Thanks Nelie.
I got back LATE last night (1:30 AM) from Stanford. (Had to wait there 3 hours to see the Dr, after driving 5 through horrible traffic) (Whew! Had to vent, sorry!
Anyway, the 2nd surgeon there (not mine since he's on a 3 month + sabatical(sp?)...), said that everything looks and sounds "normal", what he would expect after the surgery.
He was very intrigued by the visits to other CCC's I've had and flipped on the issues of surgery as a 1st line.
He basically lied to us saying that during tumor board he told my family and me that he would recommend Rad/chemo first instead of surgery!
Anyway, I know everyone's sick of hearing about this, so I'll drop it. Truth is, the surgery turned out better than I thought anyway, I don't look like the monster from the deep and the side-effects so far are "manageable"...Like everyone say's the surgery is a cake walk next to chemo/radiation :-P
The swelling is down considerably on the Left side, (maybe 20% above the presurgery size), and the incisions look incredible. Very clean, very nicely healing, and I'm overall happy to have "gotten it out".
The nerve "tingles" didn't alarm the Dr. He seemed disinterested in this side effect so I guess I'm on my own to deal with it. At least, like you said, it isn't a bad sign.
We reviewed my path results, and nothing new there either.
I asked him about his take on
Erbitux, and he nearly laughed, stating that it is a joke more or less.
I asked him about eating right, exercising, or taking any vitamins, minerals or nutritional suppliments, visualization, meditation or group therapy, and he dismissed it all saying it is just a bunch of hocus pocus (sp?). So, that gives me a baseline into his belief system. He is obviously wrong about the adjunctive therapies, since more than a couple of them have proven to help, if with nothing else, at least side effects of treatment.
He thought that it was crazy for me to travel to MDAnderson or Sloan, stating that "any" of the top 50 in the country will give me the exact levels of treatment, care and outcome. He said that Stanford would be best.
I asked him why different institutions have such wildly different survival ratings, and he said that they aren't different "just one patient can skew the numbers, and it's not significant..." (I said, "Unless you're that 'one patient'...")
All in all, it was worth the 9 hours of travel just to have him say that the tonsil bed looks normal, and he doesn't see anything that would indicate the other surgeon missed anything or that it's already recurred. (I know that was irrational on my part, but hey, I've got cancer, so I'm entitled to be a little irrational :0 )
So, now's it's back to making my decision on treatment.
I'm still scheduled for the dental work at UCSF this week, and then I'll healup and head to Houston or NY.
How are you doing today with the breast cancer, I haven't seen much online about it. Do they think it's somehow related to the SCC? Or maybe the rads you received from the treatment?
How are you feeling just 6 or 7 weeks since chemo?
