August,

I commend you on your decision not to sue your original dentist, but I urge you to try to help that dentist to increase his/her awareness of the importance of early detection. I recently had an article published aimed at educating my profession and to date it has been in one local dental journal and will soon be in our state journal that will be received by 6,000 dentists. I would be happy to send it to you to get to that dentist if you send me your email address. Mine is [email protected].

Sorry, but I don't have any experience with pterygoid or zygomatic implants personally, just maxillary and madibular ones. I have seen slides of cases with the zygomatic ones and it seems that this would be a great stabilizing factor.

Regarding your question about your prosthodontist not mentioning the zygomatic implants, you have to realize that there are many levels of expertise, even within the specialties. I have to assume the he/she knows about these implants, but perhaps has never used them. You are doing a good job being your own advocate in this process and it is apparent that you have done a great deal of research on the subject. If your prosthodontist does their own implants and you want to use him/her for the obturator, then perhaps they can have the implants done by someone else. If the confidence is gone completely, then it might be best to start looking for someone else.

As far as dental insurance is concerned, there are more and more insurance plans starting to cover implants, but there many that don't. It's great that you would still be able to do it, even if not covered.

As far as my situation is concerned, I did not have radiation or chemo. One of the handful of posters in that situation. I really can't comment about the need in your situation as it is not similar to mine, at all. A second opinion might help to put your mind at ease.

I did have speech therapy for several weeks after the surgery. I was back to normal rather quickly and unfortunately, even retained my "Brooklyn Accent". I did discover my lesion myself, but to be honest, neither my oral surgeon who did the biopsy nor myself, thought it was cancer. I was floored by the biopsy report. I had not smoked in 41 years when I developed my ssc. My surgeon and I don't consider that to be a factor in any way. There is no cancer in my family. Like Leslie, I can't agree with your surgeon either.

I hope this has been helpful and look forward to getting your email address. Please keep me posted as things progress and if you have other questions, I hope I can help.

Jerry