Terry,

The pathology office will have your samples on file still. They probably made glass slides and will review those - possibly have another patholgist read them for a second opinion. When I had my surgery - they removed 22 lymph nodes (doc said he got them all - I am pretty small in frame) and the pathologists read a slide on every single one of them. In all, there were 40 pathology slides they read - pieces of my tongue tumor, salivary glands and lymph nodes - one or two nodes to a slide (mine were pretty small). They take a paper thin (actually much thinner than that even) slice and mount it on the slide and read under a microscope. They can mount liquid / fluid specimens in another fashion - but still on slides.

I had mine re-read at another facility for a couple of weird things that came up on my pathology report- but I went and picked them up myself and since I also worked in a lab at that time - was able to look at mine under the scope and see exactly what the pathologists saw - although I'm not trained in pathology /cytology so I couldn't tell healthy cells from cancerous cells.

But - the whole point to telling you is that - I think there are guidelines that they HAVE to keep malignant samples for a certain time frame - and certainly that frame hasn't passed for you. The samples might be in the form of slides though - as pieces of tissue don't always maintain the same aspects over time if not mounted on slides. You should most definitely be able to get a second reading - now whether or not the insurance will pay for that second reading or not is another whole issue.

Good luck and I hope for your sake that they were really cancer free - even though you had the procedures done (you can't unfortunately change that fact)- you wouldn't have to worry about recurrence or further treatment.