OK - I Think We Got To The Overwhelming Part Today

Major data overload. Spent the day with a radiation oncologist and the lead medical oncologist. First time I've met either of them but they have been consulting on my case all along. Both seem good and I was comfortable with the discussion. Neither contradicted one another nor the head and neck guy I have been seeing. All have been talking pretty much real time to one another as well. Everything seems well coordinated.

Get a port put in tomorrow. Seems, as expected, there will be some major inputs and withdrawls over the next 4 months and it is just as easy to do it from a single spigot. Chemo starts Monday. Three week cycle. One week of chemo, two weeks off, repeat. PET Scan again to check progress then third round. Two weeks off after that then begin a lighter round of chemo with a radiation chaser. Six to seven weeks of that, 5 days a week. The idea is to give it a real hard systemic hit with aggressive chemo to shrink the current visible tumor and knock out any as yet undetected locations in the rest of the body. Follow up with the radiation at the specific site.

Side effects - yeah. Hair will fall out with chemo. Then the rest of the list - nausea, etc. Radiation has it's own pleasantries based on location of the tumor. Mouth sores - like a bad sun burn in the throat. Dry mouth that will to some degree be permanent. Possible loss of ability to taste food or just change in a way that nothing tastes good any more. I will really miss that if it happens. Oh yeah - super freaky mask they have to mold of my face to hold my head immobile during irradiation. Gonna be a great souvineer!

So today is the day I got to hear all that can happen but of course it varies on an individual basis. Long term survival rate is somewhere north of 50%. This is for cases in older people, smokers, more advanced stages. Significantly boosting this for me is age, general health, stage at which this has been detected (stage 3), non-smoker/drinker which makes this a highly treatable. Good chances of a positive outcome according to the doc. "Good" seems to be a highly relative term at the moment depending on which side of the fence you are viewing this from.

Cool thing happened at dentist today (dentist part of medical team). He took me through what we needed then he looked at me and asked me if I was scared. I told him that yeah, in fact, I was a little nervous about it. He said "Can we pray about this?" We did - very neat and unexpected.