This and.....Plantiers Wart said:Keep winning Curt.
Curt Schilling, the former Red Sox pitcher and ESPN analyst, announced today during the WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon that he was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma -- which is cancer in the mouth -- in February.
"This all came about from a dog bite," Schilling said. "I got bitten by a dog and I had some damage to my finger and I went to see a doctor, and the day that I went to see the doctor, I was driving and I went to rub my neck and I felt a lump on the left side of my neck. And I knew immediately it wasn't normal. So there happened to be an ENT [Ear, Nose, and Throat] right next door to the hand doctor, and I thought what the heck, let me just stop in and see and so I waited in the office and went in there and they did the biopsy, and two days later, they diagnosed me with squamous cell carcinoma.
"You know what the amazing thing was? And I was just dumbfounded by it. You've just been told you have cancer and you walk out into the public and the world's still going on and it was really a challenge to wrap my head around that. My second thought was, 'Yeah, really, you think I can handle this too?' So after a couple of tests, I got sent over to Brigham & Women's and Dana-Farber and that's where I met Dr. Haddad and the amazing team of people that got me through my treatment."
Dr. Robert Haddad, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, described Schilling's cancer.
"It's mouth cancer," Haddad said. "Cancer of the lining of the mouth."
In April, Schilling's wife Shonda — herself a melanoma survivor — tweeted that Schilling had finished radiation.
On Facebook, Schilling wrote, “To the many, many amazing folks at Dana Farber, [Brigham and Women’s Hospital] and [Massachusetts General Hospital], thank you and to the amazing team these last 5 months. I’ve been told my cancer is in remission, start the 5-year clock.”
On June 25, Schilling tweeted: "As of yesterday I am in remission. Start the 5 year clock!"
Schilling, who spent four seasons of his 20-year major league career with the Red Sox and was instrumental in their World Series victories in 2004 and '07, joined ESPN as a studio analyst for ESPN's "Baseball Tonight'' in 2010.
In December, he was chosen to replace Orel Hershiser for the high-profile role as a color analyst on ESPN's "Sunday Night Baseball" broadcasts alongside Dan Shulman and John Kruk.
Schilling pitched for five teams during his major league career, winning 216 games and compiling 3,116 strikeouts. He made six All-Star teams, won at least 21 games in a season three times -- including in 2004 with the Red Sox. He won his first of three World Series titles with the 2001 Diamondbacks.
Schilling had found his niche as an analyst after enduring some difficult times in recent years. A video game business suffered a prominent and costly failure in Rhode Island, one that cost the state tens of millions of dollars and Schilling the bulk of his baseball fortune. He revealed to the Globe's Stan Grossfeld in an August 2013 story that he suffered a heart attack in November 2011 that required surgery to implant a stent in an artery.
Chad Finn contributed to this report.
doctormoist said:Mike & Mike were commenting on this and mentioned Curt has lost 75 lbs. and, after having his salivary glands removed, he can no longer taste food. Not sure how accurate that last bit is, since chemo/radiation can cause temporary loss of taste and saliva helps present molecules to taste buds, but salivary glands are not absolutely necessary for for sensing taste. Anyway, the man has been through so much, I wish him well.
drtooth said:
If they had to remove any salivary glands, it would create a severe case of xerostomia (dry mouth) and will severely alter taste sensation.
Van Everyman said:Agreed. Also, with this happening so soon after Tony Gwynn passing, here's to hoping that the league is about to get tougher on smokeless tobacco. The stuff is poison.
wade boggs chicken dinner said:It's interesting that G38 attributes the cancer to chewless tobacco. These days, a more common cause of squamous cell cancer in the mouth is the HPV virus - which is what Michael Douglas (and Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan) were diagnosed with.
This is different from what Tony Gywnn has.
But they all suck.
Doctors can’t discuss Jim Kelly’s specific situation because the details are all private, but there are a few things that can be interpreted about the Hall of Fame quarterback’s condition.
