Last week Poison frontman Bret Michaels shocked fans when he announced he was facing some health issues — including a skin cancer diagnosis — that he said may interfere with his ongoing touring. This week, however, Michaels is back to being the high-energy rock star that fans have known and loved for decades.
“Jumping into this week like …” Michaels captioned a photo of him doing on-stage acrobatics. He then went on to urge his fans to purchase tickets for “The Stadium Tour” this summer, where Poison will hit the road with rock legends like Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Joan Jett.
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It appears that despite the announcement about his health issues (Michaels also disclosed last week that he had torn a rotator cuff in his shoulder and would need to get surgery for that, in addition to the skin cancer removal), the frontman will still be appearing at all his scheduled tour dates.In his initial announcement last week, Michaels admitted that the health issues may present some touring issues in the beginning of 2020.
RELATED VIDEO: Dr. Cecilia Larocca, a dermatologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, talks to SurvivorNet about what to look out for when self-checking your skin.
“It may slow me down a bit at the beginning of the year, but if God willing I promise this year will be awesome. Just a few less solo shows & special events until I get this all squared up,” Michaels wrote.
However, the rocker is still scheduled to perform in Oklahoma this weekend and hasn’t yet announced any cancellations of future shows. He’s set to perform shows in New York, Vegas and North Carolina over the next month.
Michaels did not disclose what type of skin cancer he had in his initial health update, nor what stage the cancer was diagnosed at — but did say he was going to “undergo a procedure to remove skin cancer that was detected after a recent biopsy.”
Surgery Is Often an Option
For many skin cancers, such as melanoma, surgery is the best treatment option.
Dr. Nima Gharavi
“When melanoma’s diagnosed early, the cure rate is very high,” Dr. Nima Gharavi, director of dermatologic surgery and MOHS micrographic surgery at Cedars-Sinai, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. “The standard of treatment and, perhaps, the gold standard for treatment of melanoma, is actually a surgical treatment with wide margins.”
Even when melanoma has progressed past stage 1 and into stage 2 or 3, there’s a chance that all of the disease can be removed using surgery — though the chance gets smaller the farther the cancer has gotten into the skin, according to Dr. Anna Pavlick, a dermatologist at NYU, who spoke to SurvivorNet about treatment options in a previous interview.
“Patients with stage 1 melanoma are cured by [surgery] 90% of the time,” Dr. Pavlick said. “Patients with stage 2 disease have about a 75% to 80% chance of being fine. … Patients with stage 3 disease probably have a 50/50 chance of being OK with just a surgical resection.”
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