New-ish Health Concern for Men

[GSG]

ERIC STATLER'S WISDOM teeth were impacted. Inconvenient, sure, but certainly not life threatening. As general manager of a hotel in Idaho's picturesque Clearwater County, Statler spent his 12-hour days charming and chatting up guests, which meant he couldn't afford a week of bloated cheeks and Percocet. Nor, given his myriad responsibilities at the hotel, did Statler feel he could justify time off for at-home recovery. So he procrastinated until the pain was almost unbearable and eating a turkey sandwich felt like chewing tacks.

 

Two months after he finally underwent the operation, Statler was still waiting for relief—his molars were gone but the pain remained. Not only did he find it excruciating to chew, but now he was losing weight and beginning to feel emotionally beat down. He decided to return to his dentist, who sent him to a local ear, nose, and throat specialist the same day. The ENT needed just minutes to solve the mystery: He took one look at Statler and said, "Son, I think you have cancer."

 

Statler couldn't believe it. A former college athlete, he still ran nearly every day, never smoked, and drank only a few beers a week.

 

"My wife used to say I was the healthiest man she'd ever known," he says. The average oral cancer patient, by contrast, is a lifelong smoker or heavy drinker in his mid-60s.

 

But the definition of "average" has slowly been changing, as more and more oral cancer diagnoses are being handed down across the country to otherwise healthy young men. Statler soon learned that he was part of this emerging subset of oral cancer patients, a group of guys who all share one unlikely risk factor: HPV, an undetectable and untreatable STD that may act like tinder for tumors.

 

http://www.menshealth.com/health/sex-cancer

[Excel]

Scary, I had always thought HPV was largely a concern for women considering the risk for cervical cancer. I was forced to get the vaccine and now I'm happy I did.

 

On a side note I'm also glad I had my wisdom teeth removed. That's what I thought this article was originally hinting at because I like this guy, had impacted wisdom teeth. Before I had them taken out I suffered from bad fevers and headaches...eventually decided to go through with it after my dentist saw a what looked like a cyst in my right jaw....turned out it had been a cyst but had grown into a 1 cm³ tumor (sounds small but is actually quite big). Anyhow, the take away from both stories is that prevention is everything