So far...

It's 3:30 am on Thursday, February 19, 2009. I'm awake at this hour to take my overnight dosage of pain medicine, and it seemed a good a time as any to learn how to set up a blog and to do my first entry--which will be a re-cap of events up to now. Setting up this blog was very easy and simple, and I'm very surprised to be posting to it already--so here goes.

In August of 2008 I started a series of appointments for some long-overdue dental work. I was experiencing some pain in my lower left jaw, which was then attributable to an impacted wisdom tooth growing nearly horizontally into another tooth in that area. Both teeth were extracted, but the pain persisted--and got a lot worse. The first diagnosis was TMD from the many dental sessions with my mouth extended wide open. That diagnosis was discounted fairly soon, and I was referred to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist as the pain kept getting worse and worse.

After a negative CT scan, a MRI showed a mass of tissue at the left base of my tongue and pressing against the tri-facial nerve in that area--thus the constant, acute pain. The tissue mass was biopsied and shown positive for the squamous carcinoma at a Stage 3 or 4a (localized advanced, but not metasticized).

The course of treatment will be 6 weeks of chemotherapy combined with radiation, followed by 4-6 weeks of recovery. This blog starts four days before the treatment begins, with several appointments to prepare us (my wife Terry and I), for what's ahead.

The first question, of course, was How does a non-smoker/non-tobacco user get this kind of cancer? We were surprised to learn that it's caused by the Human Papillanoma Virus (HPV). Researchers think that the virus 'parks' in that area and can then trigger carcinoma growth at any time from 5 to 35 years after the infection occurs. It is not a lifestyle-related disease.

I will use the next posting to describe my thoughts, feelings, and outlook as this process begins. I think it's important for readers to understand the attitude that we are taking into this with us. That actually hints at the first part of our attitude--there is no "I" in cancer. We are looking at this as a shared experience, and both of us are equally important in helping to reach our goal of me having a cancer-free body with a long and healthy life ahead. Lots more on that theme as this goes along, I suspect.