• 12/25/2007
  • Moberly, MO
  • Janet Morales
  • Moberly Monitor (/www.moberlymonitor.com)

At age 14, Don Young’s parents divorced. He was naturally upset and turned to friends to help fill the void. Many of these friends were smokers so to fit in and be part of the cool crowd he took up the bad habit too. He told his “Smoker’s Story” and that of other smokers and tobacco chewers to the students at Westran High School with the aid of an electro-larynx since he no longer has a larynx (vocal chords) due to the cancer caused by years of smoking.

“I didn’t like it the first time,” said Young of his initial smoking experience. “It burned my tongue and throat. The doctor said that is a way the body tells you it doesn’t belong. But I didn’t listen to my body and my body got adjusted to it.”

At age 48, Young thought his sore throat was the result of a cold. After it persisted, his wife Kay urged him to see a doctor. A nodule was found in his throat and removed.

“Cigarettes were my best friend,” said Young. “I went everywhere with them. I smoked right up to the hospital to get my biopsy.”

Young was assured the cancer was completely removed. Young had tried to quit smoking before but “that was enough to scare me”. He and his wife both threw away all their cigarettes, never to smoke again.

But the doctor had been wrong.

Three months after the first procedure, Young found the cancer had returned and he underwent the removal of his right vocal chord. He was treated with radiation to keep the cancer from spreading.

It didn’t.

He went back and had a total laryngectomy but was given less than a year to live. It was then he realized he needed to seek a second opinion.

“If you get sick,” said Young, “get a second opinion. Don’t be afraid to ask for a second opinion. If I had, things might have been different but that’s in the past.”

He went to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis. There they performed a 19-hour surgery removing part of both sides of his neck. Six inches of his esophagus was removed. A portion of his small intestine was removed and transplanted in his neck to form a new esophagus. His chest muscle was used to wrap around the front of his neck and skin was grafted from the top of his leg to cover it. But that was still not the end of it.

“The skin graft failed, the intestine died and my neck blew out,’ said Young. “I lost so much blood I passed out. I was sure I was dying.”

Young was in the hospital for four months but he survived the ordeal. Eventually Young’s stomach was pulled up and attached to the back of his throat to make a new esophagus. Since the passage won’t stay open by itself, Young has to put a two-foot flexible tube down his throat for five minutes each morning to dilate the opening.

Since Young had a trachiostomy, he now has an opening in his throat, a stoma, that he breathes through. Since he no longer breathes through his mouth, he has difficulty when he catches a cold because he can’t blow his nose. He has to cover the stoma to take a shower but he cannot swim because of it. He cannot lie down to sleep since bending or lying flat interferes with breathing. Due to the laryngectomy, he must use the mechanical device in order to speak.

But Young is just one person and it is easy for students to think it won’t happen to them. That is why Young brought along photographs of others, including teenagers, who have had life-altering, sometimes life-ending, encounters with cancer due to smoking or chewing tobacco. He showed them pictures of teenagers with severe tongue cancer, a man who lost his nose from years of blowing smoke out through his nasal passages and other gruesome medical photos of people who have suffered from cancer due to the use of tobacco products. He warned girls that smoking effects their unborn children.

“Studies have shown,” said Young, “that a baby stops breathing for 11 seconds whenever the mother takes a drag on a cigarette. Three hundred to 400 babies die of respiratory failure from breathing second-hand smoke.”

Young, who once was told he had less than a year to live has been cancer free for 14 years.

“I’m a survivor, a fighter,” he said. “I don’t believe in giving up.”

Young has used this second chance to spread the word about the dangers of using tobacco products. He has been a volunteer for the American Cancer Society and named St. Louis Volunteer of the year in 1997. He was selected as Community hero and carried the Olympic torch in St. Louis in 1996, 2000 and 2004. He was named Coping magazine’s Cancer Survivor of the Year 2000.

“My fight against smoking has taken me into schools, colleges, churches, youth organizations, public forums, medical schools and corporations to speak with people about my experience,” said Young. “I documented the course of my illness with graphic pictures of my surgeries and treatment. I desired that the pictures would be used to demonstrate the horrors of my cancer treatment and the price I paid for my decisions. I am thankful that I was given a second chance at life to not only show the pictures, but to narrate the story.

“You don’t have to smoke, do drugs,” Young admonished the Westran High Schoolers. “You don’t have to drink alcohol either. Marry someone who doesn’t smoke so your children won’t smoke and your grandchildren won’t smoke. That’s how we can have a smoke-free society.”