Regarding the link between oral sex & oral cancer that posted here yesterday, please read this story

[housewolf]

Re-posted with a changed title

Blow jobs may be funny and a prime target for jokes and laughter, but the oral cancer that might be the result of one isn't so humorous. It's serious.... sometimes deadly serious.

She was 26 years old when diagnosed with cancer at the base of her tongue, metastisized into her neck. As a 26 yr old female, she didn't fit their profile of people who got that disease - it was something mainly found in men over 60 who had smoked and drank alcohol most of their lives, not something that they found in 26 yr old females. Back in 1976, they had no idea what the cause might be for that particular cancer found in a young woman.

The only protocol for treatment they had at UCLA Hospital was what they did for the 60 yr old+ men - a full course of radiation therapy to start with, d5 days a week for 6 weeks. Then they wanted to do 2 surgeries - the first to remove the cancerous lymph gland (and surrounding glands) in the neck, and the second to remove half the tongue and the right jawbone.

Very funny .... right??????

She was single, 26 yrs old, faced with hugely disfiguring surgery.

Instead, they did something called a radium implant - they took 3 pieces of radioactive material and threaded them through her neck into the tumor at the base of her tongue and back out.

Those were the 3 worst, most painful, days of her life. She felt like her throat was on fire, being burnt from the inside out. She was in isolation - the radioactivity was too dangerous for other folks to be around. Being awake was physically painful - unbearably so.

All in all, she had very nearly the lifetime maximum allowable amount of radiation within about a 4 month period. Radiation therapy... the so-called "gift" that keeps on giving.

Yes, she lived - she survived both the cancer and the treatment, for 35 years now. She's one of the lucky ones, there are very few who have survived this long who had what she had. Most oral cancer patients have a much shorter life span.

She's suffered every day since then with the after-effects of all the radiation, to the point no where the muscles in her throat no long work. She can't swallow anything anymore, neither solid foods nor liquids. She now relies entirely on a feeding tube for nutrition. Her lungs are messed up from years of aspiration of food/liquid into her lungs caused by decreasing functionality of her throat muscles. She's prone to pheumonia and has frequent debilitating fevers and chills. Her neck has been disfigured since 1976 from the neck surgery. At this point, She's lost all the muscles, glands, etc from her neck, which looks like that picture from Alice in Wonderland of Alice with the really long neck. Her vocal chords have been ravaged by the after-effects of radiation. It's difficult for her to speak because her throat and tongue muscles don't work correctly any more. Often she's asked to reapeat what she said because people can't understand her. Her speaking volume is so low that many people can't hear her, especially over the phone and most especially by cell phone. She can no longer either sing or yell.

It was only in the last year that her head-and-neck dr mentioned to her that they think they know, now, 35 years later, what the cause is of head-and-neck cancers in young women - Human PapillomaVirus, otherwise knows as HPV. Fortunately for her, she learned it from her doctor instead of from a post on a political forum where nearly all the many replies were laughs and jokes.

So... who is this person? Whose story is this? Well, it's mine. It's my story. It's stuff I live with every single day. And let me tell you... it's not funny. It's quite serious.

Do I have any idea who I might have "caught" this virus from??? Nope, not a clue, it's been too long ago. Not that it matters at this point, for it doesn't. I've lived for 35 years with it's effects, and I can tell you ... they've been devestating. I'm 61 now. With any luck, I still have some years of dealing with the effects of oral cancer, probably caused by HPV, left to me to continue living and dealing with it.