Red-letter day

There are big fat red circles all over my calendar in the last few weeks of July.

I've got three circles around one date alone. Sunday, July 26 is a big day because it's Mick Jagger's birthday, my youngest nephew's birthday and it's the day that Sarah Palin has promised to step down as the governor of Alaska. (I've marked that occasion in red lipstick.)

On Monday, I found out that Friday, July 31 also will be a really big day for me. Dr. B1, my head-and-neck surgeon at Kaiser, emailed me yesterday and said that he has time in his schedule that day to perform a biopsy of that suspicious area on the left side of my tongue.

I wasted no time in emailing back and telling Dr. B1 to count on me showing up in his operating room. That biopsy, along with my June 25 PET scan, should give me and my doctors solid information about how successful my chemotherapy and radiation treatments in winter were, and what the next steps should be.

Over the next several days, I hope to hear more about Dr. B1's plans for the upcoming biopsy.

Color me bi-curious in a big way. The major question for me is, how does Dr. B1 plan to get his instruments past my lips to reach the patch of my tongue where cancer cells may be lurking?

My jaws get more rigid by the day. If researchers could figure what's making my jaw so tight and somehow replicate that tightness in other parts of the human body, I bet they could lick the teen pregnancy problem once and for all.

Short of prying my mouth open with the Jaws of Life, I don't see an easy way for Dr. B1 to get the tissue sample he needs.

I think I'm going to need plenty of anesthesia. I hope that Michael Jackson's doctors haven't bled local supplies dry.