Hi Jules,

I’m wondering if you were perhaps responding to me. Stories like yours do concern me because it sounds like your symptoms were pretty non-specific and didn’t raise much alarm.

The ENT who ordered my CT said to me at my last visit “I don’t see any reason to remove your tonsils.” I sort of tuned her out because she wasn’t addressing my bothersome symptoms but rather suspected I was asking for a tonsillectomy. Having recently had a surgery I wasn’t planning on (gallbladder removal), an elective surgery without due cause definitely isn’t my prerogative.

In addition to your account, I’ve read of others, possibly not here, where cancer was an incidental finding during tonsillectomy. I’ve also read of those who had tonsillectomies due to enlarged (symmetrical and asymmetrical) or because of pain and they were benign. My pain isn’t constant nor is it awful... I’ve had strep and tonsillitis and THAT pain is constant and much worse. This is more like zaps of pain, the occasional painful swallow and some pain occasionally when swallowing food or liquid. It’s also coupled with neck ache. And intermittent ear pain.

I feel like at this point my CT was just a waste. If it truly can’t detect a fair number of these cancers, why do my ENTs seem so confident that we can say “no cancer” based on it?