For instance, we know that the cancer has spread to the maxillary sinus and adjacent areas. The maxilla is the upper jawbone, and also forms part of the base of the skull, and the sinus is a cavity within the bone.
Cancer that arises in the oral cavity and grows upward would invade the maxilla and extend into the sinus as a gray mass. That enlargement could have happened over several months without causing any specific symptoms.
If the tumor invades or presses on nerves, it can cause severe pain. Jim Kelly had a lot of pain and we’re told that was due to involvement of the infraorbital nerve. The infraorbital nerve is directly adjacent to the maxilla, and involvement of that nerve anywhere along its course would explain pain in the face and jaw.
If the tumor has spread within the bone, there may be tiny clusters of cells that can’t be seen by a surgeon and can’t be successfully removed without a very extensive operation. But chemotherapy can reach those cells, and radiation can cover the whole region they occupy.
Thanks for posting these links. I have some familiarity with Jim Kelly's story. It's pretty tragic. Also, typically if one is a non-tobacco user, the prognosis is generally better, but I've not found anything in the reporting about Kelly to indicate that.Schilling said today that his is the same type Jim Kelly is battling.
This report offers some technical details on the ex-Buffalo Bill's diagnosis:
Coincidentally, Kelly flew to NYC yesterday for tests and scans to determine "how much impact chemotherapy and radiation treatments have had on the cancerous tumors."
The treatment does affect the vocal cords/voice. But just like the taste buds and salivary glands, all of this can come back.Is his voice different from the treatment, or just because we haven't heard it in a long time and he was on some different device than he usually broadcasts from?
Glad he's in remission. Sounds like he went through hell.
Very powerful. Thank you for posting.soxhop411 said:https://twitter.com/ESPNPR/status/509703307599040512
Here is the interview for those who missed it
What factors are you referring to?I can't listen at work, but did he mention any of the other factors that sometimes play into contracting mouth cancer?
wade boggs chicken dinner said:What factors are you referring to?
He only mentioned chewing. Spent a lot of time on it. Ravitch added Tony Gwynn as another example, even though Gywnn had a completely different kind of cancer.
Dalton Jones said:Curt Shilling is one of the most intelligent athletes I have ever seen. He is a no bullshit guy. He was that way on the mound and he is that way in life. Just remarkable.
It's my understanding that while alcohol does make your chances worse, tobacco is multiple times more likely to lead to cancer than alcohol. In fact, I would suspect that HPV is responsible for many more throat and neck cancers than alcohol use by itself.Alcohol, especially when combined with tobacco, is linked to Oral Cancers. Also linked by itself. And you won't get beer our of baseball.
Detts said:
Tony Gwynn did not get his cancer from smokeless tobacco.
http://regressing.deadspin.com/did-chewing-tobacco-kill-tony-gwynn-1592459255
http://www.tendercaredental.net/baseball-player-tony-gwynn-undergoes-surgery-for-parotid-gland-cancer/
wade boggs chicken dinner said:At any rate, the treatment that Schilling went through is brutal, and congrats to him for getting through it and continuing to fight through it. I'm sure that having no taste buds and no saliva and recovering from having the inside of your throat and mouth burned up can't make it easy to get the necessary calories in.
maufman said:
Apparently, losing your taste buds due to chemo doesn't make food tasteless; it makes it taste terrible. Someone I knew who went through it said everything tasted like wet cardboard.
