Poison drummer Rikki Rockett opened up about the harrowing details of his oral cancer diagnosis and treatment in a recent interview on Get On The Bus.
Rockett described the grueling standard treatment he underwent after his diagnosis in June 2015, which ultimately failed to stop the disease.
“Once I was diagnosed [in June 2015], I did the whole normal sort of path to be treated for it, standard of care, as it was. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work,” Rockett said. “I remember the doctor told me, he goes, ‘What are you doing for the next three months?’ He goes, ”Cause this is gonna be your job.’ And I said, ‘Okay. Uh, nothing, I guess.’ So, I did 37 rounds of radiation, five days a week, where they make a mask and they put you down on a metal thing. They twist these things so your head can’t move, and the machine comes over. It’s very scary stuff.”
He went on to explain how the cancer spread despite the intense treatment, forcing him to look for alternative options.
“And then you get chemo. I had that. I had a good type, a better type of chemo — Martha Stewart drug, they call it. At least I thought it was better. But it didn’t work,” Rockett continued. “And at the end of the five months, because it was three months of treatment, then two months you have to wait until everything calms down so they can do the imaging, and it was like it had jumped to the other side, and I had some on the front of my tongue now.”
With few options left, Rockett sought out an immunotherapy clinical trial in San Diego. That decision would prove to be a turning point in his fight against the disease.
“And there wasn’t that many choices. But there was something called immunotherapy. There was a doctor in San Diego that was heading up some clinical trials, and I did some research on him, and I said, ‘I’m gonna meet this guy.’ They made the introduction… I got in a car, and met with him. And he said, ‘I think I can get you on a trial.’ I said, ‘Well, my surgeon told me I may not have time.’ I said, ‘If I let this go and try immunotherapy, and therapy doesn’t work, it’ll be too late to do surgery.’ And he goes, ‘I don’t think so, ’cause I don’t think that’s the case. I think if it doesn’t look like we’re going the right direction, I’ll get you on something to shrink the tumor right away. It’ll buy more time. We’ll figure this out. Somehow we’re gonna figure this out.'”
Rockett said the treatment brought swift and lasting results, marking a decade of remission this past summer.
“So, within nine weeks, I was 90% cured. Within another few weeks, it was gone. It’s never been back. I celebrate[d] my 10-year anniversary on July 13th,” Rockett said.
Rockett’s ordeal began with a persistent sore throat that led him to an ear, nose and throat specialist. A biopsy uncovered a small tumor at the base of his tongue, and his diagnosis was identified as HPV-related oral squamous cell carcinoma, a form of head and neck cancer tied to human papillomavirus infection.
Despite nine rounds of chemotherapy and 37 rounds of radiation, the cancer spread to his lymph nodes. Rockett then pursued the experimental immunotherapy trial at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health. Within roughly two months, his tumor had shrunk by more than 90 percent; by the 14- to 18-week mark, it was gone entirely.
Reflecting on the choice he faced before entering the trial, Rockett described the stakes plainly: “The options that I was given were chemo, (which would) buy me time, (or) surgery, which would render me speechless, literally, or this new thing called immunotherapy.”
