I was on the third round of doctors trying to get an answer as to why my left ear ached all the time, and the newest ENT had just about given up after doing endoscope, antibiotics and declaring that it was "stress - in my head" when I insisted on getting my head scanned. The CAT scan was on a Friday and that Monday I had three urgent emails and two phone messages to call him but when I did, he wss not available. Finally at lunchtime I got through and he blurted out on the phone: You have CANCER and need to come in today to see his colleague who had lots of experience with cancer. She was great and had no doubt it was cancer but that I needed the biopsy before our CCC would start treatment. She was also very tactful and positive in telling my wife that it was Stage IV and had spread to two lymph nodes but that it was "treatable" while I was still unconscious from the biopsy