Medical Oncologist/Radiation Oncologist/MRI

 

Two days ago, I saw the medical oncologist. He told me that the cancer that was on the parotid gland actually came from the skin cancer that was on my ear. He said before MOHS surgery, there had to be at least one cell that migrated to my parotid. The other doctors I saw, said it wasn't from my ear. However, he also told me the cancer was squamous cell cancer and that it would be ultra rare to just get squamous cell cancer on the parotid without it being skin cancer. He also said it was an aggressive cancer which I did not like the sound of. He told me they usually prescribe immunotherapy along with the radiation but in my case, because I had a double lung transplant, it wasn't an option. If i had only had a kidney transplant, they would still proceed, because I could always go on dialysis and get another kidney at a later time. The immunotherapy ramps up the immune system to recognize foreign bodies and attack. He also said that in studies, chemo therapy did not really seem to show much of a difference in terms of cancer coming back, it just makes you sicker, as it's poisonous.  It was a lot to take in. I told him I was scared and he said there was no reason not to be optimistic.

I then saw a radiation oncologist in a telehealth visit. I am going to Sloan Kettering for my care and he operates out of a different location. They wanted him to see me even though the appointment with him might have been scheduled as a mistake seeing as he's not from my center. He talked more about proton therapy, which is apparently a type of radiation. He said there isn't much of a difference in effectiveness but there are slightly less side effects than traditional radiation. He also mentioned it could be difficult to get insurance to cover it and there would be some hoops to jump through as the machine used to do the therapy costs millions of dollars and usually insurance doesn't want to pay all that money. I decided I'd rather just stick with traditional radiation as it's already been a long time that I've had this cancer and I don't want to delay treatment any further.

 I had another head and neck MRI with contrast, yesterday, as well, at Sloan.They want to check and make sure that no other tumors have grown. The radiation oncologist said the PET scan didn't really show any other tumors so he's pretty sure the MRI won't show anything new.  I took some calming medicine as I'm claustrophobic. I closed my eyes the second I was on the table. I was most scared when I first went in because you can see light and then it gets darker and darker as they put you into the machine. Thankfully the calming medicine helped and I felt I was starting to drift off into sleep a few times.

 I'm guessing I may get the results of the MRI tomorrow as I'm seeing yet another radiation oncologist, this time, from the right facility.