Poison drummer Rikki Rockett was staring down a terrifying possibility as he battled cancer: Doctors might have to remove his tongue.
After chemotherapy and radiation failed to stop the disease, the rocker began recording messages for his young children so they could remember the sound of his voice.
“I was recording pieces of information for my kids so they could watch it, because the next step was to cut my tongue out if they had to,” Rockett (born Richard Allan Ream) told Fox News Digital. “And I wanted them to know what I sounded like and my advice to them growing up, and I wanted them to hear it from me. I wanted them to understand what I was, what I thought I was or would become.”
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Rockett, whose weight dropped to 161 pounds during treatment, said the possibility of losing his tongue left him fearing he might not survive much longer.
“I would’ve most likely had a feeding tube,” he said. “I don’t think I would’ve lived much longer. It would’ve added another year or two. Some people do make it. Some people get all of that done and live for a long time. But I think a lot of times, with the way it was going with me, I don’t think I would’ve survived, quite honestly.”
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Now 65, Rockett says he has been free of cancer for a decade. His memoir, “Ghost Notes: My Life in Poison,” chronicles his rise to stardom during the decadent ’80s and his grueling health battle.
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In 2015, Rockett said he and his family developed sore throats. They were all prescribed antibiotics, but while everyone else recovered, his symptoms persisted.
Rockett returned to the doctor, who examined his nose and throat with a scope. During the examination, the doctor spotted something suspicious.
“I don’t know if it’s cancer, but it’s suspicious, and we got to do a biopsy,” Rockett recalled his doctor telling him. “My life changed at that very second.”
According to the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance, Rockett was diagnosed with HPV-related throat cancer in 2015. The disease affected the base of his tongue.
According to his memoir, Rockett had experienced a sore throat and a swollen lymph node for more than a month. It hurt every time he swallowed. After doctors diagnosed him with cancer, he received radiation and chemotherapy.
“Before long, I couldn’t eat solid food anymore,” he wrote. “My weight dropped dramatically because all I could manage was soup, shakes and water. Eventually, I couldn’t eat or drink anything at all.”
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Rockett wrote: “I’ve got throat cancer. At its worst, I struggle to swallow even a gulp of water. This morning, my son had to watch tears running down my cheeks as I tried to eat a spoonful of soup. He looked terrified.”
Rockett told Fox News Digital that he eventually “wound up in stage 4.” For three months, he received radiation five days a week, along with chemotherapy weekly, but he said the treatment failed. Doctors then discussed removing his tongue, according to Rockett.
Rockett was terrified. In his memoir, he wrote that he believed he had only a “40 or 50 percent chance of living.” But he refused to give up.
“Even with all the treatment, it still didn’t work,” he recalled. “So then I got on an experimental drug combination at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, and it worked incredibly well. It’s one of those things where, if it works, it’s amazing. If it doesn’t, you kind of go, ‘Wow, maybe I wasted my time.’ So I had to roll the dice. And I did. And when I rolled it, thankfully, it came out in my favor.”
According to UC San Diego Health, Rockett participated in a clinical trial involving a combination of two drugs: pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and epacadostat. Rockett was declared free of throat cancer in July 2016.
The treatment took a toll. At one point, Rockett’s tongue swelled so much that he feared he might choke. Soon, however, a scan offered hope.
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“The crazy thing was that my first PET scan showed that 90 percent of the cancer was already gone,” Rockett wrote. “And by the second PET scan, it was all gone. It was as if the angels had come down and blessed me. I mean, it was unbelievable.”
Rockett wrote that his doctor seemed just as surprised by the results but explained that treatment needed to continue to reduce the risk of the cancer returning.
But Rockett’s health challenges were far from over.
“Some eight months into the process, nothing was coming up, but I was getting high white blood cell counts,” Rockett wrote.
“So, they got concerned about that, and to cut a long story short, I wound up with something called CML, chronic myeloid leukemia, and it’s a predisposition thing. It’s a translocation between BCR-ABL, the chromosomes. You’re prone to it if, like me, you have the Philadelphia chromosome. Of course, it absolutely freaked me out. I mean, I just went through one cancer, and now I was facing another one.”
Chronic myeloid leukemia is a type of blood cancer often associated with an acquired genetic abnormality known as the Philadelphia chromosome.
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“The hematologist, however, took everything in stride, and when we met, she was super calm,” he wrote. “She told me, ‘You picked the best leukemia you could. It’s very treatable, and sometimes curable.’ Dr. Jaimeson would be my doctor for the very long foreseeable future, and I was blessed to have her.”
“So, all that happened was that she put me on new medication, which I’m still on. It has some nasty side effects, but the best side effect is that CML has been 100 percent in remission! Zero detection for a number of years now! There must be a reason why I’m still here, I think to this day.”
Looking back, Rockett told Fox News Digital his medical team “actually saved my life.”
Rockett still lives with the lasting effects of his treatment. But a decade after his throat cancer battle, he’s focused less on what the disease took from him and more on what he lived to see — his children growing up.
“Sometimes my voice gets rough, or I get dry,” he said. “I get very dry because my salivary glands got toasted with the radiation. But I’m cancer-free, and I’ve been cancer free for 10 years.”
Rockett has no plans to slow down. He’s been keeping busy performing with his band, Rockett Mafia.
“I’m not out of gas yet,” he said with a smile. “I still got stuff to do. And I love playing because I want my kids to see me, and they have. They’ve been to some Poison concerts. I wanted them to see me, and they did. I got that wish.”
For Rockett, beating cancer meant getting the time he once feared he wouldn’t have. And he’s not wasting a single second, he insisted.
“A big part of it was fighting for my kids,” he reflected. “There’s no question that was a big chunk of my fight.”