It was a Tuesday morning, December 5th. The phone rang, and the doctor on the other line very casually said, “We got the pathology report back. It’s squamous cell carcinoma cancer.”
Rewind to mid-October. I remember watching the Dodgers in the post season and having this small, annoying sore underneath my tongue. It was more of a nuisance than it was painful. I passed it off as a canker sore, although I hadn’t had one of those since I was a teenager. “It will go away”, I kept telling myself. It didn’t. It kept growing, and it became painful, to the point I couldn’t eat certain foods and I had trouble swallowing. It had been a whole month now, and the lesion had grown to the size of a dime. I couldn’t find anything on the internet that remotely looked like what I had going on in my mouth, so I remained confident that this was nothing, and it would go away. I gargled salt water, hydrogen peroxide, apple cider vinegar, convinced I could home remedy this thing.
***
I decided to make the call to an oral surgeon to take a look. I booked an appointment, and within a couple days, I was sitting in the surgeon’s office.
“We’re going to cut it out and send it off to the lab”
I knew this was the most probable outcome, but still, I asked the Doctor, “Just a piece?”
“The whole thing. Doesn’t make sense to just cut a small piece out and leave anything remaining.”
“Ok, so when are we going to do this?”
“Right now”
Now my mind was racing, thinking of the pain that would be involved in doing this procedure. I was 100% accurate in my assessment. The Doctor swabbed a topical anesthetic and let that set in for a bit. Then came the big guns.
“This is going to pinch,” he said as he jammed the syringe with anesthetic deep into my tongue, underneath the lesion.
I death-gripped the arms of the chair, waiting for this torture to end. “JUST BREATHE!” the doctor’s assistant tried to comfort me. The procedure took about 10 minutes once I was all numbed up. Doc sent the lesion off to a pathologist, and I would have the result in about a week – a whole different kind of torture.
“Squamous cell carcinoma. We need to set you up with a head and neck cancer specialist.” I was in a fog. Cancer?!?! Seriously??? Doc said I was a little young – his oral cancer patients are typically in their late 50’s – especially for a guy who doesn’t smoke and is only a casual drinker, at most.
***
The Oral surgeon, Dr. Beehner, was amazing during this process. He contacted an Oral Cancer Specialist that he trusted, Dr. Simms, and told him the story. Dr. Simms office notified him they were booked a month out. “No,” Dr. Beehner said, “We need to get him in there now.” They made it happen for me. A week later, I was laying on the MRI table.
The news was both good and bad. Dr. Simms didn’t see anything to indicate the cancer had spread to any lymph nodes. That’s not to say it’s not there, but he didn’t want to open up my neck for no good reason. For now, that will need to be monitored – every 3-6 months for the foreseeable future.
The bad news, was that the initial pathology report indicated that the cancerous cells on the sample were a bit too close to the margins to be deemed safe. I would have to go through a second tongue procedure, to make sure they get it all.
As I’m sitting here writing this, I’m in excruciating pain from the 2nd procedure that was done today. This time required surgery, since they had to keep me out for an extended period of time while they run the sample to pathology and test it, before determining whether or not more would have to be cut out.
***
Upon waking up in the recovery room, the first words out of my mouth were, “Did they get it all?”
“They did.” I sobbed uncontrollably – maybe it was the anesthesia wearing off, maybe it was the flood of emotion that I had been keeping in.
“Let it out,” the nurse was hugging me as I cried like a baby.
It’s been a surreal couple months. When I first heard “carcinoma”, I really had no reaction. It didn’t sink in. I just knew I was relieved to have it out of my body. A day or two later, though, I went to a darker place, checking out WebMD and seeing all the horror stories. I was convinced that my tongue would be removed, along with my voice box. I was never going to talk or eat food through my mouth/throat. The mind plays cruel tricks with you if you let it. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself or asking “Why me?”. Far better men than I have suffered much worse, so why NOT me. I almost feel like a pussy. Hell, this was easy. My Mom had gone through some brutal chemo and radiation after being diagnosed with breast cancer 3 years ago.
***
This isn’t over by any means. This could pop up again in a couple months or a couple years. What this did, however, was give me a big punch in the nuts. I need to do better. I need to live better. I need to be a better person, a better husband, a better father. I’ve spent too many years in a chair, working. Ten, 12, 16 hours some days. A slave to the chair since late 2001.
I immediately cut out energy drinks. I had been drinking 1-2 a day for years. Years! I was drinking sodas on top of that. Coke was my poison. For the time being, I’ve decided to forego all alcohol and I’m weaning myself off the Coke. From this day forward, my only caffeine comes from coffee.
In The FGI Podcast, we focus on sports, dating, relationships, sex, beer, etc. It’s more than that, though. I think it’s about living a better life, being the best YOU you can be. It’s about laughing at everything along the way, because there is humor in the most morbid and mundane.
I’m definitely not a New Year’s resolution guy. If it’s worth doing, you’ll do it now and not assign a date to it. I’m also really in no position be giving anyone advice. I just wanted to share this experience because it HAS changed me. At 43 years old, I’ve simply decided to just BE better.
