About a month and a half ago, I posted concerned about lymph nodes and a long-known-about growth on my tonsil. It has always looked very much like this:https://openi.nlm.nih.gov/detailedre...3182.001&req=4
At last examination around the last time I posted, it had a few petechiae on it, but I figured that it was just from me messing with it. I let it go and continued living my life, HA again under control.

Well, I now get to enjoy dealing with tonsil stones, and in the process of panicking about those, I decided to look more closely at the tonsil growth. Very bad idea! Now at the bottom end of the growth, where there was once very scattered petechiae, it's blood red and what might be a tiny white patch or two. It looks bad and of course I'm terrified of it being cancer. Maybe I did something to it while digging around in my tonsils, but that seems pretty unlikely. I should go to the doctor, but I'm in the US and don't have insurance so even if they tell me something that I need more tests, I can't have them done.

Statistically, I'm not a likely candidate for tonsil cancer-- 32-year-old female, I don't smoke, one glass of wine every six months or so, one sexual partner, etc.--but someone has to be an outlier, so why not me? The idea of having cancer horrifies me, but I'm also really sad and frustrated that my HA is back after fighting it so hard with exercise and keeping busy with volunteering teaching history workshops at the prison, taking French, running a trail race, etc. I spent last holiday season thinking I had leukemia, and now it's tonsil cancer. Some days you just can't win.