Exodus’ Tom Hunting recently chatted with Radioactive MikeZ and discussed how cancer diagnosis possibly changed and saved his life. The drummer praised science, pointing out how important it was to get the proper diagnosis and treatment.
Hunting discussed that his body would lose weight, and he wouldn’t feel hungry before his diagnosis. The rocker then stated that there were times when he would feel like this before due to his anxiety, but this time, his instinct told him that this was something different, as it would ‘linger’ around his body.
The Exodus icon then decided to see a doctor, but they couldn’t understand what was wrong since his scans and tests were regular. However, after an endoscopy, where they’d sent a camera down to his stomach, the doctors found cancer and diagnosed him with two different types of the disease.
Tom Hunting recalled the period and how the diagnosis saved his life:
“I urge anybody who’s having a gut problem, if [the problems] persist, they’re gonna do a CT scan first. Tell them you want an endoscopy. That’s the best test out there. It probably saved my a**, looking back. I was taking antacid stuff, like Pepcid and whatever.
And I probably took that Zantac drug that they’re talking about causing cancer. I brought that up to my doctors, too Zantac has a lot of the same stuff that your Pepcids and your other ones have in it too. And at the end of the day, you shouldn’t have to take that sh*t for, like, a year.
So, that was there. It was an esophageal type of cancer that showed up in what is called the cardinal region of my stomach; it was forming in there and causing me not to eat. I couldn’t burp. That was another one. I had this tumor inside me, and I couldn’t burp. And as soon as they gave me my first dose of chemo before the surgery, something loosened up in there, and I was able to burp. It felt so good.”
The musician then detailed his cancer diagnosis and the following operation:
“[I] ended up having two different kinds of cancer. They found a tumor inside my stomach. So then they do what they call a laparoscopic surgery, which they send two things inside of you. They make two cuts, and they send a camera inside of you to physically explore the region and the outside region.
And mine was in a weird spot; mine was in my stomach. So, okay, they wanted to check out the outside of the stomach lining — some crazy testing that they’ve gotta do, but it’s all part of the process to make you a candidate for the surgery.
When they did the laparoscopic [procedure] with me, it’s two incisions, it’s a camera that goes in and another tool that moves your organs out of the way for this camera to go do its job. So they found nodules of mesothelioma on my abdomen wall.”
He continued:
“They took out 42 lymph nodes and my stomach and all this crazy surgery — like two surgeries in one surgery — and they didn’t find one speck of cancer in one of the lymph nodes, which is, like, ‘Holy sh*t.’ If you’re going through it, that’s the f*cking jackpot. The best three words you can hear are ‘nothing to see.’
Fortunately, it’s been… After the surgery, I got six months or five and a half months of immunotherapy because they found out that the chemo didn’t affect the cancer like they wanted it to, so they did the surgery. It trains your immune system to go out and kill rogue cells that it finds its pretty high-tech sh*t. And I’m a beneficiary of that too.
I’m thankful. And I’m definitely one of the lucky ones. Science is killer, and what they’re able to do for people in my situation and others nowadays is leaps and bounds from what they could do even five years ago.”
So, it’s undoubtedly great news that Hunting has now fully recovered with the proper diagnosis. When the musician’s instincts told him to see a doctor, he didn’t dismiss his weight loss as a signal of anxiety. In the end, with the proper treatment, he survived and is grateful to science.
