We saw Jerry's surgeon today. She is not the type to pull any punches or make anything seem better than it is. And, Good News so far! Nothing showed up on the cat scan. She said the 'spot' looked no different to her than it did the week before last. She said she was pretty optimistic that it was not cancer and that instead it was a spot that was dead tissue that was not healing. The 'spot' is both where the primary tumor was removed and where they blasted it with extra radiation during IMRT. She said she has had 4 other recent patients with the same problem and when she did a biopsy, they were cancer-free and had a non-healing spot instead. She will do a surgical biopsy on Jerry at Moffit on Friday morning at 10am. If all is good, then she will order hyperbaric oxygen treatment for the 'spot'. This basically amounts to him breathing oxygen in a special oxygen chamber for X minutes for a number of sessions and causes the non-healing skin to heal. She says she has seen excellent results from it. She said her gut feeling was that it was not cancer. Thank God! We are so relieved! (and the surgeon was actually in a good mood and very nice today.)

Then, we managed to get an appointment over with his acupuncturist, and she treated Jerry for anxiety and stomach distress. Within an hour, his voice had improved significantly, his stomach felt 75% better, and he was feeling much calmer. I'm sure some of this was due to the good news with the surgeon, but regardless, the results were impressive today. Turns out she had been treating him for anxiety and digestive problems since the week before radiation began and had stopped doing this two weeks ago (the week before he lost his appetite and became so anxious.) I guess I had always thought she had mainly been treating him for pain.