I’m too tired right now to rant, so I won’t tell you about the hours Paul and I spent sitting in one waiting room or another at MD Anderson today. One of us will give you all the details some other time. I promise.

Once we finally got in to see Dr. Weber, what he had to say was interesting… in a “may you live in interesting times” sort of way. We did get the confirmation that we’d hoped for regarding Dr. Futran’s experience and competence at the surgical approach to this type of cancer. However, we also got the new information that MD Anderson’s preferred treatment of squamous cell carcinoma in this location is usually not surgery. They prefer to treat it with a combination of radiation and chemotherapy, which means less trauma and less potential loss of function (swallowing and speech). The question now is whether Paul’s head and neck, which had some radiation during the first cancer war, could tolerate enough radiation to make that approach work. Paul has 4 more doctor’s appointments in the next 2 days – radiation oncology and medical dentistry tomorrow, medical oncology and another appointment to touch base with the surgeon on Thursday. On Thursday afternoon the whole team of docs will meet “to talk about Paul behind his back” as Dr. Weber put it, and then they’ll make a treatment recommendation.

Needless to say, this puts the whole plan of action that we’d been working on into question. Great.