Thursday Jan 22, 2009 -- I had been agonizing over whether to have surgery first and get as much of the cancer out NOW or follow the recommendation of the Tumor Board and UCSF and have chemoradiation first with surgery as a backup if the chemoradiation doesn’t clean out all of the cancer.

I had been scheduled for surgery on Jan 28 to remove the left tonsil and about 10 lymph nodes on the left side of my neck. I was reading research papers like crazy on the web, but none of them were helping me make the decision. I had three phone conversations with Dr. Eisele. For once, more data wasn’t helping! So I left a message for Dr. Fong and asked him to call me. That evening we agreed to turn back the Jan 28 operating room reservation. We discussed the pros and cons for a while. I was starting to worry that the cancer was rapidly advancing while I was dithering so Dr. Fong agreed to have a look at my tumors the following Tuesday.

Dental update… I visited my endodontist to check if the root canal done last May was looking OK. If it doesn’t look OK it may need to be extracted. Good news! The May 2008 root canal looks good. Bad News! The old root canal next to it is failing. When my immune system dips during the chemo/rad treatment that tooth will probably become severely infected. I probably have 4-6 more root canals. I ask him to x-ray the others. I worry that we may be looking at multiple root canal redos / extractions. Good news! The others look fine. I only need to have 1 root canal redone.