The stories don't say anything more specific about location than "throat" -- and there can be some MAJOR variations: glottic, sub-glottic and supra-glottic and the treatments vary dramatically. Glottic (cancer of the true cords)is highly unlikely to spread because it has no connection with the lymph system and only spreads by growing larger and engulfing a larger area of tissue.

Both Kendall and Tom have had squamous cell carcinoma of the true cords -- glottic -- and have had partial laryngectomies. In Tom's case, this means he has no right vocal cord -- just a gap where it once was -- but his left vocal cord is intact and healthy. The reason he has such a quiet voice right now (and has trouble coughing and can't sneeze) is that gap.

Right now (he's boarding the train this moment) he's on his way to Boston to meet with the anesthesiologist at Mass Eye & Ear to see whether he'll have a better chance with general anesthesia right now then he had in February (which was before his defibrillator battery was changed) or whether Dr. Z will do a procedure that only involves local anesthesia. Then he'll go over to Dr. Zeitels' office at The Voice Center (One Bowdoin Square) to meet with Dr. Z and decide exactly which procedure -- under general or local anesthetic -- will kick off the voice restoration process. Soooo...I'll know more when he's home this afternoon. But whichever procedure Dr. Zeitels decides to start with, it will be in the next couple weeks and it will involve building up the area of the right vocal cord (with body fat or other material) so there will be no gap and the intact left vocal can work against it to produce a voice.

How's that for up-to-the-moment reportage?

I hope Michael Douglas has a doctor skilled not only in the eradication of the cancer but in voice preservation and restoration. Too many doctors are not sensitive enough to the importance of preservation of voice. (And I remember the head of oncological radiation at the Seacoast Cancer Center telling us that what he would consider a "good" voice, we probably would consider "crap" -- his word.)

Linn