Nothing's easy

Saw the "special dentist" today. Good news there -- I get to keep all my teeth!! For those who don't know, they proactively extract marginal teeth before radiation treatment because the radiation's so hard on the gums and teeth that marginal teeth will need to be pulled later anyway but, later, the gums and jaw will be less healthy to deal with it. But, non-issue for me hopefully.

From there the day got more confusing. In the process of a few hours MD Anderson called back -- finally -- and actually scheduled me to see one of their top notch docs on Tuesday, Oct 7. My radiation doc, then, shocked me by saying they're ready to begin treatment on Monday, Oct 6.

So, I now need to weigh the tradeoff of delaying treatment for the opportunity to visit with the doc from MD Anderson. Gut tells me the MD Anderson guy is not going to be able to offer me any miracle cure or, even, any super-secret new trial they're running that they THINK will be better. I've read and read and read and it APPEARS everyone does some variation of the same treatment. But do I want to miss this opportunity just in case?

Conversely I've been chompin' at the bit to get started. In my mind I can just see the cancer cells multiplying and multiplying and I am having more and more obstruction in my throat. It's obviously getting bigger and I'm ready to start shrinking it.

We're going to lean on the 2nd opinion Oncologist tomorrow to see if he can't help us squeeze some info out of the MD Anderson folks to see if that trip would be worth our while.

Oh, and to further muddy the waters. The Radiation Doc doesn't think I qualify for the clinical trial I posted about on Tuesday. There's certain criteria you have to meet with the progression of "the disease" and I'm not there yet. I'm not sick enough. I suggested to the Doctor that we could just wait a couple of months. I got him to chuckle. But he was going to talk to the Primary Oncologist Friday to see if that's even an option. Not sure I care but we'll see.