The results are in...

Went back to the surgeon today.

He took my stitches out which was another less than enjoyable procedure. He put another bandage back on over the wound which I have to wear until Monday. Finally on Monday morning I can take the bandages off, leave the wound open to the air all day and finally have a proper wash on Monday night. I can't wait!

After working on the wound and the stitches we sat down to speak. He had received the results of the biopsy on what they had removed from within me. It was the, now classic, case of good news - bad news - good news, whatever.

The most important aspect is that they are 99% sure that they found and removed the primary tumour. This would be the rather large (3 cm x 2 cm) tumour in my left tonsil. The entire tonsil was destroyed by the tumour. However it looks as though the bit they removed had healthy tissue around it which shows that they removed the entire cancerous area.

He gave me the results so I asked him questions about what I read, from what I could understand, and learned a bit more about just how deeply they had probed in to me. The deepest tumour they had removed was one, about 2 cm in size, that they had extracted from behind my jugular. In the area that they re-opened and explored wider they removed an additional ELEVEN tumours ranging in size from 0.5 to 1.5 cm. Two of those were cancerous. They also worked their way around the back of my neck and removed another FIVE tumours, ranging in size from 0.2 to 2 cm, two of which were cancerous. It was obviously a good thing that they were so thorough.

The basic summary is that they removed over 17 tumours and that 5 of them were cancerous.

The good news again is that he believes they have removed all of the tumours which will need to be removed via surgery. I just have to get healthy again and prepare myself for x-ray therapy (radiation therapy).

He gave me the introduction letter to start my consultation and preparation at the Clinique Hartmann in Neuilly-sur-Seine which is close to his office and relatively easy for me to get to. I will be calling them on Monday. He said that it would be a good 2 weeks before I started radiation therapy as the wound has to be completely healed before they start blasting x-rays through it.

He still does not fully understand where the cancer came from. I haven't smoked for over 15 years. I have one night of smoking per year (Super Bowl Sunday) and maybe a cigarette or two in the year when I drink a bit. I am not a heavy drinker. Although by American standards I am probably a wine drunkard by French standards I am quite a weak drinker. Being male and over 40 apparently are risk aspects but nothing much I can do about that. I'll never know if my dad would have gotten cancer as he died when both of us were so young. A lot of his family died of cancer. But then again they were all, and without exception, very heavy smokers as well.

I asked about the risk for my kids and he said it was absolutely minimal. I then asked if we were hopeful to truly remove the cancer to a stage where it would not come back. He said we wouldn't be bothering to put you, and us, through all of these invasive procedures if that wasn't precisely our goal. A bit obvious but good to hear all the same.