June 9, 2019

A Guest Post by a Head and Neck Cancer Survivor

The Post below was written by an inspirational lady from Auckland who has traveled the cancer road for a long time. The subject she is writing about is important to everyone, not just those of us who have fought cancer.

Please take five minutes to read her wise words, and please follow her advice and share this with your family and friends. Awareness from reading this could save your life as well as your loved one's lives. 

If you would like to read more about "Maureen's Journey", please click on the link in the panel  to the right.




I’m older than you, please listen
Campbell’s Bay Primary School was closed for a while in the early 50s because of the polio epidemic and when the vaccine became available we were first injected with the Salk vaccine and some years later (1962?) lined up at school and made to drink the famous Sabin vaccine from little paper cups.
There wasn’t much objection from the anti-vaccination brigade. Children were being paralyzed and placed in iron lungs. There was a worldwide panic. Beaches were closed.
People of my vintage might remember reading classic novels where there was always a character whose life was changed forever by smallpox scars. I read that smallpox was so bad in London that the vaccination became compulsory for a while in 1863.
What about TB? Katherine Mansfield.
Measles was milder but also dangerous. I think I was about 9 when I got it. I was in bed for two weeks with the windows covered in dark gray army blankets. Children’s writer Roald Dahl lost his nine year old daughter to measles. Anti-vaxers seem hellbent on letting this scourge return.
Now I’m in the cancer support volunteering business after several brushes with head and neck cancer which has disfigured and disabled me a little bit. My cancer was not HPV related but similar in its treatment to those that are.
HPV related head and neck cancer responds better to treatment than non HPV but a lot of patients still suffer a world of grief. Four of my head and neck cancer friends are currently facing awful long term effects of treatment and one has metastases to the lungs.
Guys, this type of head and neck cancer is almost totally preventable!
When it was realised that the HPV vaccination could prevent throat cancer it started to be offered to boys as well as girls. It has been very effective in preventing cervical cancer in women.
In our little circle of similar countries it was first offered in Australia where the inventor of the vaccine is from and then NZ and the UK.
Sadly the uptake has not been stellar in NZ since it became freely available in 2017. Vaccinations are optional and parents might vaccinate their kids against measles, mumps and chicken pox (some don’t) but fail to have their 12 year olds vaccinated against HPV.
Why? The sex stigma probably, as well as the loud voices of the anti-vaccination brigade, now amplified by social media.
It’s hard for some parents to admit to themselves that their babies are going to have sex and indeed probably oral sex which is the main way the type of HNC caused by the HPV virus is transmitted.
It’s hard to admit that for herd immunity you have to vaccinate everyone at 11 or 12 before they are sexually active. Maybe this fact will help: they need to be vaccinated then for best results because that is when the body takes up the vaccine best.
I haven’t been squeaky clean when it comes to vaccinations. I’d heard vaguely of the shingles jab being funded for people over 70. Did I take up the offer? No. I was invincible.
How wrong I was as my friends on Facebook told me last night. Shingles in AWFUL. I have an appointment at 11.45 today.
Vaccinations have changed the face of health care since the late 1600s. The world waits for vaccinations against the Zika virus and Ebola. We can only dream of a vaccine against cancer.
But wait, there IS one! HPV cancers like cervical cancer, anal cancer and throat cancer CAN be prevented. There’s a VACCINE.
Get your kids vaccinated now to prevent them from getting this horrible cancer in their young middle age!

              

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