Cancer

Well, It's been a while since I've done social media. Here's why. Back during the last week of August, I developed a sore throat and ear aches but only on the left side. So I googled, of course, and saw that that particular combination could potentially lead to meningitis. I stopped searching at that point. ON Sept. 7th, I went to my GP and told her. She immediately sent me to an ENT. I made sure to tell both doctors that the pain was only on the left side, complete with putting my hands to the laft side of my face to emphasize the point. The ENT barely glanced at my throat. But he prescribed antibiotic ear drops while telling me I didn't have an ear infection. I used the drops for a week and nothing happened. So I googled some more and discovered that the painful thing in my throat on the left was my severely enlarged tonsil. I could reach in and feel how big it was. A couple of weeks later, I went to my Moked (the Israeli equivalent of urgent care.) The doctor there, not an ENT specialist, looked in my throat but not my tonsil until I told him to specifically look there. He swabbed directly on the tonsil and tested positive for strep. So we treated for that. I went home and did more googling. And now I saw that it could be tonsilitis, or worse, lymphoma. I finished the antibiotics for the strep and of course, it didn't fix the tonsil. Finally, in early October, I went to the ER and they had an ENT on duty who looked at the tonsil with a laryngoscope. And she immediately ordered a biopsy. Knowing what that meant, I asked her if she thought it was cancer and she said yes. Well, I had the biopsy and sure enough, it's cancer but not Lymphoma. It's Squamous Cell Carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. It's in my left tonsil, the adjacent lymph gland, the base of my tongue, and the left pterygoid muscle, which opens and closes the jaw. I was in constant pain from the end of August until after my first chemo treatment at the beginning of December. Meanwhile, I was contracted to sing in concert performances of Aida with the Israel Philharmonic. Singing was excruciating but I made it all the way through. I'm really angry that it didn't occur to any of those three doctors that it might be serious. I can understand the GPs not necessarily catching but why didn't it occur to that ENT on September 7th? Back then, it might have been operable but by November, that was no longer an option. So now, I'm on chemo and start radiation in January. The prognosis is still fairly good (70 to 80% survival after 5 years, but not as good as it could have been had it all been cut out early) but I'm supposed to sing in Nabucco at the Israel Opera starting in May and at the moment, I don't have a singing voice. ON the other hand, think of how much time I'll have in chemo to write that damn pattern I've been procrastinating about! So that's why you haven't heard from me in a while.