I posted on Livestrong's Base of Tongue Cancer survivor forum for the first time on November 16. Still Zero replies or comments. Only three other posts so this entire LAF Forum for month of November had 4 posts. I did it to add a link to this OCF forum since I didn't see much support going on for the LAF oral cancer members. Compare that to OCF.
But LAF does have a section of interviews with cancer survivors and lo and behold, I found an interview with OCF's Brian Hill when he was a 5 year survivor - 8 years ago.
So I'm sharing this as OCF and Brian are a big part of what I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving. There is even a video.
BH 2002 Interview
Charm

Thanks for posting this, Charm - great BH interview. I am so-o-o-o grateful, too!

I'm so glad you posted this! Brian is an inspiration to all of us!

Man.... that was great. Thank you, Charm. I'd never seen Brian before. Hey Brian - your neck looks just like mine! (though doubt I have enough hair growth on the left for a natty beard like that)

Terrific.

D2

Lance was kind enough to tell my story in many pages in his original book, Livestrong: Stories of Survival. I met Lance at a CDC cancer meeting a decade ago, and he showed me a silly little yellow wrist band that someone at Nike wanted him to use to raise money. Neither one of us thought this young marketing guy had a winning idea. Man were we wrong. Millions of them have been sold, and it started a phenomenon. I was later asked by LAF/Lance to serve on their Grant Review Committee for LAF, which I did for a couple of years, but OCF just took too much of my time to work with them at the same time, and I had to move on. Plus about that time things were changing at LAF and I had serious disagreements with their direction (like I know so F$%^&king much that I know better than them), but the idea of starting a commercial site with ads ( which is now Livestrong.com and has an ad between every paragraph, and material written by people with little knowledge) meant that I had to be true to my inner self. Hey I'm not throwing stones, I've just learned that it's best not to get too close to your heros.

In rereading that part of his book or listening to this video, which was highly edited, I also realize how much I've learned since then, and how far I've personally come. As to the goatee, it's a funny thing. I've always hated them. But the edges of mine I do not trim - that is the exact line where the radiation ended. And about the time that I decided to start sporting it, to help hide that the right side of my mouth doesn't quite work right, Brad Pitt was sporting one and they were kinda in style... Now there's a laugh, me thinking that I could be anything like Brad. While he's got nothing to worry about from me and the TV time that I've got under my belt, for those of you that are unaware, we all do owe him, as Brad has been a generous donor to OCF in the past. (You have to remember that he used to date Gwyneth back in the day, so there was one of those 6 degrees of separation thing going on, that OCF benefited from.)

What does everyone think of Lance now?

I think with anyone you have to take the good with the bad.

Still the same, and a hero to many in cycling, and cancer. I don't care if he lied initially, and knew most likely he took something. All these other althetes just beat the tests, the same way Lance Armstring did. I would also say just about all elite athletes take performance enhancement drugs, not because they have to, but must to compete. Being a cancer survivor, fighter, Erythopietan, EPO, is often given to increase RBC, including anabolic steroids, to gain back musle loss, and reverse testosterone inhibition. I take EPO, like epogen, procrit, and took anabolic steroids to recover from cancer, and is nothing unusual.

Just waiting to see the Oprah interview on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal had a very interesting front page article on Lance. But as far as I am concerned, Lance is yesterday's news, Brian is the future. That's what I felt when I posted this two years ago and having met Brian personally last year, feel more strongly than ever. That interview was ten years ago, so now Brian is a 15 year survivor and inspiration to us all.
I confess that I have never cared much for the so called sport of spandex/lyrca suited up bike boys . (although I would make an exception for DavidCPA) There's a reason why this is a big sport over in France but not here. As far as I can tell in the DC area, they mostly all pretend they are Lance while speeding reckless down the walking paths - I carry a large walking stick to remind them of their manners. Just my opinion
Charm

stated as only Charm could