Words Still Mine: HPV Throat Cancer Survivor Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe HPV-related throat cancer, most often in the tonsil or the base of the tongue. Many began with a painless lump in the neck, a one-sided sore throat taken for strep, an earache treated as an infection or hoarseness put down to teaching. Writers include a radio breakfast presenter, a court interpreter, a translator, a pastor, a hairdresser, a line cook and a baker who lost their taste, a drilling rig worker who had teeth pulled before radiation and a cattle farmer five hours from the nearest cancer centre. They write from Dayton to Pune, Gothenburg, Johannesburg and outback Queensland. The stories cover weeks of daily radiation and chemotherapy, a cancer whose source could not be found at first, a clinical trial of lighter treatment, a feeding tube refused and then accepted, speech and swallowing therapy, a jaw that tightened, hearing aids and a thyroid pill a year later. Couples talk through what HPV means between them, parents explain it to children, a daughter becomes her father's interpreter and a church runs a meal rota. Not every recovery is complete. One woman is still on a feeding tube two years on, a man's cancer returned in his lung, another faced a jaw problem eight years later, and the night before a scan still unsettles many.

Who it's for

For anyone newly diagnosed with HPV-related throat cancer, in the hard middle weeks of radiation or living with what changed afterwards, and for the partners, children and friends beside them.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 231 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.