I finally came up with a tagline! Isn’t that enough for one day? Unfortunately, no. I also have to visit the dentist (incidentally, where all of this began), and continue awaiting that phone call re: my thyroid ultrasound. Like most people, I don’t enjoy the dentist. It’s mostly the noises their tools make, although I do relish the soft rock/easy listening music it’s so often paired with.
In related news, a friend recently asked how my MASC was diagnosed, and I figured I should share that, here. This past summer, my dentist fitted me for a bite guard because I grind my teeth at night, and something about the way I moved my tongue after inserting the guard caused me to feel a small, firm lump on its underside. It didn’t hurt or bother me in any way–I only noticed it when making certain movements with my tongue that I don’t ordinarily make (sticking it way out, for example. Are you pleased, dear reader, to find that, as a thirty-nine-year-old, I don’t regularly stick my tongue out at people? You should be). So, I told my husband and asked if he thought it was anything to be concerned about. He said probably not, but I should check back with the dentist, anyway.
Fast forward a month or two from that, and I finally drag myself into the dentist’s office, unscheduled, to ask if he could take a quick look at my tongue. He graciously agreed to, poked and prodded a bit, then sent me away with a referral to an oral surgeon to have it biopsied. It didn’t look like other oral cancers he had seen, he assured me, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
It wasn’t until a few months after that visit that I actually had the biopsy (work and holidays threw a wrench in things), which came back as positive for mammary analogue secretory carcinoma. The doctor who shared this news with me was extraordinarily gifted at doing so; she pulled her wheelie stool close to my chair, leaned forward, looked me directly in the eyes, and confessed to being as pained and shocked by it as I was. I remain grateful for (and a little in awe of) her forthrightness and compassion. She then referred me to my surgical oncologist, and here we are, a little over a month out from my operation.
I am nervous about the next steps; I meet with my radiation team for the first time this week (and will report back here), but I’m trying not to let my mind get ahead of me. “Suffer once,” my therapist wisely advised. Today, I feel good and am thankful.
Well, then 