It’s April Fool’s Day, but I’m not ready for any jokes this morning. Spent some of the past 24 hours googling all sorts of stuff relating to Throat cancer – and the most it taught me is to ignore 95% of what’s online!
I’m on time for my 11.00am appointment with the ENT doctor. He and his nurse apologise for being in full NHS protective equipment – complete with visors. They assure me it’s not because of me personally. The doctor has a very personable manner as he takes notes.
‘Now this isn’t as bad as it looks’ he says – holding a long thin flexible tube with a light on it. Oh really, says I who has a pain threshold of zero. And really it didn’t hurt as he fed the instrument up my nostril. Just needed to contain the feeling of sneezing!
The procedure is delightfully named Nasendoscopy and it really is quite painless. Actually it’s pretty cool to see up the inside of one’s nostril and all around the throat. Everything is seen on a full-colour monitor. All looked fine to me!
The doctor wasn’t so sure though. ‘There’s something on your tonsil bed that I don’t like the look of. You’ll need a CT scan and a Biopsy asap’, he says. We look at each other – I don’t want to say it and nor does he. But I need to know and ask the question that no one ever wants to ask.
Do I have cancer?
The doctor’s very professional – he won’t commit 100%, but he’s knowledgable enough – and we’re both grown up, for him to say that it’s likely, but of course lets be sure with some results.
I’m given an appointment for the following week for both the biopsy and CT scan. I decide that I discuss the possibility with Samros, my wife – but no one else until we’re sure.
Again there’s no hospital delay for me, even with the ever growing virus problem, so we wait a week without really discussing this in depth.
But one just gets that feeling…