Yet another doctor

I went and saw Dr. Hagege today. He's an ENT (Eyes - Nose and Throat) specialist.

He put my nose and my throat to sleep with some sort of spritz stuff. He then put a camera up my nostrils and down my throat and looked around.

He found a tumour on my left tonsil. He didn't find much else. The good news is that he didn't find anything spreading down to my lungs or moving upwards.

The bad news is the rest...

On Wednesday morning (14/09) I go to the Clinique Turin for a complete scan of my throat area. They inject with some special ink and then put me in this big moving tunnel and scan the entire area. This is going to allow them find all of the cancer cells and is the most important exam in that it is going to let us know where we stand, or don't, for the future by showing how widespread the cancer is.

On Thursday morning they will knock me out and perform a complete internal endoscopy. Based on the results of that and the scanner, and while I'm still out they may very well perform a tonsillectomy which is not a big deal. If however the results of the scanner and endoscopy are not good then, again while I'm still out, they will re-open my wound of last week's operation and scrape out whatever they have found. They would, in that case, open a bit higher and lower than actually.

Depending on what type of procedure they end up having to do I will be in hospital for 2 days (endoscopy), 3 days (tonsillectomy) or 5 days (re-opening surgical wound).

More disturbing, if that's possible, was the news that it is extremely likely that I will have to go through x-ray therapy. The doctor considered this good news in that I will most likely not have to go through chemotherapy but rather only x-ray therapy.

I will have external x-ray therapy. Using the scanner results as a sort of shooting target diagram they point an x-ray pistol at my neck and shoot high doses of x-rays in the cancerous areas to kill all of the cancer cells. Unfortunately I will have to go through this every day (Monday through Friday) for EIGHT WEEKS. I am not looking forward to any of this. Apparently it's going to be very difficult for me to work during this period. However that's for an employee who works normal hours. I am going to truly try and work 2 to 3 hours in the evenings when I have energy. I have a lot of projects on at the moment, many of which I am already behind on, and I am not going to allow this to slow me down that much. I also am going to need to be able to do some billable work during this time. Although the advantage of not being an employee is that I can work when I can and when I want one of the disadvantages is I have not such thing as paid sick leave. If I don't work I don't get paid. It's very simple. I therefore have to do some work during this time to keep alive both mentally and financially...

As you can imagine I am going through all of the standard emotions (depressed, sad, angry, scared, sad, scared, sad and did I mention scared?).

Now that I have actual results and know what I have (throat cancer) I am going to be spending the rest of the afternoon writing to everyone to let them know and to get my life in order (resigning as President of the Parents' Association at Jess' school, warning my clients of my lack of availability and probably lack of voice and all of the medical paperwork). I'm not even thinking of the 2-month x-ray therapy treatment yet as I don't know when that is going to start and can't organise around it yet...

After my examination with the doctor I went to W.H. Smith's to buy some books as I don't know how long I'll be in the hospital for.

I'm just living day-by-day now and preparing myself for Wednesday...