Hi Hostilis and AfroHorror, Thanks for the warm welcome and the kind words, folks like you make this a very nice place to be!

Corpus Callosum, Thank you for the congrats and the warm welcome, small world, isn't it.  When you passed through Pleiku, were you coming from Hanoi?  In any event, it's nice to hear that someone here trod the same ground I did 23 years earlier!

My medical oncologist and I discussed the options, and one of them, indeed, would have my jaw split at the chin to allow access to the primary tumor, a(other) tangerine sized mass just under the skin at the rear base of my tongue!  We elected to use radiation (in conjunction with three applications of Cisplatin -  a very nasty chemo agent) on that, and the three remaining metastatic tumors in lymph nodes in the front of the throat.

The standard treatment, when this approach is elected, is to install a "Peg," (a feeding tube) directly into the stomach before the radiation begins in anticipation of the temporary loss of the ability to swallow due to the burning of the radiation.  I elected to wait and only have one if that proved necessary.  To everyone's (especially mine) surprise, I never needed it and never had any discomfort despite the fact that I now have a ring of scar tissue on the inside of the throat (that drives me nuts because a large glob of phlegm frequently hangs there...)

I regret that I never heard that grading system for heroin.  All I knew was how to test it, and read the results.  It was either Heroin, or not.  The test results could also tell the relative purity as a rough approximation.  Remember, I started my own investigation into the field only after I had gotten out of the business.  Sorry.

Thanks again to all of you for your warm welcomes!  I'm very happy to be accepted here.