Author Talks About the Steps Leading Up to His Cancer Diagnosis

Michael D. Becker, cancer survivor and author of “A Walk With Purpose: Memoir of a Bioentrepreneur” discusses how he realized that he had head and neck cancer.

It was the day before Thanksgiving 2015 when Becker spotted a lump on his neck. He immediately called his physician, who was able to see him that day. The doctor told him that it may be some sort of an infection, and gave him antibiotics, telling him to see an ear, nose, throat doctor if it didn’t clear up in about a week. Sure enough, a week later the lump did not go away, so off Becker went to the ENT.

After the ENT conducted a biopsy, Becker learned that he had squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Having a background in oncology, Becker knew that it likely started elsewhere, and conducted some research on the disease, which said that many of the men his age who get this disease are diagnosed with it in stage 3 or 4. Sure enough, Becker was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer that started in the right tonsil and then spread to the lymph node.