Oscar Sierra II

Well, I saw my ENT after speaking with my RO, and it seems that the two of them have a rather vocal disagreement going on.  The RO seems to think that the ENT missed the node that was hot on the October scan.  The ENT maintains that he did get the right node, after all, pathology came back with evidence of active disease.  I'm not sure who to believe or side with, both are pretty adamant in their positions. 

For what it is worth, my ENT has referred me to a specialist in head and neck surgery, as he is not comfortable dealing with this node that is supposed to be close to the thyroid cartilage.

I saw the new ENT, and she will be doing a second dissection in early April (my wife is not happy waiting that long) and will be using the same scar and possibly extending it beyond what it is at present.  She also let me know that it will be at least one night in the hospital.  She found it very surprising that I was an out patient for the last procedure.  To be honest so was I, but with two admissions early in the battle, I was not in the mood to be in the body and fender shop again.  I did some research on the new doc, great marks on all the 'rate my doctor' type sites.

She also said that this is likely a different node than the last one and that is a little more than disturbing.  I wonder what steps we can take to treat it if there is actually active issues.  Induction chemo did damage to my kidneys, so I doubt they'll go down that road and rads can't be repeated.  Let's hope that this is just a 'missed' node instead of new.

Despite what feels like the sword of Damoclies hanging over my head, I keep smiling, keep working on recovery, golf season starts soon and I am looking forward to that long walk spoiled by a little white ball.  There was no golf at all last year, very disappointing.