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Letter from John Butler
Thu 15 Feb 1996 Four and a half weeks ago I realized I had not exactly a sore throat but a "strange sore throat," as I wrote on my calendar. I went immediately to my new doctor, who looked with a flashlight at my throat as I said "Ah" a couple of times, and he said "It's fine." A couple of days later I thought "Well, he's wrong; _some_thing's not right there," so the next day I called my throat specialist's office to make an appointment for the day after -- he comes out to the boondocks once a week, on Thursdays -- and was told "someone will call you tomorrow." They didn't, so I later made an appointment for the following Thursday, on Jan 25. My throat man has a wonderful machine that lets him look way down your throat, without putting anything into your mouth and making you gag, and after a brief inspection he said I had a growth on the back wall of my throat, "But I think it's all right -- nothing to worry about." So I didn't worry. Twelve days later, Feb 5, I went to his clinic to have it removed (under a general anesthetic). When I woke up he said "Everything went fine." Ha! A week later, this last Monday, at his office he said, "Surprisingly, the biopsy came back positive," meaning cancer. He made an appointment for me to see a specialist ("He's the best in Rhode Island. In fact, he has not only a national reputation but an international one. Universities all over the place are always trying to hire him") tomorrow for my first radiation treatment. I asked, "Is that the sort of treatment that leaves you feeling nauseous?" I had heard, over many year, of people's being knocked for a loop for days by certain treatments. "No, that's chemotherapy. This is just radiation, and they can pinpoint the area exactly." "Will I be getting radiation treatments, say, once a week for a couple of months, or more?" "I have no idea. I know noting at all about that." Amazing. This morning I decided I wanted my throat man to take one more look, so made an appointment for a five- minute exchange. He was surprised to see me, looked down his scope, and said "It looks exactly the same." "Really? Is it healing all right?" "Well, there really isn't much of any healing." "Why not? Didn't you remove that lump?" "Oh no! I just took enough for a biopsy." "Oh! When you called it 'an operation', I assumed you meant removal." "Oh, no, you can't remove that by surgery. That would expose the ********** (a word I'd never heard or read), and that would be the end of you. It has to be shrunk by radiation." (My throat man is rather retarded when it comes to what might be called Human Relations.) "Oh, OK." e also said "As soon as I touched it, I knew what it was. (I didn't say, but you said 'Everything went fine'.) Cancerous tissue is very grainy. It was also larger than I first thought." How large? He didn't say, but a sheet I'm to take to my radiation many says "1.0 cm by 0.9 cm by 0.5 cm," roughly .39 inches, by .35 inches, by .197 of an inch. That's not so bad. It's roughly a third of an inch by a third of an inch by a quarter of an inch. So it'll be four and a half weeks between my noticing something and my first radiation treatment. That sounds as if it's one of those "We got it early" cases, but the fact is I have no idea how long it's been growing. As soon as it got large enough to touch a moving part of the front wall, I felt it, but that could have taken a year or two. I'll try to remember to ask, tomorrow, and if I fail at that, I'll call on the phone. I suppose that even if the radiation expert is pretty sure he knows the answer he'll be evasive ("There's no way to tell") so that I won't be able to quote him later in court as, on my deathbed, I try to collect millions from his insurance company. Of course I _know_ there's no way to tell, but a specialist can probably make a guess that would be fairly accurate 95% of the time. I'll keep you posted on my progress. As ever, JB *** Sat 17 Feb 96 Good news. Yesterday at the specialist's I learned that although the lump is probably a year or two old, it is still considered an "early stage" of cancer, and it is very unlikely that it has spread. Cancer in this area almost always spreads first to a lymph node, an that doesn't seem to have happened. I was with the specialist and his assistant (a young surgeon) for nearly two hours and Flo was present all of that time. (I wanted her to hear all that was said.) The only other thing I learned is that the dimensions I list above are for the biopsy sample, not for the lump, which it turns out is about two centimeters (three quarters of an inch) long and one wide. Yesterday's visit was not for radiation, after all, but only for inspection and planning. Tuesday I'll be told when the radiation treatments are to start. Although my throat doctor said the lump could not be removed by surgery, yesterday's doctors said it could be, but they prefer to attack it first by radiation. If that fails, "we'll consider surgery." Yesterday left me feeling optimistic. Both doctors seemed optimistic. And I should add that there has been no pain. I should also add that I don't plan to do any worrying. I learned quite a few years ago that 1) worrying does no good, and 2) somehow I am able to prevent myself from doing it.
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