Let's talk about cancer.

Three years ago at this time I was lying on the couch, watching St. Elmo's Fire with Friend Pens The Lotion S., feeling rather giddy from a combination of red wine and Vicodin. I had just had the majority of my hard palate and all of my soft palate removed due to a case of oral cancer. If you want to read the whole story, go back to September of 2010 in the archives.(St. Elmo's Fire is a good movie filled with terrible people. Skip it; that way, you won't have to wish for that two hours of your Vicodin- and red-wine-soaked life back.)Let's talk about oral cancers. There are a lot of them, some of them frightening, some of them less so. All of them are on, as they say, the rise, due to a number of factors. Here are some interesting things about OC that you may not know:1. A large number of oral cancers are due to the human papilloma virus. In different forms, HPV can cause warts on your fingers, genital warts, cervical dysplasia and cancer, or lumps in your mouth, or oral cancer. There are innumerable strains of HPV. Most of them are harmless. Some are really a bitch to get and to treat.2. Oral cancer, which used to be the province of men over the age of 60, is increasing in young women. Part of this has to do with the near-ubiquity of HPV in the population. A lot of it has to do with the fact that young women now smoke more and drink more than young men. Alcohol or smoking predisposes you to oral cancer; doing both at once is a great way to lose chunks of your tongue or jaw.3...
Source: Head Nurse - Category: Nurses Authors: Source Type: blogs