As a three-time cancer survivor, Toby Hanna shares his journey in his Ambassador profile, offering personal insights and experiences in his own voice and style:
I’m a three-time cancer survivor. I care for myself intentionally to stay healthy: good diet, exercise and low stress. So why does cancer grow in my body? No one has been able to answer that. Can you? I sometimes say ‘I’m really good at beating cancer. I just need to get better at not getting it.’
I am a 57-year-old prostate cancer survivor (2018), skin cancer survivor (1991), and now a head and neck cancer survivor. In May of 2022, I was diagnosed with HPV-attributed squamous cell carcinoma, with tumors in my right tonsil and a lymph node under my right jaw. A new third tumor was found three months after surgery, which called for seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiation. It’s been a remarkable journey. In short, I was very lucky and grateful to come through it all with minimum pain and suffering and now find myself driven and empowered to help others do likewise.
How did I do it? I am a very goal-oriented person. When it comes to tackling cancer diagnoses, I have found that my goals break down into several phases: diagnosis/learning (first phase), enduring surgery/treatment (second phase), recovery from surgery/treatment (third phase), and survivorship (fourth phase). I use these phases to describe my journey while sharing my insights on: goals, success factors, coping with the physical and emotional ups and downs, and my vision for curing my cancer.
DIAGNOSIS/LEARNING: This is the chaos phase where I felt most scared and hopeless; like there was no firm ground to stand on. To cope and manage toward the best outcomes, I think the goals here are to find a team you can trust, get answers to questions you have (and don’t know you have), learn, learn, learn, find a patient peer/mentor, come to terms with the mental and emotional burden, prioritize a healthy diet with exercise to help your body get ready for treatment, get second/third opinions, and ultimately make important decisions on treatment plans/locations/doctors/timing. Yes, we need better diagnostic tools to detect head and neck cancer before it progresses to secondary tumors, or even primary tumors, and of course prevention in the form of HPV vaccination uptake. So much of this suffering could be avoided.
ENDURING SURGERY/TREATMENT: At this point, you have a plan with a prognosis for success. At this stage, you should be more familiar with the risks, phases of recovery, and schedule. The chaos settled down for me in this phase. I could see the road ahead. Goals in this phase are to execute that plan with minimum impact and no setbacks. Communicate actively with providers and caregivers so they can adjust and improve your outcomes. BELIEVE in your treatment plan. It’s gotta be worth what you’ll go through. Be strong; you won’t know that you have the strength in you, but it’s there. Be brave. ‘One day at a time’ is absolutely the rule here, control what you can control (eat, move, smile, laugh, no stress). Continue to learn and ask questions and be your own advocate. And when it’s done, I hope you ring the bell or get discharged to home, with no setbacks and a recovery plan. That’s when you know you succeeded with your treatment goals – you made it through.
RECOVERY FROM SURGERY/TREATMENT: This can be a painful and risky time that needs careful planning. You want to gain weight, keep stress levels low, rest, rest, rest, regain strength, move, eat, enjoy not going to the hospital as much, and manage pain, nutrition, blood counts, and other side effects. I have a recovery mantra that I use for times like this. It’s the phrase ‘I will’: I will learn to swallow again, I will do what my doctors and team tell me to do, I will love my caregiver like she deserves, I will do my speech & swallowing exercises, I will beat cancer… Future treatment hopefully will minimize the significant recovery and side effects incurred by the current surgery and treatment methods. It seems like this is expected, especially for HPV-attributed head and neck cancer. Progress is happening, even since I had my treatment. Ultimately, the recovery phase leads up to the first post-treatment scans.
SURVIVORSHIP: My first post-treatment test was a PET scan three months after surgery. I failed that test. There was a new tumor that needed the full seven-week course of radiation/chemotherapy. So I went back to the first phase (see above – Diagnosis/Learning) and proceeded again from there. If there was a low in my journey, that second round of diagnosis and treatment planning was it. As many do, I wrestled with painful thoughts: ‘Is this my last Thanksgiving, Christmas, is it time to record videos for my sons, etc.?’ Shaking off the worry and focusing on controllables was not easy, but it was the only option. Trusting the goal-oriented approach that served me well in the past, I moved ahead with the new plan. The remarkable journey continued.
Today, more than two years later, my scans and blood tests remain clear.
Survivorship for me involves managing long-term side effects such as dental issues, carotid stenosis, fibrosis, dysphagia (swallowing), lymphedema, and dry mouth. I continue to apply my ‘I will’ mantra: ‘I will do what is within my control to minimize the impacts of those side effects.’ I am a competitive cyclist and almost back to my pre-cancer performance. I firmly believe that biking, and exercise in general, played a large part in my smooth recovery and good outcomes. Survivorship also means striving to be a better version of myself—giving back, supporting others, and channeling my experience into helping those in need.
Physically, I know that I am lucky. The biggest long-term physical changes that I live with are some neck pain and stiffness, dry mouth at night, sensitivity to certain spices and alcohol, and weight loss with reduced muscle mass.
Emotionally, the fear of recurrence lingers, but I feel that the positives outweigh the negatives. Cancer has made me stronger, more caring, and happier. I see the world differently. It’s so much easier to see the bright spots and step away from the dark ones. If there is a silver lining in my cancer journey, it is the transformation in how I view life and others—a perspective that I embrace as a gift.
