Where to begin... a month ago I went to see my ENT with a mild sore throat and swollen tonsil. A week later I learned I have stage 3 cancer in my tonsil. The good news: it's highly curable. The bad news: it's cancer, and my insurance doesn't cover chemo or radiation. Further, I have just enough assets to keep me from qualifying for financial assistance... but not enough to cover the insanely expensive cost of treatment ("financially devastating" were the terms used by my ENT).

What to do...? First I read anything and everything on the net regarding my condition. Prognosis. Side effects. Cost. Not sure this was a good idea... At this point Crawling under the bed and hiding was tempting... Very tempting.

Instead I decided to grab my camera and dive head first, documenting my journey every step of the way, the good, the bad, and the really ugly. Hopefully sharing my experiences will help someone else that finds themselves in this unfortunate situation; and maybe they will help bring awareness and change to our health care system. Maybe both - now that would be very cool.

There is a serious problem here. Things are definitely out of whack. As my sister Leah observed, "The real disease isn't in your body, the real disease is in our country." Hmmm....

Rest assured, I will beat this, with the "REC" light on.