I smoked from about age 18 until diagnosed with BOT in April of this year. I was smoking 2 packs or more per day until DX day. Quit cold turkey after we met with my ENT to be told of all test results. Needless to say, should have quit years earlier but honestly never tried. My ENT tried to be nice by telling me not to be kicking myself as 8% of all BOT cases involved people who never touched tobacco. I still feel that I brought it on myself. Never have drank much over the years and feel no cause associated.

Bill D.

William, if we all spent our time beating up ourselves for the bad choices we have made in life there would be no room for anything in our future. The only question now is, what you are going to do with that time. The fact that you are here, is a good thing... some of that future might be spent helping others, or keeping others from stepping in the same holes that you've been in. (Damn I just stepped in some more S*&^t... It never ends.) Life's certainly a learning process, I just wish that I wasn't such a slow learner!

I never smoked, drank socially in my twenties, and then again in my mid-thirties(divorce). I was diagnosed with HPV during my 1st marriage, and had some dysplasia on PAPs. I developed base of tongue/tonsillur cancer at 45 that was diagnosed after I developed a very swollen lymph node. My grandmother died from cervical cancer in her late thirties,my mother had cervical changes for years and later went on to develop lung, mets to brain, cancer. She died 6 weeks into treatment at 59. When the vacinne for HPV became available I had my 13 year old daughter get the series. I paid for it because insurance refused to pay, but considering our family history, I think it was money well spent. Sue Poling

Hello all,
I guess it is my time to add to this tread. I was the king smoker 1-2 packs a day for 35 years, smoked alot of pot and hardly ever drank (never really aquired a taste for it) but I have had my share of drinks in49 years just light and social. I quit cold turkey with the nicotine the day my ENT gave me my DX (sept.27 2005) so I have 1 year under my belt, I have had maybe 10 drinks in the last year and maybe 10 hits off of a joint since then. for the most part I eat way different and try to exercise more.I do know that it was the nicotine and nothing else that put me in this position. January 11 I will have one clean year, and I had the whole thing radiation, chemo, neck dissection, and even 39 HBO treatments . I must say I feel lucky as hell to be doing as well as I am this soon,even my doctors smile broadly when they see how well I am doing, never the less I am always looking over my shoulder, could I be this lucky, I hope so. A lot is in the mind and I have always believed that this was just a difficult path that I put myself on but i would see it through to the end. So far so good, I hope my luck holds out. Looking ahead to Jan 11.
You all are doing great, you are here and I am sure your perspective on things is different and for the most part better. Hang in there all of you, your spirit is astounding.
Lenny

Wow! What a great thread! I am really interested, since I don't fit into any pattern or risk factors, and my family has no cancer victims in our collective memory.

Question: How do I get tested for HPV? I am going to the gyn. next week, and I can ask him to do any test I wish. I will get a PAP test, as usual, even though I have had a hysterectomy and my cervix is gone. Is the HPV test a blood test? Please tell me what to ask for.

Thanks.

You won't have to worry about them knowing what to do since the test is done on the same pap smear (brush cytology) that they are already taking. While this is usually done on the cervix, my understanding is that they still collect cells from the surrounding area if you have had surgery. Given all the publicity that this is getting with the TV ad campaign about HPV ( they haven't even gotten into the issue of the vaccine on TV ads yet since the American public is so uniformed about HPV that they are going with 5 million in just HPV ads alone first) and lots of women are finally coming in asking about getting tested. When my wife had it done it was $50.00 extra for the test... but get this - the gyn tryed to talk her out of it, saying it wasn't necessary. 'Course that was before the vaccine was out there two years ago.

Brian, this topic is personally interesting to me, since I do not at this time feel that a cause for my OC has been determined. There is no reason to anticipate that I will have a positive HPV test, but if I do, what should be my next step? Is there any treatment at this point in my life (63 years old, 4 children, one OC surgery)? Is there an agency that would benefit from my submission of my test results?

Not at this tme. It is estimated that bewteen 60 and 80 % of the American population will have HPV in their lifetimes. How many will have the malignancy forming versions is unknown, and how many that have those versions will actually develop a malignancy, is also poorly understood. The question for you to figure out is; does your body have the ability to purge itself of the virus (on your subsiquent tests, are you virus free, if positive this time) and secondarily are you being reinfected routinely by your sexual partner ( If you go from free to infected to free etc. in a monogomous environment.) More than that there isn't much you can do, and there is no preventative measure such as condoms that will ensure that reinfection does not take place. Data is only being collected at a few places, and that is on people that develop malignancies right now.

HPV...There is no way around this question: How can a person contract HPV in a totally monogamous relationship? There is absolutely no question about other partners being involved. None. So, that issue aside, is there any other way a person could become infected?

My husband is a urologist who is scrupulous about cleanliness. Could he by any chance have picked up the virus in his practice in a non-sexual contact and passed it to me?

I haven't been tested yet, and I have no reason to believe that I have this virus, but I go to the gynecologist next week and could ask to be tested if there is a reason for it. AND.....if it will not cause relationship problems afterward. If I have HPV and do not have other causative factors for my OC, is it the current thinking that often HPV can be a cause?

All it takes to transfer HPV is epithelial cells rubbing against epithelial cells that contain the virus. This virus does not require a fluid transfer like AIDS of saliva or semen. You think of all the ways in which that can happen. Now given that it isn't transferred through a handshake, you have to consider the kinds of cells that it is attracted to. Here we are still discovering things, but clearly the moist squamous layer of the epithelium on all openings to the body, are prime places for it to reside. Perhaps some of you have read recently that Farah Fawcett has just been diagnosed with anal cancer. This is also a place that is lined with squamous cells, and she likely came to this cancer through HPV, since anal cancers are like oral cancers, predominantly SCC. Remember that it can be dormant in your body for years. That means unless you guys were virgins when you married, (not too many people these days) it could be from some relationship prior to you. It is not a new virus or a new problem. It is on people's radar now because of the vaccine, but it has been known of for half a century or more. But keep this in perspective, read what I said about how many people in the US are going to get HPV. It is very ubiquitous, it is everywhere, and an Australian team has found it associated with breast cancer. And out of over 100 versions there are only a handful that cause malignancies, and if you get one of those there is no guarantee that you will get a cancer, your immune system may eliminate it prior to that kind of event.