‘Oh God, That's Not Normal!’ Terrified Singer Sam Fox, 56, Describes Her Fearful Reaction To Seeing Cancerous Lump On Her Vocal Cords

Speaking with The Sun, the East London native says, “When I saw the growth on the screen, I thought, ‘Oh God, that's not normal.’ It looked very big.,” she says. “You think about throat cancer straight away.”

Sam Fox and her fiancée Linda Olsen, 48, both began crying when the lump was discovered, because “they feared the worst.”

Fox lost both her mom and her former partner to cancer.

Sam Fox’s Scare & Understanding Throat Cancer

Sam Fox discovered a nearly half-inch growth between her vocal cords. She’s having surgery to remove the lump. Fox recalls her doctor explaining the potential severity to her, saying “‘We have to get that out as soon as possible. It might be nothing, but it might not be.'”

It’s important to take action on potential growths like these, as it could be cancer. The two main causes of throat cancer are smoking and excessive drinking, but throat cancer can also be caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV).

Dr. Ted Teknos, president and scientific director of the Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, says in a previous interview, "When I first started training and practicing head and neck surgery, we saw this group of patients that were becoming increasingly more frequent, who were those patients who never smoked, were not drinkers, and were developing head and neck cancer. And in the beginning part of my career in the early '90s and mid-90s, those were rare patients, but then, year by year, those numbers increased dramatically."

"What we know now, through science, is going back and looking, decade by decade, the rates of HPV-related head and neck cancer have increased exponentially," says Dr. Teknos. "If you look at the percentage of patients who developed throat cancer, really, cancer of the tonsils and the base of the tongue, in the '80s compared to the 2010s, if you will, the rate of HPV-related head and neck cancers has gone up by 300%. So there is no myth. HPV causes throat cancer, and it's a sexually transmitted disease. And it's something that is an epidemic in the United States."

HPV and Cancer Risk: The Basics

Advocating for Your Health

Sam Fox initially sought treatment from a specialist after she had trouble with her singing voice. It’s so important to advocate for your health and note when something feels off, the way Fox did. Your health is too important to brush it off if something feels unusual.

"Every appointment you leave as a patient, there should be a plan for what the doc is going to do for you, and if that doesn't work, what the next plan is," Dr. Zuri Murrell, director of the Cedars-Sinai Colorectal Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. "And I think that that's totally fair. And me as a health professional that's what I do for all of my patients."

In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, April Knowles explained how she became a breast cancer advocate after her doctor dismissed the lump in her breast as a side effect of her menstrual period. Unfortunately, that dismissal was a mistake. Knowles was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at age 39. She said the experience taught her the importance of listening to her body and speaking up when something doesn't feel right.

Be Pushy, Be Your Own Advocate… Don't Settle

SurvivorNet reporter Abigail Seaberg contributed to this article. 

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