Shortly after 8:30 pm mountain time last evening, my surgeon, Dr. David Williams called to let me know what was happening with the pathology on the samples taken during the surgery on the 26th of November. Now, think about this. At 8:30 pm a surgeon calls a patient. This call is made at the end of what was probably a very busy day. In fact, knowing what we do about David, this call was probably made at the end of another surgery… Norman Cousins once said: “Nothing is more essential in the treatment of serious disease than the liberation of the patient from panic and forboding.” This guy, this David Williams, he gets it.

Now, the substance of the call last night was this:
Of the 41 lymph nodes removed from the right side of my neck during the neck dissection only one was contaminated. And that one was the secondary tumour that sent me to the doctors in the first place. It was, when removed, 4 cm x 4 cm in size. And, of the samplings taken from the left side of the neck, none of them was contaminated. Tissue removed from the area surrounding the primary tumour, no additional cancerous material was found. In short, it looks like THEY GOT IT ALL!

We will, of course, still submit to the radiation and chemo therapy treatments that will be designed based on this new information.

There is a lot of relief around here. I, personally, have never doubted that the team would get it… this may be a silly attitude to take, but it just never occurred to me that they wouldn’t.