Hello Wendy:
Welcome to the family; hopefully your involvement with us will be short lived, as in you will find out it's not cancer.

Whether it is, or isn't, there are a couple of things you can learn from those of us who were diagnosed with oral cancer.

First and foremost, stop worrying so much. I know this whole thing scares you to death, but you have to get control of that fear. If you can't get appointments on a timely basis to your ENT, then consider a different ENT.

Looking in your mouth 20 times a day just keeps this thing in the forefront of your existence, it keeps you thinking about it all the time. Stop that. You have lots of other things going on in your life too, many of them pleasant and peaceful. Spend some a lot of time concentrating on them. Read a good book, watch a good movie, go visit your friends (and don't talk about your mouth), pursue your hobbies ... you do have a hobby don't you.

If it is cancer, there's nothing you can do about that except to start treatment. Worrying about it won't help anything, it will just make the rest of your life miserable. And cancer loves miserable; miserable increases the stress level which further weakens the body making it even harder to beat.

You seem to be the worrying type, that is already a strike against you. You would do well to look up one of our forum members named Bart and start reading what he writes. He has had cancer 4 or 5 different times in his life, yet has found the key to maintaining a positive attitude about this whole journey. That alone has probably saved his life. Getting to know him and following his advice made my journey through diagnosis and treatment much easier to handle.

Good luck with your 2nd surgery, let us know how it turns out.

Tony