I am so glad to see this subject discussed. I smoked some in high school, college, and early adulthood. I quit smoking the day my husband got home from Vietnam, in 1969, and I haven't had even one more cigarette since then. I was 62 last year when my SCC was diagonsed.

My doctor asked if I had ever smoked, and I said, "Yes, 37 years ago." He said that that, then, was the cause of my cancer....that the statistics say that even long-ago smoking is now considered a causative factor. I don't personally agree, and everybody's comments here seem to back that up.

He said that if not smoking, then it was caused by genetic factors, and it would be better for me if it were caused by smoking.

Hmmmmm......

It isn't ringing true to me.

My cancer developed on the gum of my upper jaw in a place that had been irritated off and on for several years.....or longer. It couldn't have been cancer for that long....could it?

When the cancer did develop, I didn't immediately become concerned because I was so accustomed to having that area give me problems.

By the time I became concerned....about 9 months before my diagnosis....my dentist didn't recognize it as a problem......even though I was complaining then of earaches on that side. Two months before my dx, he cauterized the area, and did not have me return for him to check it. Two weeks before my dx, he scraped and cauterized it again, and did not have me return.

I am trying to figure all of this out. I know that the dentist goofed big-time, but that is in the past. However, knowing that this cancer was in my mouth for longer than necessary is pretty dis-heartening.

Also...here's a new question: Will all of that cauterizing and scraping and....finally....the biopsy stir up the cancer cells and free them to metasticize? My surgical margins were clear and my neck nodes were all negative, though the lesion was pretty large (T2, based on size and length of time it was present.)

HPV is an STD, right? I can't imagine how I could get that, so I will dismiss that as a cause, though I wouldn't mind being tested just to find out.

If not smoking 37 years ago, and not drinking, and not HPV....what could be the cause of my SCC? Most literature no longer lists constant irritation of an area as a causative factor....but isn't that what smoking does?

I suppose that many of us won't ever know for sure what caused the cancer, but it would help to know how likely recurrence or additional primaries are, and the cause would be significant in determining that.

I look forward to reading other histories and opinions.