The List of Side Effects and Doctors Keeps Growing

I met with the radiation oncologist again today. He's happy with where everything is at and ready to move on with my treatments. There's still some planning visits before treatments start, and I have another new doctor. This one is a dentist who specializes in tooth decay caused by radiation treatments.

I think this is about what the doctor said today, "Oncologists used to do extractions of teeth that rotted from radiation treatments, but we don't do that any more and prefer having a dentist involved". I hadn't heard of losing teeth as a side effect of the radiation treatments, but my doc rattled that off like he had said it hundreds of times.

The list of radiation effects I'm aware of (so far) is:
1) Loss of immune system (temporary)
2) No sensation of taste (temporary with potential long-term changes in taste)
3) No saliva (temporary)
4) Potential tooth loss (permanent)
5) Sore throat from hell (temporary)
6) Difficulty swallowing (duh!)
7) Need of a feeding tube (temporary)
8) Significant weight loss (gee, you're kidding, right?)
9) Loss of hair growth on one side of my throat and part of one cheek (permanent)

Here's something else I've learned. A tonsillectomy doesn't mean you don't have tonsils. There was a lot of tonsil tissue taken from my neck. The doctor I saw today is convinced that my cancer originated in my right tonsil. That's his interpretation from the pathology reports from the stuff removed in my big surgery.

If that's true, here's my entire medical history:
1) Tonsillectomy
2) Pneumonia
3) Wisdom tooth extraction
4) Cancer originating in a tonsil

That's half of my entire medical history that involves tonsils. The danged things will grow back. Tonsils contain the type of cells identified with my cancer. All the tonsil tissue removed was dead and contained no active malignancies. This doc thinks the cancer started in the tonsil and killed the tonsil. When it killed the outer layer, it broke free in my neck and went nuts. That left a dead tonsil that couldn't even support the life of the cancer.

A tonsil isn't critical to life, and a non-working tonsil has no symptoms. The cancer had a nice little home until it killed its home. Tests for cancer in the tonsil tissue that was removed showed no cancer. This doc's theory is that the origin of the cancer was killed to the point it could no longer support even a cancerous growth, so there was no way to positively identify cancer there.

Doctor's appointments are stacking up now. I'm up to sometimes seeing multiple doctors in the same day. This is to get everybody informed as I go into the next phase of treatment.

This better be the end of it. That's one nasty list of side effects. My surgeon is convinced he got the source and all of the cancer. My oncologist is convinced there's no point in looking further for an origin, as it will never be found. My oncologist radiologist is convinced the source has been removed. The radiation treatments are a contingency in case all those guys are wrong.

That's a lot of exposure to bad things just in case 3 doctors are wrong. but they all think it's worth the risk. It's not their necks on the line here. In a way it is, but not physically. It's my neck on the line and I'm going with the contingency plan. It's brutal, but taking any easy way out here that left any risk would result in even more brutal approaches if that risk turned into something that needed to be dealt with later.

If I have to go through something like this, I'd rather do it once and do it right. I'd rather do it now instead of later. I'm already having problems healing and it's guaranteed I will be older at any time that is "later".