I'm happy to help. Yes, I think that staying with an oral surgeon to do this is the right idea, outside of the potential to have insurance pay for it if you see an ENT. Not many otolaryngologists use laser for anything, so what you would have done there is a scalpel removal of the tissue. The outcome would still be the same, but one difference is you would have the tissue for additional pathology work if needed. The laser is just going to vaporize whatever it burns off. And the skill level of the ENT doing a very thin cut to remove this might be more difficult, so it might be a deeper removal of tissue with a suture or two. But insurance would pay, so if that becomes the issue the outcome is the same at either kind of doctor. The only drawback to the laser that I can think of would be that with no removed sample that path lab won't be able to tell you that they got it all with clean margins, but Im sure that they will burn an area at least 5-10 mm beyond what is visible to ensure complete elimination. Either way this is a very simple laser procedure, and I don't believe it will be very expensive of take much time.

Having things heal by secondary intent can be uncomfortable for some people depending on where it is, how much food and other things come in contact with the area. The good news is in most cases we are only talking about a week of healing probably. I had a large section of my neck, when I had my mandible replaced with my fibula in a free flap procedure, not be covered with new soft tissues. It was a pretty deep area that had to heal in on its own in over a month and a half. That is the worst kind of "healing by secondary intent" when its not just superficial, but you are waiting for 3/8 of an inch or more of soft tissue to granulate back into the area.

As to random kindness I agree. I think that as a society we have drifted off into a place where even random civility, let alone kindness can be rare. But the people that help others as volunteers at large inside OCF, and posters to OCF support questions, are a special crowd. My only trouble is finding enough volunteers to help us do some of the things that are necessary to serve the population that we do. Again it takes someone special to want to volunteer; and we have several areas where we haven't been able to find help for quite awhile. Please report back on how all this goes. I'll be curious to hear.