Well, my husband takes complete ownership of his tobacco and alcohol use. I know there are many with this disease who never smoked or drank (or who did so on a very minor level). He smoked a pipe for 29 years and was a social drinker. He knew the risks, yet like so many continued with a tobacco habit that was very hard to shake. He did not realize that you don't have to be an alcoholic for the mix to increase your oral cancer chances so significantly. Would that have made him stop sooner had he known? I don't know. But, the point is that it seems to take somebody famous to raise awareness about any kind of disease these days...I'm thinking Michael J. Fox and Mohammed Ali. Roger Ebert had a salivary gland tumor a while back and noticeably has a speech defect because of it, but I haven't been able to find out much about his experience. Sometimes when I'm cleaning my husband's trach tube with a pipe cleaner I think about how often I saw him clean his pipes with one. That's a juxtoposition I'd like to see on a billboard.

Christine