POISON drummer Rikki Rockett recently completed nine rounds of chemotherapy and seven weeks of radiation after being diagnosed with oral cancer this past summer. The 54-year-old rocker will undergo a PET scan in February to determine if the treatment was successful.
Rockett spoke about his cancer battle for the first time publicly during an appearance on the December 14 edition of Eddie Trunk’s SiriusXM satellite radio show, “Eddie Trunk Live”.
Recalling how he found out he had cancer, Rockett said: “[In] June, I kind of got sick. I had this horrible cold, sore-throat thing, and they were scoping me and they were doing biopsies, and nothing was coming up. And finally a doctor at USC did a biopsy and took a look and he said, ‘I believe you have oral cancer.’ And what it was is a tumor at the base of my tongue… This is very similar to Bruce Dickinson [IRON MAIDEN], very similar to [actor] Michael Douglas, similar to Tom Hamilton [AEROSMITH], as far as I know; I don’t know the details of his. And two adjacent lymph nodes that it kind of… Normally, it does spread to the lymph nodes; that’s typical. That’s how you find out you have it ninety percent of the time.”
