The Backstory, part four

I, of course, did go back to see him two months later, because the cough had progressed to a wracking, painful thing that caused headaches and nausea, and destroyed my ability to sleep.  

During the second visit, he pulled on my tongue, looked slightly further down my throat, reiterated that he "saw no evidence of lymphoma", though he could not explain the persistent redness in my throat, or my cough.  He then tried to convince me that it was all in my head.  "Are you sure you're not just focusing on your throat and making this out to be bigger than it really is?"  He had not even done so much as palpitate my inflamed lymph nodes.  He told me to come back a month later if it was still bothering me.

During this time, my other doctors expressed concern, but the ENT was the ENT, so they respected his decision, for some reason. 

I went back a month later.  At this point, I appeared to have a thrush infection.  It turns out that I never did, and it was just a manifestation of the lymphoma, but that's for later.  I was prescribed a mouthwash called Nystatin, a swish-and-swallow affair, and we scheduled a scope for a couple of weeks later.  That is where they cram a camera down your throat, by way of your sinuses; I've had better times.  Nystatin coated the throat enough to give me temporary relief, and when I visited him for the scope, all we found was the red spot that I kept coughing bloody.  He "still saw no evidence of lymphoma."

He still refused to do a biopsy.  I should point out that doing the biopsy would have taken about an hour of his time, for which he would have been well compensated.  He just didn't want to.

This was early June.  In the two months that followed, my uvula and soft palate became so swollen and distended that they covered the entire back of my mouth, eating and drinking became excruciating exercises in self-discipline, and all pretense of sleep vanished entirely.  I still appeared to have a massive thrush infection on top of it all.

I got fed up, and went back to see my GP.  Due to the short notice, I ended up seeing another GP who worked under him, but that's all right because she was amazing.  She got me in to see another ENT that afternoon, who, in the span of an hour, took actual notes, did a scope and got a biopsy out of my soft palate. 

One hour's work.  That's all it took.