Oral Cancer Strikes Out

Doesn’t seem possible but we’re only a few days away from one of our own dental practice rituals of the summer: our Oral Cancer Awareness Night at the Ballpark.

The Rancho Cucamonga Quakes have been our way more than gracious hosts for the last 13 years. And I can easily remember Year One; months before, one of my best DDS-type buddies and I performed spring training oral cancer exams for our favorite Major League club, the Angels, and a few months later we were in Anaheim seeing the Halos win their one and only World Series.

Back in early 2001, over at the Universal Amphitheater, Hall of Fame announcer Joe Garagiola spoke to some 2000 dentists and team members about the National Pastime and one of its ugly secrets…and he showed us a video. The video was “Tragic Choice: The Bob Leslie Story.”

The 10-minute film began with a young man sharing some of his boyhood baseball dreams and his fascination with the round tin container many major leaguers carried around in their uniform back pocket.

Bob soon began using spit tobacco and continued using it into his mid-twenties...just like many 80’s marquee professional athletes (some of whom actually endorsed the stuff on network television.)

Just five months after finally quitting the habit, Leslie, then a high school baseball coach, was diagnosed with oral cancer. The lesion inside his lower lip marked the exact location where he had held the spit tobacco. Bob’s oral cancer diagnosis came within days of his learning he’d soon become a dad.

Oral cancer treatment can be heartbreakingly invasive and disfiguring. In Leslie’s case, it meant the removal of his chin and lower teeth.

A second surgery produced an even more crushing diagnosis. The cancer had invaded surrounding tissue clear up to the base of Bob’s brain. On hearing the bad news Leslie called friends and family, hoping they could somehow help his wife and daughter after he was gone; he was 27 years old.

Five months short of his 32nd birthday, Bob Leslie died of oral cancer. And I keep seeing him as that 12 year-old little leaguer.

Leslie died within 5 years of the diagnosis; the 5-year survival rate of about 50% for oral cancer is less than that of breast cancer, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer. Oral cancer is the only cancer not to decline in its incidence over the last 50 years. One American dies of oral cancer every hour. 25% of the 30,000 Americans diagnosed with oral cancer every year do not smoke or use spit tobacco. As of the Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health in 2000, only 14% of the U.S. population knows they’ve ever had an oral cancer exam.

I never used to think of Southern California as spit tobacco territory. And each time I’m doing an oral cancer exam in the office, I still see Bob Leslie.

Visit your dentist. And demand an oral cancer exam.

Hope we see you at the ballpark on June13.