2009 and a New Year Begins
After a break from Christmas Eve to 05 January 2009 where H, M, D and I went to Melbourne to watch the Boxing Day Test (we will prefer to forget Australia’s performance on Day 3), I returned to work with great expectations for the upcoming year. I was planning on recruiting new staff to my work team, had grand plans for restructuring the team and looking forward to getting some of the hang-over problems of 2008 sorted. Outside work I was looking forward to the upcoming hockey season as I am on the executive of the Hockey Club, as well as studing (Law), being Vice President (External) for the Law Society at the Uni and mentoring graduates from the University.
All this changed on 08 January 2009 when the doctor rang with the test results from the FNA. The results showed cancerous tissue in the sample and the doctor advised he had pre-empted the phone call by booking me into see an Ear Nose and Throat specialist for 09 January 2009.
I meet with the ENT late on the Friday afternoon (I was the last patient) and he did an endoscopy, also referred to as a gastroscopy, which is a procedure which enables the doctor to see inside your oesophagus, stomach and duodenum, using a thin flexible tube, to detect any evidence of inflammation, ulcer or cancer. The doctor also stuck his fingers in my mouth and felt around and discovered a hard mass towards the back of my throat under my tongue (he also nearly discovered what I had eaten for lunch).
The ENT specialist then gave me the news I was sort of expecting but not really ready to hear. I had a Squamous Cell Carcinoma and I would need to undergo a number of scans and tests over the next week to ascertain exactly where the primary cancer site was.
I suppose it would be a good time to explain that the lump in my neck was a secondary cancer and this is like a "cannon ball" shot from the primary site. Given that cancer cells usually head for the closest lymph node it is assumed that the primary site, in my case is in the head and / or neck.
The tests I needed to undertake were a CT scan, an OPG, a PET scan and some exploratory surgery to take some biopsies.