Hello again,
I went to MD Anderson for a biopsy of the two suspicious nodes on the left side of the neck and they were positive for mucoepidermoid carcinoma. I have since seen the chemo oncologist there and will see the radiologist and the surgeon next week. The plan, most probably, will be to do a dissection of the left neck (hopefully selective) and to get rid of the nodes. There probably will not be any radiation since I have had so much in early summer of 2014. The chemo doctor did not recommend chemo since chemo has already been done and the only way to cure this is to cut it out.
In addition, I have suffered a pathologic fracture of the right mandible and will have to get that taken care of after the nodes are removed. My fear is that surgery is extensive and I wonder how I will be after that. I have progressed pretty well on my swallowing, with the help of a wonderful speech therapist. However, I am still having to use the Peg tube for almost all my nutrition.
I sometimes have days where I have trouble getting out of bed-like today- because of the anxiety and depression that accompanies this. It is particularly difficult because of the fact that my cancer was misdiagnosed and the treatment should have been different and I might have had less long term complications like difficulty swallowing and some changes in my speech. "What if" serves absolutely no purpose, however. What really is difficult is that sometimes I feel like this is too much of a struggle physically and mentally and it is hard to keep going. I am scared of dieing and sometimes I feel scared of living.
I do feel this forum does allow me to vent with people in similar situations. I am not sure how to put my specifics on the bottom of my posts, but if you see my first post, you can see most of my specifics. I will try to put my specifics on the bottom of my posts so that they will show up for everyone on each one of my posts.
Thanks for your help.