My throat cancer was zapped and drugged to smithereens, and it is all gone.
That’s the result of a PET scan which was run this week at the Truxtun Radiology Medical Group.
This crowning glory came after four of the most miserable months I have ever spent, and about $80,000 in medical costs.
Some may ask whether I’m worth it.
Well, if I colored my hair, I’d use Clairol because Heather Locklear and I are  worth it.
 And now I’m an official cancer survivor. 
To briefly recap, here’s what I survived:
A cancer lump that went from my right tonsil halfway up my neck. It’s called squamous cell carcinoma of the right tonsil. We found it in late August.
Three chemotherapy sessions at  Dr. Anthony Ciarolla’s office knocked me flat on my back.
I got sick a lot. I had near zero energy. And you don’t want to know about my potty habits.
I had eight weeks  (five days a week) of radiation from Dr. Dean Davis at the Florence Wheeler Cancer Center.
That turned my throat into a war zone. At times I could barely talk. Everytime I swallowed it hurt. Turns out you swallow fairly often during the day.
A tube was surgically inserted in my stomach because I couldn’t swallow food. So my wife fed me six cans of Ensure a day for about two months.
After the treatment it was yanked out. Ouch.
I lost my tastebuds and my saliva glands. I got the tastebuds back but the saliva glands are expected to be gone for a year.
Thus, I can’t eat thick bread or pizza.
 During the worst of it, a slight arm movement while I was in bed might be enough to toss a few cookies in the porcelain bowl.
I was on a regimen of expensive drugs that didn’t always work. And they plugged me up.
You just have to endure suffering because you don’t have a choice.
I’m not recommending this disease to anyone.
What kept me going was my wife, Mary, who literally kept me alive.
And the support from my family, friends and church.
Plus, Dr. Ciarolla got giddy when the tumor shrunk a lot. And Dr. Davis reported in January he couldn’t detect any more cancer.
The PET scan, which came about three months after my last treatment, was to determine if it all worked.
PET doesn’t mean I’m a cute little puppy. It stands for Positron Emission Tomography, and it is a form of nuclear medicine.
There’s this stainless steel cylindrical container that’s packaged in a much larger container, all for the protection of radioactive material. (Thus the name nuclear medicine)
After an hour, the injection sends out gamma rays in my body, which are read by this big doughnut hole machine I go through.
And all that told the doctors I was cancer free.
Well, how much did that cost — that process to keep me alive.
Dr. Davis and a couple scans at Mercy cost $31,300.
The chemo cost about $22,600.
The drugs cost $6,300.
 An emergency room visit and the stomach tube procedure cost about $9,000.
The doctors on the stomach tube cost about $1,000.
That adds up to $70,200. There were a few other costs that I couldn’t get — a bunch of blood work, cartons of Ensure and the removal of the tube — but I’m guessing they were no more than $10,000.
Is my life worth $80,000? At a bare minimum, I say.
Any other opinion ain’t worth a dime.