It’s been five days since I was woken from general anesthesia with the news that my sore throat of 6+ months is not just a sore throat.
The words have sunk in. Hypopharyngeal keratinizing squamous cell carcinoma, well-differentiated. A ~3cm mass of mutated cells that have convinced my immune system to ignore them — nothing to see here folks!
As it turns out, at some point the medical oncologist was supposed to have reached out to us in these last five, excruciating days. That would have been nice. The system has failed.
Continue reading “The Great Journey begins”