People mentioned HPV, but your particular cancer "sometimes" is associated with people who worked with nickel in their lifetimes, and in the plating industry. The studies on this came out of a wonderful long tern database on cancers kept in Norway. (I will explain why there if anyone is interested, but it is not pertinent) It is also associated with a different virus, (not HPV) the Epstein-Barr virus.

The relationship between viruses and cancers is long known and it surprises people that the are so many direct cause and effect associations between them. Just to give you a quick list of the well known, cervical cancers - HPV16 &18, posterior oral cancers - HPV16, Kaposi Sarcoma - kaposi sarcoma virus, liver cancer - hepatitis B&C, Merkel cell carcinoma (a skin cancer) - polyoma virus, nasopharyngeal cancers, and Burkitt's lymphoma - Epstein-Barr virus, and of course Leukemia (blood cancer) HTLV-1 (human T-cell leukemia virus).

For most of these the virus is hard to early diagnose, except in cervical, our sister disease.

As you can see I'm interested in all this, but the most important thing at your stage of thing is less about cause, and more about beating it back, and returning to a normal life. On that note, people here are full of good advice, work arounds for things that don't go as planned or side effects, and it's a good place to safely rant (away from family and loved ones) when thing drag on, or weigh you down. You can post openly, or as you develop a sense of who's who and find friends, private message or email with them. This group will be here for you as needed, they are an amazing community of people.

Funny Charm, I'm in the same boat with you and Jim wishing I had been diagnosed with a STD. It's actually scary how close we are alike in some ways. I too studied to be a "man of god" and went through the hell that was celibacy Boy did I make up for lost time though.

Be Well...being diagnosed with cancer may be life altering...but it doesn't mean the end of life. To me it was a realization of my own mortality and a wake up call to cherish every moment with the ones I loved. I'm thankful for that, however a more subtle wake up call would have been appreciated, maybe not as effective though.

Andy and EricS

C;mon guys, Time to vote for OCF. If you haven't read Megan's sticky post on the Cancer Fighter Awards, it's worth it.
Then click on this link VOTE OCF We have less than one percent participation and we are getting our ass kicked by competitors. This is the last weekend to vote, so take some time
Charm

I voted last week; there were a few others listed at that time but not too many.

Up to 50 now. It really does just take a couple of minutes!

Andy. welcome to the forum. Yes, being told you have cancer is a life altering statement. I am still trying to get back to some normalcy after that statement. You have come to a great site. Everyone here is wonderful and full of wonderful advice and encouragment.

I voted too

Yes, thank you and Angelia also. Now if I can just get the other 99% off their duffs, maybe OCF can pull ahead this last week.

Leslie

Thank you. It's only 53 now but I can only hope that everyone is waiting until after their Sunday morning paper and coffee to go vote
Charm

Andy, your radiation experience is going to get worse and keep on that way until two-three weeks after the last treatment, so brace yourself for it. Eat as much as you can while you can still taste and swallow food.

On this forum, we came up with a phrase called "New Normal" to describe life after cancer treatments and all the side effects.