Powers That Be

We have an uncle who is a retired surgeon in the United States of America. The only time I remembered meeting him was during the wedding of Nerd and Genie. As kids, Tito Toto and Papa are joined at the hips, getting into mischiefs and adventures together.

When he learned about my condition, he insisted that the biopsy slides be sent to the States for a second opinion. So, we "Fed-Ex"ed the slides. Tito called us up January 4, a day before my scheduled operation. He had called in favors and asked not one, nor two, but FIVE pathologists to look at my slides to verify if it indeed was cancer. Wow! Talk about "powers that be"! Well, thing is, not one of the five pathologists can commit 100% that it is indeed cancer since it is only FNA (fine needle aspiration) sample.* The "best reading (?)" I got is "the sample is suspicious"; or something like that. "Suspicious" meaning "looks like cancer". So, Tito recommended that I went ahead with my surgery as scheduled. And to have the QUART procedure.

And so be it. Operation on January 5!

*Side note: don't ask me why the sample is not enough to draw concrete conclusions, I don't know why. Let's look for a doctor to explain why. =)