Local News -- Just In!

Assume for a moment that I am currently cancer-free. That the combination of surgery, chemo, and radiation removed all detectable traces of cancer from my body.

There are two ways in which the cancer can come back again:

Local re-occurrence means that a tumor would show up in the same place from which the first one was removed.

Distant means that the cancer had metastisized and showed up somewhere else. Usually, in the case of this cancer, the lungs or liver -- as I understand it...

Anyway, my E/N/T doc today did a pretty thorough physical exam today of the site of the primary tumor -- the "Local" area. He probed the area of my neck that he had operated on, then put on surgical gloves and probed the inside and outisde of my cheek -- the location of the parotid salivary gland where all this started.

He couldn't find any new lumps or anything that caused him any concern.

And he told me: "With a cancer as aggressive as this type is reported to be, if it were going to re-occur locally (i.e., in the cheek and neck area), it probably would have done so by now. And I can't feel a thing anywhere in that area."

(The next step will be the PET/CT scan, searching for any "Remote" occurrences of the cancer. And that will happen in early- to mid- October.)

So the "Local" news is good. Not a guarantee of anything, of course, but definitely welcome news.

Don't you think?