CANCER AWARENESS ADVICE: HPV IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Cancer awareness question: What cancer has a vaccine?

Cancer awareness answer: HPV cancer.

What cancer threat creates a bitter response from parents: HPV cancer.

Why would some random advice blogger give a damn?

Please continue.

The world of twitter comes alive when a post draws responses to something close to you, to me, to interested readers.

I don’t know about everyone else, but when a tweet about HPV cancer shows up, I read.

I didn’t know this was HPV Awareness Day, but this thread is a whopper, full of anti-tax talk, and survivor guys, and loss.

Call it research if you’re looking for a mind-set related to medical issues. Since we’re in a pandemic that’s racked up 500K unexpected dead, HPV takes a backseat.

However, if you know someone, or like me had a first hand experience, then reading the vitriol from parents of kids emphatically, angrily, explaining why they refuse to vaccinate against HPV sounds familiar.

Louder Cancer Awareness Is Better?

It’s a smaller voice added today to the screaming bedlam of covid anti-vax, covid anti-mask, anti-social distance, anti-anything that goes beyond seventh grade science.

Suspicious of medicine and motives, The People are using their freedoms and mental abilities the best they can. Some better than others.

The thread includes guys posting pics of themselves after treatment, gruesomely right after, and the weight loss from treatment. I can relate. One tweet:

This is just a part of what treatment looks like. Neck dissection, extreme tonsillectomy, remove parts of tongue, remove soft palette. Not to mention the radiation and chemo/immuno that follows. Very painful. And I’m a lucky one. Get your kids vaccinated before they are exposed.

What I can’t relate to is using the same argument, the same outrage, the same disbelief as the covid crowd. Same people? Maybe.

For March 4, 2021 I’ll add this for men: A new lump on your neck is not a new fashion accessory. There is no ‘good’ new lump. Don’t let it stick around. It’s probably nothing, but get it checked out.

If it is HPV related cancer, not smoking and booze related cancer, you’re in luck for better results. Unless you don’t get a second opinion. Backward medical opinion loads up neck cancer patients the same, but HPV isn’t the same.

It’s a virus adding it’s two cents

One doc might prescribe three chemos and a pump, another might go with one, and no pump. I asked how to avoid the side-effects of chemo. The doc said, “Don’t get chemo is the only way.”

Honest enough.

I asked the radiation doc how they knew it worked. He said, “Science says it works.” This is the tricky part, the science.

We just had a four year round of ‘Science is just another opinion’ now we’re all doctors. Since this is today’s blog post, I’ll leave with this:

A friend spent a day with me while I was in the throes of cancer treatment and said this: “I’ve never seen anyone suffer as much as you.” I said, “Your mother in law lived with you and died in your house.” He said, “Then I’ve never seen this sort of suffering without death.”

He was a doctor, and it pumped me up to prove him wrong. Warning: You don’t want this happening to anyone you know. It’s an awful experience for everyone to go through.

It’s especially bad when a heroic man decides they know better, forgo cancer treatment because they know a better remedy, and die. It’s a downer to find out they were wrong.

Last bit: HPV16 throat cancer in men, as I’ve learned, is caused from oral sex with an HPV infected partner. Oral Sex, going downtown, the six to the nine, and mommies and daddies have a hard time connecting the dots.

So often one thing leads to another, but oral sex leading to tongue cancer seems a bad combination. No one get an ‘atta boy’ for cancer.

There is no ‘fair’ cancer, but oral sex cancer? There should be a law, or a vaccine. Thanks for posting the pic, @thedavidbrumley.