No cancer, lots of possible causes and options for solutions, but they all seem trivial in this forum. Certainly a huge relief, but after a long drive home, some thoughts. First, how incredibly humbling to sit in the waiting room on the head and neck center at MDACC. On my way out, the overwhelming thought was "God knew I was not as strong as these people must be, he knew I could not handle this".
The most valuable piece of advice I got from this forum was "do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go to a CCC". They got me in within a week and put an end to three plus years of needless worrying in two hours. Thousands of dollars, hours or my life and hours of worrying.
The doctors were not rushed, answered all my questions and, while they were not in any way judgemental or condemning, they were clearly not surprised at the lack of knowledge and inconsistency from the dentist, two oral surgeons and two ENT's I have seen over the past 3+ years. This is pure conjecture on my part, but I got this sick feeling while visiting about my frustrations that with the relatively small number of deaths, the fact that your average ENT or oral surgeon could go through their entire career and might miss one potential oral cancer if they ignore all but the most obvious cases, they might consider this an acceptable error rate. And besides, if they did, "that person shouldn't have smoked, drank, etc." Sorry, I have this basic problem with medical care in that if a GP tells every single patient to "go home and take two aspirin and call me in two weeks if you don't improve", they are by default assumed to be correct 95% of the time because the human body will cure itself in at least 95% of all ailments.
Sorry, I digress...
They said that MRI's probably would not pick up early oral SCC. Yes on nodes. Another interesting point on initial detection, all tongue cancers originate on the epithelium (surface) and tools like Velscope simply aid in detecting the very early subtle changes in the surfaces of the oral cavity, changes that they see enough of to pick up with simple visualization. These tools do not detect anything occuring under the surface.
I am very appreciate of the responses and welcoming by most of you and to those offended by my presence, I apologize for not meeting your standards for participation. I would think that any additional exposure and awareness for this cause would be worth the seeming drivel.
I feel this need to do something, but still need to figure out what the best use of my efforts would be. I would welcome any suggestions. Obviously, after sitting in the waiting room today, I feel sorry for the poor teenager I catch coming out of the convenience store tomorrow morning. It might be my highest and best use in life....harassing young tobacco users at 7-11. Having quit myself once a week for 20 years, at least I won't just be preaching.
