Sixteen years ago, I contracted cancer in the left tonsil thanks to the human papillomavirus.
Given removing the cancer involved delicate cutting of the tonsil, tongue and throat, Dr. Lee offered to refer me to a surgeon in Halifax who used a robot named da Vinci.
He sits behind a console controlling da Vinci’s arms while peering through high-definition cameras.
The previous radiation had made the tonsil stiff; it didn’t pull away easily.
I woke up with a feeding tube up my nose and an incision that ran the full length of my neck.
When I asked Dr. Corsten what the surgery would have looked like without da Vinci he replied, “In the good old days, we would have cut your jaw in two.”
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