Ignoring for a moment the half dozen or so appointments that led to my diagnosis, I’m going to describe everything I’ve learned and experienced since my first oncology appointment.
I had to wait several weeks for my first appointment with the Emory oncology team at the Winship Cancer Center (in midtown Atlanta). That appointment was scheduled for four hours: it was a busy information gathering and sharing experience, wherein a team of doctors made a decision about how treatment was to proceed. In the lead up to that appointment, some doctors had told me that I might expect surgery and radiation as my treatment. Instead, due to the area where the current tumors are growing on my lymph nodes, surgery isn’t an ideal option. At the first Winship appointment I learned that my treatment would entail 7 weeks of radiation and chemotherapy.
To spare some of the more granular details, there are two main kinds of throat cancer, and mine is the less aggressive of the two. Given that, the doctors thing that I have a strong (90% was the number they used) chance of a complete cure (that was the word that they used) of this condition following treatment. Hearing that was a great relief, but it also made me acutely aware of how many other people receive worse news about their diagnosis.
I will need to have two new scans (CT and PET) before the team schedules me for treatment to begin. Once that starts, I will be receiving radiation therapy (which takes less than an hour) Monday-Friday, and on one of those days I will also be receiving chemotherapy with a medicine called Cisplatin (and, I guess, a bunch of other medicines designed to make that medicine easier to process). I’ve been told that the first week or two of treatment does not result in too many side effects, but that around week three uncomfortable things start happening, and they continue until about 6 weeks after treatment concludes. I’m focusing on these numbers: 7 weeks of treatment, side effects for 6 weeks beyond that, so, a total of 13 weeks of commitment to treatment and its consequences. Then, hopefully, I’ll be done.
