• 12/3/2003
  • Illinois
  • JODY NEAL
  • Bluefield Daily Telegraph

“People look at me like I’m a freak. I’m not a monster. If you give me a chance, you’ll find I’m pretty likable.”Those were the words of Gruen Von Behrens, a 26-year-old from Stewardson, Ill. A victim of oral cancer, he now travels the country, speaking to high school students and athletes about the dangers of smokeless tobacco. He was at PikeView High School on Tuesday, after making trips to Montcalm High School and Bluefield Intermediate School.

With half of a tongue and a deformed face, it is sometimes difficult to understand Von Behrens when he speaks. “I know I’m hard to understand. That’s why you have to listen closely,” he told the gathered ninth- and 10th graders.

“I went camping with some of my buddies when I was 13, and one of my friends asked me if I wanted a dip,” Von Behrens said. “I was 13. I didn’t have a care in the world, so I took a dip, and I liked the taste.” Von Behrens said he started dipping nearly a can a day until he was 17 years old. That’s approximately 1,827 cans. “We would play games to see who could get the biggest chew in their mouth or see who would get sick first. It was fun,” the cancer victim said.

Then, when he was nearing his 17th birthday, Von Behrens said he noticed a white spot on the side of his tongue, sort of like a fever blister. “It didn’t go away like a fever blister though. Pretty soon it split my tongue,” he said. Von Behrens, who grew up with only his sister and his mother, could not confide the news that he might have cancer to his family. “I was scared to death. I could talk to my mom about anything. She was my best friend. But I couldn’t tell her that I had cancer. “She was asking me why I was talking funny, why I drooled a lot and why food kept falling out of my mouth when I ate. I told her that my wisdom teeth were coming in.”

Then, one Friday afternoon, his mother got him into the car under the pretense of going shopping. She actually took him to a dentist’s office, he said, to pull his wisdom teeth. “Right before the doctor was going to put that mask over my face to knock me out. I said, ‘Wait. That isn’t why I’m here. I’ve got cancer.’ The doctor took one glance in my mouth and nodded to my mother that it was true. I don’t think I ever saw her cry that hard.”

The next week, Von Behrens was three hours away from home, undergoing a 13-hour surgery in which doctors removed half of his tongue. “The doctor said I had a 75 percent chance that I wouldn’t survive the surgery,” he said. After the surgery, Von Behrens spent a month and a half in the hospital and then had to undergo painful radiation treatments every day for eight weeks. “It was hell. I knew that it was going to hurt every day for eight weeks. It was the God-awfulest thing in my life. It would burn my face, and I went from 190 pounds to 113 pounds in eight weeks. “But I beat the cancer.”

His fight was far from over. The tumor decayed much of the lower half of Von Behrens face. By the time he was 19, he had to have all of his teeth removed. “Those were the best years of my life, right? No. People didn’t talk to me anymore.” For four years, he fought to save his mandible, the lower jawbone, but eventually, had to undergo surgery to have three inches of it removed. “I almost died from the infection,” he said.

In January of this year, he lost his entire mandible, but doctors removed a bone from his left leg to replace it with. They also grafted some skin from his right leg to help with his facial features. “I want to be pretty again, but I just had to have that dip,” Von Behrens said. Von Behrens, who was homecoming king at his high school and a star baseball player, said it’s difficult to go out in public when people are constantly pointing at him. “God made us all different for a reason. So what if that girl likes pink hair, or that guy wears green shoes. Who are you to tell them to stop?”

He said, “I made this mistake, and it taught me a valuable lesson. I know now to make the right choices. I wish I would have back then.” Von Behrens said he still has no feeling from the top of his mouth down. He underwent five surgeries this past year and has had more than 30 surgeries since he was diagnosed with oral cancer.

Although he hasn’t finished college, he spends his time traveling around the U.S. talking to professional athletes and schoolchildren. He has also appeared on MTV to share his story. “I think one of the proudest moments of my life was when a baseball player with the Arizona Diamondbacks quit dipping because of me,” he said.

He started dipping because he thought it would make him seem cooler to his friends, but pointing to himself on stage at PikeView on Tuesday, he said, “How cool does this look?”