Living with consequences

Mac Olsen
South Peace News

Rick Bender lives with the consequences of chewing tobacco, having had parts of his mouth removed 17 years ago due to cancer. Bender, who hails from Kentucky, was at E.W. Pratt on Oct. 11 to discuss his experience with students. He explained that three things influenced him to use chewing tobacco: peer pressure, sports figures and advertisements. He also said that he influenced his younger brother to use chewing tobacco. Bender started out with just a couple of cans every two or three days. (Bender says that one Canadian can of chewing tobacco is the equivalent of two to three packs of cigarettes.) But by February 1988, he was on one can a day, and he could feel a sore in his mouth at that time, but didn’t think anything of it. The sore grew, and early in 1989 Bender had to see a doctor, who performed a biopsy on it. Bender learned that he had undifferentiated squamous cell carcinoma. This cancer is very aggressive, and the younger and healthier you are, the faster it spreads, he says. Bender had his first operation shortly after the discovery. He was in surgery for 12 ˝ hours, and spent nearly a week in intensive care. Later, he had radiation treatment, but then he had to have three more surgeries because his jaw was deteriorating. The result was that he lost half of his jaw, all but eight of his teeth, one-third of his tongue, and part of the right side of his neck and shoulder. He cannot lift his right arm over his head because of the partial loss of shoulder movement. Bender also showed several graphic photos of mouths that had deteriorated due to tobacco use. Bender says that a person who uses tobacco is 50 times more likes to get cancer than someone does not use it. He emphasizes that not everyone who smokes or chews tobacco will get cancer, and insists that he is not preaching to students about tobacco use. But they should consider the risks. “Regardless of how old you are, the day you start (using tobacco) is the day you start putting your body at risk,” he says. Early detection makes the difference, says Bender, and he encourages people to go to their doctor or dentist if their stomach or throat remains sore after 10 days. He is critical of the tobacco companies, insisting that they target 12- and 13-year-old children for all forms of tobacco, as well as college students and others. The tobacco companies spend $12 billion annually to advertise their products, he adds. Bender takes his anti-chewing tobacco message all over North America. Kristine Maurice, who runs the Alberta Spit Tobacco Education Program in High Prairie, invited him to speak at Pratt.

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