Cancer sucks and it’s even worse when your loved ones die.
Luckily we have been fortunate to see legends like Tony Iommi, Dave Mustaine, and Bruce Dickinson survive cancer.
One more legend that has survived cancer is POISON drummer Rikki Rockett.
He addressed this in a new interview on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation.
He said (Transcribed via Blabbermouth):
“I just had a PET scan three weeks ago, and I’ve been in remission for over four years now. So I’m good. It was the base of the tongue with an associated lymph node, which is pretty common as far as head and neck cancers these days. HPV-related head and neck cancers usually are base on the tongue.
There are a few people that I’ve sort of mentored or helped out, and many of ’em are musicians. And HPV is pretty rampant — it really is. If you have a kid, get ’em inoculated.”
He continued:
“I had a sore throat that wouldn’t go away. That was the main thing. And then I had a lymph node that was kind of sticking out. First, they tried antibiotics, and they didn’t work at all — they didn’t even touch it. So it was, like, ‘Okay, we need to do a biopsy. We’re gonna go down and scope and take a look.’ And there was a lump down there.
Then, after a few weeks, it started to get hard to swallow, ’cause the lump was getting bigger — the tumor was getting bigger. So I went and did the typical treatment for it, which is chemo and radiation, and it did not work. And by the way, it’s a fairly curable cancer, especially with HPV — there’s a high percentage rate of success with it, of cure.”