Because one smiles ear-to-ear and rings the bell symbolizing the end of 35 grueling radiation and seven chemotherapy sessions aimed at knocking out a squamous cell tumor doesn't mean they've won the fight.
Just ask someone with my name who hoped otherwise until last week.
When I rang my bell at the Claude Parrish Cancer Center in Harrison on Sept. 6, I felt confident I'd endured sufficiently harsh treatment to my neck, throat, mouth and head to have won the fight over the large tumor growing in a lymph node that I affectionately call The Beast. Not so fast, Mike.
What, for Pete's sake, does it take to finally quash this bloodsucker?
As I learned last week from a PET scan, I'd only knocked the beast to the canvas in round one. A relatively small amount of him was still showing up as active. And since my one and only shot at radiation had failed, the choices boiled down to surgery, more chemotherapy, or perhaps immunotherapy (which some say likely represents the future of cancer treatment).
After living with The Beast attached to my neck more than seven months, and discovering those weeks of radiation and chemo had failed to kill it entirely, I just want it knocked out of the ring, which is no different than anyone else would feel.
A week later, Jeanetta and I headed from Harrison down U.S. 65 to meet with the highly regarded otolaryngologist and surgeon Dr. Mauricio Moreno, a native of Chile who completed three fellowship programs at M.D. Anderson, the nation's premier cancer treatment center, before joining the staff at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
He's strongly recommended by my ENT specialist, Dr. Paul R. Neis of Mountain Home and Dr. Arnold B. Smith, my oncologist who oversaw my radiation treatments, both of whom said that, if faced with my condition, Dr. Moreno is the surgeon they would want wielding the scalpel.
This development, which I was told upfront could happen, has not been an easy pill to swallow. I was disappointed that the fight goes on and the future remains clouded. The pain in my throat and other after-effects of therapy thankfully have diminished notably, yet my voice has become gravelly.
The meeting with Dr. Moreno at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute went well. He is an amiable, compassionate man with dark hair and an easy smile who listens attentively and spent the time necessary to understand and actually hear me.
The prognosis wasn't the rosy picture I'd hoped for: "Oh, sure, Mike, I can remove what remains of this squamous cell and sew you back up, good as new. No problem!"
Instead, he explained that the tumor is located in a precarious spot beneath my jawline at a place where blood vessels and nerves congregate. The challenge will be to separate those from the remaining tumor surrounding them and hope on close inspection that The Beast hasn't wrapped itself around them like a serpent with its prey.
The potential dangers are loss of voice from a severed nerve, the inability to shrug my left shoulder, and even a stroke if the carotid artery is deeply involved.
The upside, the hope I nurture, is to be left in reasonably good shape to live out what years I may have remaining with meaningful quality of existence. Radiation has already taken a significant toll on that.
Dr. Moreno said our time together in the operating room together on Jan. 6 (exactly four months after the bell for the fight's first round chimed) should last about two hours.
Some might wonder why I didn't opt for surgery in the first place. Drs. Neis and Smith explained that the tumor in such a location initially was too large for surgery, and they hoped radiation with chemo would kill The Beast, as the combination usually can.
So now that it's shrunk by about half its original size, Dr. Moreno soon will take his turn battling this ugly thing whose origin remains unknown despite testing and thorough examinations.
I only know this, as do all who become afflicted with cancer: I want it out of my body. The physical, emotional and financial expense of fighting it are enough to regularly interrupt nightly sleep for the world's best non-licensed nurse/wife and me.
Besides that, at some point it becomes necessary to try to overlook the painful realities, "damn the torpedoes," and storm head-long into the breach.
Thank you so much, valued readers from across our state, for your hundreds of kind and appreciated well-wishes and prayers over the past five months. Say a sincere prayer, if you're so inclined, for Dr. Mauricio Moreno to maintain a steady hand and discerning eye as he enters my neck to take his turn in the ring with The Beast. (All of us can benefit from prayer, we are told.)
And please continue to bear alongside me as I endure yet another unsolicited post-treatment recovery, hopefully the last.
Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at [email protected].