administered in the hospital and it was a corticosteroid to relieve the inflammation on my spinal cord. I have been taking oral prednisone since that time to help keep the inflammation down because my spinal cord looks like swiss cheese on an MRI and I have terrible pain and spasms etc. They are also used to cause my immune system to calm down and stop attacking itself. It does cause the immune system to not work as well. In fact, they almost gave me chemo instead. So my concern is that my weakened immune system could not fight off the effects of the smoking that I did. But as I said, I did not smoke lots. My kids never even knew. I hid it from them and everyone except my hubby. Hubby dips and I am working on him trying to get him to quit.
I awoke this morning with the sore throat- on the right side- and when I push on my neck I can feel pulling in the right ear. I would like to know if any of you had burning, raw throat pain- more on one side- as a symptom? At first I really thought it was from the extra mucus smokers always have and that there was a post nasal drip causing my throat to burn. But as I said, it hasn't gone away. It has been 3 weeks. And the hoarseness has been 2 or 3 years, I am not even sure how long.
The other possibility is the thyroid. I have a nodule on the right side that this same ENT has been following. I have had ultrasounds every 6 months on it. I cannot really tell but the docs tell me that it is enlarged. I am wondering if maybe I have thyroid issues/cancer or something.
Anyway, thank you for your time. I know ya'll get a lot of hypochondriacs on this site and it is frustrating. I assure you that I am not one of those. I am already sick and I know how annoying it is when people think they may have a disease that you already struggle with every single day. I have an ms site that I use and we have so many people coming on there asking us questions about ms and they usually do not have it. So please, please forgive me if I sound like that. I would not be here at all if I didn't have a real problem.
Thank you. I admire you guys.
God be with you all,
Ellen