Strike Three

Below I identified two causes of my cancer, smoking in "Smokey Joe" and anti-psoriasis medication in "Risky Business." Today the third: human papillomavirus, or HPV.

I guess I have, or had, HPV. It may sound brave to reveal my connection to a sexually-transmitted disease; actually it's common. The statistics jump around, but it seems safe to say that a majority of American women, and lots of American men, have or had it. This "have or had" stuff comes from the fact that it seems to go away - your immune system can take care of it. My immune system is pretty funky - hence the psoriatic arthritis - and maybe that's why HPV caught up with me.

HPV has become well known as a cause of cervical cancer. Accordingly it's viewed as a women's issue, and a girls' issue, where the discussion has focused on the need to vaccinate girls before they become sexually active.

The same strain of HPV seems to be a principal cause of my type of cancer in men. The research is compelling. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine lays it all out in detail, and there appear to be plenty of others. Plus my doc identified it, without much qualification, in my case.

So, two things to say.

The first may be important. HPV may be killing as many men with head and neck cancer as it does women with cervical cancer. So the vaccine should be given to boys as well as girls. I haven't heard that said much; I am way past that stage of parenting, so maybe it's well known. It should be.

The second point is that if this cancer wins, I will have been felled by an STD. Or, more romantically, killed by a lady.

Like Sam Cooke. Not so bad, right?