Jesus. This is a brutal, painful read. Regardless of whether you bring these things on yourself, no one really deserves to go through that. It sounds like it was a far harder road than he had let on before, and while his quality of life sounds like it dropped, at least he still has his life! Crazy stuff.joyofsox said:Long article by Jackie MacMullan on Schilling and what he has gone through as a result of his cancer.
http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/11754095/curt-schilling-not-hiding-scars
Hoplite said:
Chemo tends to attack fast growing cells, since that's exactly what cancer tends to be. And tastebuds are some of the fastest growing cells in the human body, hence why people's sense of taste is altered. It's not always as simple as dulling tastbuds, so that everything tastes like cardboard. It often causes foods to taste different. For example, someone I was close to couldn't eat peaches because they tasted like ravioli. They also reported a metallic taste. One of their favorite foods became "pickle, cheese sandwhiches" which included rye bread, mayonnaise, a sharp cheese and pickles. I actually thought they were pretty good too. They tasted strong but didn't cause stomach discomfort.
HANG IN THERE!AMS25 said:
Yep, on my fourth month of chemo, and I really can't eat tomato-based foods right now. Six more weeks!
donutogre said:HANG IN THERE!
I unabashedly love Curt Schilling and that article and quotes like this break my heart."I brought this on myself," Schilling said in a lengthy interview in Kansas City earlier this week. "For the last two years I've had to stand in front of my wife and kids and explain to them, 'I lost $50 million and my company went bankrupt, and it was all my fault.'
SoxinMaine said:My wife is fighting stage IV cancer and the part of the story that hits with me is when G38 talks about depression...Although completely understandable that someone would get down when fighting cancer, I don't think I was fully prepared for just how bad the depression can get. Thankfully my wife has a great support system and the folks at Dana Farber have been amazing.
Congrats to Schill on his courageous battle! Hoping the best for him and his family.
Beware when someone starts off a post with, "Not to sound insensitive"... Seriously, though, this would have been a pretty ignorant statement in 1984, nevermind 2014.Hoplite said:Not to sound insensitive, but when people knowingly take part in harmful acts like chewing, smoking, substance abuse, etc. they're adults that are aware of the consequences. It sounds like Schilling has manned up and taken responsibility for his actions, which I am glad for. I'm tired of people making excuses for smoking, chewing, etc. when similarly harmful acts like substance abuse are frowned upon.
Bone Chips said:Beware when someone starts off a post with, "Not to sound insensitive"... Seriously, though, this would have been a pretty ignorant statement in 1984, nevermind 2014.
Well it's not as bad as his first I don't mean to be insensitive post in this thread right after he announced he had cancer.Hoplite said:
I don't mean to be insensitive, but Schilling strikes me as the type of guy who would say exactly what type of cancer he had if it was something serious and would say "cancer" if it was something that could potentially be removed with a relatively quick procedure.
Bone Chips said:Beware when someone starts off a post with, "Not to sound insensitive"... Seriously, though, this would have been a pretty ignorant statement in 1984, nevermind 2014.
Glad to hear Curt coming out and telling his story. I "knowingly" chewed Copenhagen for 22 years. But I can assure you that when I took my first dip during Freshman baseball tryouts in 1983, I had no idea what a fucking scourge of an addiction it would end up being. If anything good can come out of this it's the education that a guy like Curt Schilling can provide. I have no doubt that his ordeal will help save lives.
I liked Curt Schilling the infallible baseball hero, but the all too human Curt Schilling the past few years is most likely a better person and an even better father. In his own personal life I have a feeling his best years are yet to come.
Yeah, it was the "bulletproof" part I was referring to. You're right, in 1983 there was good awareness out there as to the long term consequences of chewing tobacco. But of course no 15 year old ever thinks 1) longterm, and 2) that the rules apply to him.Average Reds said:I agree with you that this is probably not the thread to be criticizing Curt for his smokeless tobacco use, since he's paid an awful price for it and does not appear to be avoiding his own responsibility for his condition, which is precisely the message we should encourage.
That's part of why I find the bolded to be so troubling. I'm right about the same age as you and I have to say that if you didn't understand in 1983 what a scourge of an addiction smokeless tobacco would end up being, that can only be chalked up to willful blindness.
I get how it happens - when we are young we feel bulletproof and it's easy to ignore or diminish the significance of long-term risks. And if I read your post right, I'm glad that you have been able to get through it.