Today I had my 3 month followup with my ENT and we discussed (yet again) the idea of a coronoidectomy. Last time I had seen him I had asked about a second opinion and he had given me the name of the doc he trained with as Wash. U. Medical school in St. Louis (I live in the Northeast). I looked that doctor up and he is (at least) 63 years old which, to me, is right on the edge of too old to be doing a surgery requiring fine motor skills. I know when everything is taken into consideration, eye-hand coordination is a smaller part of being a good surgeon than it would seem(experience, decision making and judgment being at least an equally important part), but still, at some point a surgeon just gets too old to operate--for my grandfather, a pediatric cardiac/thoracic surgeon, it was younger than age 63 and even before he retired from doing surgery totally, he was reallty supervising med students who did all the cutting (and since this doc is also at a medical school I suspect that would also be true here).

I am also not really in an economic class where I can easily afford to just fly halfway across the ccountry for an opinion or for surgery. Espeically given what the last few years of cancer treatment and checkups and surgery to help my swallowing have done to my/our bank account (I have insurance but I have also ended up paying about 2 K each year of my own money). Though I can afford it if I felt I absolutely had to.

But my ENT here is saying he can do the surgery here with an oral surgeon who has (some) experience doing these operations too and whose judgments I trust. I trust my ENT too basically although I do worry he may be a little overconfident sometimes.

So I asked him to go ahead and contact the oral surgeon to see if they could coordinate this. I will have an appointment with the oral surgeon too before I have the surgery.

I am still looking for anyone here who has had this surgery or knows of a doctor at a major medical center somewhere in the midatlantic/northeast region(at least one connected with a teaching hospital) where I could get another opinion that this was a good idea.

My ENT said he thought it would help with the jaw cramps I've been having as well as the trusmus--that, in turn, would help with dental care and using the bougie. And if I can easily use the bougie everyday, that would mean I wouldn't have to keep going back for throat stretching. Less jaw cramps would help with swallowing and swallowing exercises not to mention mean I couold teach in a classroom without having to stgop and wait because my jaw is cramping so badly I can't speak. It sounds like those outcomes are worth some pain and discomfort from the surgery. But I'd be very interested to hear anyone else's experience.

Nelie