Eddie Van Halen struggled with his cancer treatments in his final years and months before his death last week, he even shared a final photo in 2020, as he dealt with steroid shot treatments to try to help him, along with painful chemotherapy sessions and hospital stays at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Van Halen would text friends describing how harrowing the chemo was, with the guitar legend eventually being unable to speak. Van Halen was limited to text conversations with many friends, with former bandmate Sammy Hagar being one of them.
Van Halen was heavily medicated, and his messages increasingly became about love, using love emojis as well. Eddie Van Halen died last week at the age of 65 after his cancer reportedly spread, surrounded by his family. The Eddie Van Halen funeral is currently being planned.
If you want to get involved in helping find a cure and treatments, you can support the Oral Cancer Foundation at OralCancerFoundation.org. Their website states, “The foundation is an IRS registered non-profit 501(c) 3, public service charity designed for advocacy and service, created to promote change, through proactive means, in both the public and medical/dental professional sectors.
At the forefront of our agenda is the firm establishment in the minds of the American public for the need to undergo an annual oral cancer screening, combined with an outreach to the dental and medical communities to provide this service as a matter of routine practice. Oral cancer takes more lives than cancers we routinely hear about, such as cervical, Hodgkin’s lymphoma, skin (malignant melanoma), testicular, and many others. In the efforts to reduce the death rate from cancers in the US, the most significant progress has been made through early detection. Cervical, skin, prostate, and others that lend themselves to simple, opportunistic screenings and exams have all had their death rates reduced through programs promoting early discovery.
Early discovery and diagnosis, yields better long-term outcomes, and lower morbidity to those who undergo treatments. Oral cancer is not hidden within the body in some hard to find location requiring an invasive examination, the majority of the time it is literally in plain view, right under your nose, and can be seen with the naked eye or felt with the fingers. In most cases, its early, highly survivable stages are easily detected in a 3 to 5 minute painless visual and tactile examination.
Even the precancerous lesions, which can progress into malignancy, can be seen with the naked eye. An annual oral examination conducted by members of the dental and medical communities will have a definite impact on reducing the death rate associated with oral cancer. It is our mission to bring this about.”
