Hi Christy,
It typically can take a month or more for all of the diagnostic testing to be done for a complete workup. The treatment is pretty severe so they have to be sure that the kidney's and liver and healthy before they start also. In the beginning the doctors were using the process of elimination so they gave her a course of antibiotics to see if it would respond. It obviously didn't so now she is seeing a specialist. Many of us, including myself, went through a couple of courses of antibiotics first. They don't always operate on head & neck cancers, sometimes they use radiation and chemo only. In any case they would have to determine the staging before they will define a treatment plan.

I read somewhere, just the other day, that cancer does not grow any faster than any other cells in the body - that it devides and multiplies like any other cells. Whereas as regular cells stay confined to whatever their specialty is, cancer cells can grow, uncontrolled into other areas. So it can spread from the tonsil(s) (for example) to the muscle tissues in the neck, etc.

From the date of my original Dx to the start of Tx was 2 months and that was after everything, tests, scans, biopsy, etc., was placed in high priority by my medical team. And that was after they KNEW it was cancer! I started going to doctors for the "anomoly" in my throat many months earlier. My head & neck surgeon told me that the cancer had probably been there for over 2 years before I noticed it.

The following is an extract from thi months "Placebo Gazette #16" about health care in Canada.

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