Monday Jan 12, 2009 -- We met the radiation treatment staff and my radiation oncologist. At this stage Dr. Fong was my reference point for my doctors; admittedly a challenging standard to reach. The meeting went well except for 2 things: listening skills and HPV-16. I had been spending most of my free time doing research on my cancer. There has been a mini-epidemic of throat cancers, especially tonsil cancers, in patients who didn’t have the classic high risk behaviors – heavy smoking or heavy drinking. It turns out that HPV-16, the same human papilloma virus that causes cancer of the cervix in women, causes tonsil and tongue cancers in some folks. While normally one wouldn’t wish they had an STD, in this case I was really hoping my cancer was caused by HPV-16 since the cure rates were significantly better for HPV-16 positive tumors than HPV-16 negative tumors.

I had requested that Kaiser run the HPV-16 test on one of my biopsy samples. I hadn’t yet heard the result but evidently it was on my updated chart. The doctor didn’t seem to be up to date on the importance of the HPV result or how to interpret the result. This wasn’t going to have any negative impact on my treatment but it wasn’t inspiring either.