About a year ago I noticed a sort of mushy lump on the side of my neck, right under the left ear lobe. I didn't give it much thought at first. Then, it started changing; growing, getting smaller, etc. Sometimes it was hard as a rock, other times it was soft. My doctors said it was probably a lymph node just doing it's thing. Wrong! I changed doctors.
I moved my primary care to Dr. David Shen in Long Beach, CA. He and his partner take a comforting old school approach to care. If there's a question mark, they do something about it.
Dr. Shen referred me to an otolaryngologist, Dr. Michael Kim in Los Alamitos. Dr. Kim seemed like a good fit on first impression. But, at my second visit he seemed not to know who I was and began to develop a history that we had discussed in detail on my first visit. He was quick to say that I needed to have a CT scan. The scan revealed an unidentifiable mass. I asked for a second opinion on his recommendation for surgery.
I soon found myself in the office of Dr. Keith Blackwell, Chair of the deparment of otolaryngology at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Blackwell is a world renowned surgeon, highly noted for his brilliance and forward-thinking research. Bingo!
More to follow . . .
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My new best friend, Dr. Keith Blackwell @ UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine, sent me an email a few days after he dug into my neck and ripped out an offending neoplasm of the nasty kind. The opening line was "You had a low grade mucoepidermoid carcinoma. This is a slowly growing but cancerous tumor." I'll try to keep up with myself by posting details of the ensuing saga of treatment here.
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