Abstract
“It was 9 years ago. I was unusually exhausted and had a sore throat and raspy voice. While rubbing my neck, I felt a lump under the left side of my jaw. It was hard and about the size of a walnut, as I pressed beneath my mandible. At this time I was a dental hygienist of 21 years. Non- smoker. Fifty-four years old. I’ll skip the next few months of terrible frustration. As I eventually had to insist on a biopsy, I was diagnosed with head and neck cancer-stage four!! Squamous cell carcinoma. I had 35 radiation treatments. Each one consisted of nine individual areas being radiated. I know as I counted every single one in order to survive lying there with my head bolted to a table via a molded mask.”
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Fundakowski, C.E. (2020). In Their Words. In: Fundakowski, C. (eds) Head and Neck Cancer. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27881-6_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27881-6_14
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