Well, I'm still up in the air. I had the neck MRI and chest CT yesterday and my ENT called right after (he must have been in the hospital--if I recall correctly, Wed. is his surgery day) to tell me that he was leaving the results of the chest CT up to my medical oncologist to look at (because apparently the PET had shown activity in nodes in the chest near my armpits but bilaterally which would not be consistent with a breast cancer recurrence OR oral cancer recurrence--he didn't say what showed up on the chest CT--arghh. I just HAD an appointment with my MO and now I have to call his office and ask about those results. I'm tired of this part time job called "patient".)

BUT, I'm not out of the woods with the ENT either because the PET showed some "activity in the upper neck" and the MRI showed a place on hte base of my tongue which looks "abnormal". The he said, as if he was looking at it as we were speaking "but I see this was on your last MRI as well" (I assumed he meant the one I had a year and 1/2 ago, when I was only three months out of treatment, but now I'm wodering if he could see it on the mistakenly-given, head and brain MRI I had a month ago.) Anyway, he said "that suggests it could just be something anatomical that's not normal".

But he wanted me to come in anyway, as soon as possible for a really thorough exam with a scope. I last ahd one of those 3 months ago and I remember at the time he said the base of my tongue looked good but he was actually looking more to see if I had another stricture, so maybe he could have missed something? So I'm going in Monday.

Anyway, from his tone I kind of got the impression he doesn't think this is likely to be a recurrence but just wants to double-check with the scope. I hope that isn't just me in denial. Well, maybe it's better if I am. I do know there is some possibility of bad news so I made the appt. for a time my husband could be with me. But I'm hopeful this will turn out to be a false alarm.

Nelie