Flush the Butts
By Keith Olbermann
9:41 p.m. ET, August 8, 2005

SECAUCUS -- I wrote here yesterday of Peter Jennings' death from lung cancer. The entry yesterday -- as nearly all the talk - was, suitably and appropriately, about the man.

Now, about the disease -- and you.

The statistics are staggering. By the time this day is over, just in this country, 447 people will have died of lung cancer -- 1,562 from all forms of cancer. Nobody did a better job of remembering the part of this sadness that we are trying to forget than Tom Brokaw, yesterday morning, on the Today show: "To go through this difficult time seemed particularly cruel to me. But I know Peter would want us to say, this happens to families every day, and we can't forget about them either."

To that point, the story now of somebody who quite probably should've been in Peter Jennings' shoes, except for dumb, undeserved luck.

Me.

'So,' I thought, as I was hunched over, spitting blood into the garbage can in my office, half an hour before the newscast, 'this is it -- this is cancer.' It gets uglier, I understood that -- so ugly that those who've survived can't even describe how much uglier it gets.

Still, that imagery that I want to have stick in your mind, is pretty good: They've just had to cut something out, from inside your body because they think it's cancer. And because it doesn't heal up right away, every couple of hours the coagulation breaks and your mouth fills up with blood -- and all of a sudden, hunching over a garbage can, spitting it out, is the best available option.

I'm not doing some sort of bad taste 'what-if' on the passing of Peter Jennings -- I have had a tumor removed from the roof of my mouth.

It was benign -- that makes all the difference in the world, of course.

Except for the part -- where it doesn't make any difference. Because, I was in that position -- spitting globs of myself into a garbage can in Secaucus, New Jersey, entirely through my own doing, my own fault.

And maybe there's the chance that if the loss of Peter Jennings hasn't impacted you, that maybe if you listen to my story you might get smart enough in a hurry -- or scared enough in a hurry -- so that you don't wind up spitting blood into the garbage can, and spending five days like me, thinking you had cancer -- or actually having it.

There are some things in life you don't have much control over -- terrorism, lightning, and even cancer when it runs in your family or when you just get it.

But that's not what this tumor was -- the one that for five very long days had me convinced I had cancer. This is from me smoking pipes and cigars for 27 years. And if you work for a company that produces or sells pipes and cigars and you are recoiling defensively and saying 'you don't know that'... well, let me quote Robert Novak -- "bull" -- I do too know that.

The place where this thing grew on the roof of my mouth, is precisely above the spot where the end of the cigar, or the tip of the pipe, would sit, nearly every time I've smoked. I've been smoking -- with the first place the smoke connects with my tissue, right in this one spot in my mouth -- since Jimmy Carter was President.

So, yes, biologically speaking, smoking caused that tumor. Behaviorally speaking, I caused that tumor -- period.

It's not like this thing that they cut out of me a week ago last Friday just appeared overnight, either. It was there no later than 1991, and a dentist told me then: either quit smoking or keep an eye on this -- or both -- because that could be pre-cancerous.

But no -- until my current dentist Bob Schwartz said "this has changed, go see an oral surgeon" -- I knew better. Both my grandfathers, I liked to say, lived into their 80s and in the last weeks of their lives, both of them walked into town to get a haircut and some cigars -- and that would be good enough for me.

Well, maybe that would have been good for me. Except, the point is this: they cut something out of your mouth; it's a benign fibrous tumor; they have to cauterize it with a laser; you wind up spitting blood like Rocky Balboa in front of Burgess Meredith; you spend five days thinking about the radiation and the chemo to come; and -- by the way -- ten days later, your mouth still hurts and it'll probably be all healed in six weeks.

And that's if you're lucky -- so lucky that you start jumping up and down and singing "Happy Days Are Here Again."

Imagine... if it were bad news.

My oral surgeon, Andrei Mark, admits now he feared the worst. And worse still, the last guy in to see him, before me, the last smoker with a tumor in his mouth -- his was Lymphoma "B" -- Cancer. No unexpected good luck for him.

Maybe, if you're sitting there smoking right now, it'll make you think.

And even if you sense there's already something wrong, don't wait. Oral cancers are survivable at a rate of 80 to 90 percent -- get your dentist to give you a simple screening. Even lung cancer, you can do something about -- if you do something about it.

Since that lovely evening I spent hunched over my garbage can, I have changed in a couple of ways, but most notably this way: when I see somebody smoking, I want to smack the cigarette or the cigar or the pipe out of their mouth. And then I want to smack them. I understand about the addiction and how they hook you and all of that. I'm a smoker -- remember?

But consider something - I had to consider this, last week. It would be terrible enough to have cancer. But on top of it, you'd have cancer and you'd have to stop smoking. Guess what? It's easier to stop smoking while you don't have cancer. Ever thought of that before?

Anyway. We're all sad about Peter Jennings. Me, I feel sad and guilty. But if his death has saddened you, and you smoke, and you want to do something about it, something for him -- stop smoking. Or get somebody else to stop.

Break the pipe or throw away the chaw, or flush the butts, or leave the cigar in the cigar store. Buy the gum, buy the patch, get them to tie your arms behind your back until you stop smoking. Do whatever you have to do to stop smoking -- now. While it's easier.

So you don't have to stop smoking while you have cancer. Or while you're sitting there, spitting into a garbage can, praying that you don't.