Has just been told he has Stage II SCC of the voice box. Long term 3 pack a day smoker. We have talked a lot and his local oncologist has convinced him that this is a piece of cake and he is convinced he will breeze thru Tx, unlike me he proudly boasts. I have encouraged him to get a second opinion from Moffitt. He mentioned he will have some type of chemo and only 4 weeks of some new radiation which I couldn't get the name of either out of him. I wrote down this site and begged him and/or his wife to log on. HOPEFULLY YOUR READING THIS!!!

We were also told this would be a piece of cake. I won't tell you what kind of cake but it has to do with cows.

My husband had stage IV larengyl cancer. He was also a smoker. He received Chemo and radiation. This eliminated the cancer in his larnyx. He had a lymp node in his neck that was still cancerous after chemo & rads. He had a modified neck disection. He was diagnosed 2/05 and still is cancer free. Linda

David,

It's totally amazing how some people just accept what they are told and have no desire to check things out. I think it might be similar to the ostrich syndrome. With so much information available at our fingertips, not taking advantage of it, is just plain foolish.

You are a good neighbor and hopefully something will click and he will do something about it.

Jerry

David:

Its a shame your neighbor has oral cancer. Im amazed at how some people think cancer treatment is like getting over the flu. Hope they dont have a hard time, but you know how this cancer is and the side effects of treatments. Lets hope he takes some of your advice now so he will be a proactive patient.

I think for some people, diagnosis, the attendant statistics about surivival and treatment are so scary that they really can only cope by clinging to something that sounds optimistic (like that someone told him it will be a piece of cake) and ignoring everything else that might contradict it. And it isn't always the patient either. I was definitely not this way but my husband WAS at first, and this was confounded by disagreement among my docs (mainly with a radiation oncologist who later, I heard was fired-he certainly left very quickly) because the RO was saying this was early stage cancer and so would definitely not require radiation let alone chemo. Then when a second opinion from Dana Farber set us straight on that, my husband didn't want to beleive that, then when he reluctantly agreed we should take their advice, he was sure this was something I could get through pretty much on my own without any help needed including his, because he had a colleague who had gone through all of her breast cancer radiation wihtout much help (uh, so did I, it's a totally different level of ordeal). I begged him to get on here to read what other people who had been through it had to say about treatment and he continually found excuses not to. So need less to say, my entire treatment was also a process of him coming to grips with a reality much worse than he thought it should be even though he had been repeatedly warned about what it would be.

It did not do wonders for our marraige and he admits now he wasn't the supportive person he should have been because of that attitude. Under other circumstances, you might call it optimism but when it gets extreme, it can get in the way.

Anyway, at least your neighbor has you to turn to for advice during treatment, however it actually turns out to go for him.

Nelie

We've been close next door neighbors for about 7 years now and we always talk and go to the same parties, etc. Their dog and my dog and one of my cats are best friends. Even though I'm not his CPA he has asked for my financial advice re his business in the past. My wife and I knew he had cancer 2 months ago... started loosing weight; developed a raspy voice and was coughing like crazy...but I never found the right moment to say "hey are you all right?" and "you really need to have that looked at with your history of tobacco" type of discussion. Then 2 weeks ago his wife saw me outside and told me he was going for a biopsy for something they found on his voice box. I told her to let me know what the biopsy said, which they did and then I tried to get him more prepared than his doctor had. It's frustrating to know this won't be a piece of cake and I/we could help him soooo much but I can't push to make him listen so I just have to sit back and wait for him to come to me/us.

He keeps trying to compare my Staging to his as justification to why he will fare better but as far as I'm concerned my Stage IV HPV+ SCC is probably no different or even better than his Stage II Tobacco+ SCC. I just hope his doctor hits him with the kitchen sink and takes care of his cancer now.