dw,

I take exception to at least one thing your ENT said. Unfortunately, there are still people out there perpetrating the myth that if it's painful it's not cancer (I had an oral pathologist at a major dental school tell me that just a couple of months before I was diagnosed with cancer). There are some members on this forum who had painless lumps, while others were extremely painful, so trying to make a determination on that basis seems to me to be pointless.

Cathy