DOUG ALDRICH feels great after throat cancer treatment
04-04-2025
In a new interview with Scott Itter of Dr. Music, former WHITESNAKE and DIO and current THE DEAD DAISIES guitarist Doug Aldrich offered an update on his health, nearly seven months after he underwent a “very successful” surgery following a throat cancer diagnosis. Regarding how he is feeling at the moment, Doug said: ”I feel great. I’m doing really good. It’s taking me time. I’m still getting there, because in certain situations, when they’re working on your neck, you can’t eat very good. And then, getting radiation, you’re not hungry, really. They’re frying your neck every day and eventually you lose your taste and you can’t swallow so good. And so you lose weight. So I’m working on bulking back up a little bit. But, fortunately, my neck healed. The scar is good. Sometimes I got a few little issues, but I feel really good and I’m grateful.
“The silver lining is just — I was living pretty hard for a long time and I think that now I’m realizing I need to live a little more healthier,” he explained. “So that’s a good thing,
“I think before, when I was in my forties, it was easy to stay in shape. ‘Cause for people who are out there that are in their forties, that’s like being in your twenties now. That’s the way people come off. But eventually your body starts to slow down. You’ve gotta work a little harder at it. And it was harder, in the past couple of years, to really stay in shape. I tried to, but I wasn’t living as… I was definitely drinking a lot and eating not good stuff. Obviously, since cancer, I’ve been a hundred percent trying to be better — not drink and eat cleaner and stuff like that. But the problem is that you lose weight with cancer most of the time, and so you’ve gotta find a way to build that back. So it just takes time.
“But anyway, I feel great, man. I’m grateful,” he added. “And I would just stress to anybody, especially male listeners of yours in their fifties or sixties, going to the dentist is a good thing to do, overall wellness of your mouth and throat, because the dentist checks that every time before they do anything. And I wasn’t going to the dentist. I would take my kids there, but I had no problem with my teeth. I was, like, ‘Why spend the money?’ But then this thing happened and I realized, well, had I gone to the dentist, they probably would’ve saved me a bunch of money in medical bills. Well, they would’ve caught it. And it would’ve been a matter of — when they catch stuff early, when it’s cancer, they can just either do some type of minimal treatment or minimal surgery. But as it progresses, if you wait six months or a year or longer, and then you find it, then it progresses and it goes deeper into your body and it can go to your liver, it could go to your heart, whatever, your brain. So I recommend, in my situation for that kind of cancer, neck and throat, getting checked. It’s worth it because even at 60-plus, there’s a lot of time left to live, so you don’t wanna be getting hammered by some health problem.”
Two months ago, Doug told Ernest Skinner of Canada’s Border City Rock Talk how he found out about the seriousness of his diagnosis: “Once I met with the oncologist, he said, ‘Hey, this is very treatable. You’re gonna be fine. It’s gonna be a pain in the ass, but it’s very treatable.’ But prior to that — it was about two or three weeks [earlier] when I got the news that it was cancerous, it was definitely cancer — I didn’t know what kind of cancer [it was] and how advanced it was. That’s the scary part, because, man, I was, like… It was just a nerve-racking situation because I’ve got kids. I’ve lived a great life, I’m super blessed and lucky, and if it’s my time, I’ll go, but I don’t wanna leave yet because I’ve gotta help my kids get through life a little bit.”
Doug continued: “It was definitely a setback mentally. And I just had to kind of go, ‘Look, I’m gonna leave it in God’s hands and just whatever it is, it is, and I’ll just deal with it my best I can.’ And then the doctor said it was very treatable and it would be a pain in the ass. It would be a surgery and also radiation. And I thought, ‘Okay, the surgery is the worst part of it,’ but actually radiation is the worst… Fortunately, I didn’t have to have chemo, so that was good. They took out my tonsil where it was, and then they took out a bunch of lymph nodes right here. And the scar is pretty good, actually.”
Elaborating on the negative effects of his treatment, Aldrich said: “One of the biggest things was I lost all my taste, so you could smell stuff, but you couldn’t taste it… On one side, for some reason, it was really metallic… I would gargle all day with salt water and baking soda, and that helped a bit with a lot of issues. But anyway, the bottom line is I got my blood test the other day and it’s zero, whereas prior to my surgery, it was 277, whatever that is. Now it’s zero. So that’s good. I’ve still gotta get scanned on my full body to make sure there’s no organs that got anything in ’em, but I think I’m pretty good. I’m hoping so.”
He added: “Going through that treatment, I lost a bit of weight, and so I’m trying to build back a little bit without gaining in the other spots. I like that I lost some weight.”
In a new interview with Ernest Skinner of Canada’s Border City Rock Talk, former WHITESNAKE and DIO and current THE DEAD DAISIES guitarist Doug Aldrich offered an update on his health, nearly five months after he underwent a “very successful” surgery following a throat cancer diagnosis. Regarding how he found out about the seriousness of his diagnosis, Doug said: “Once I met with the oncologist, he said, ‘Hey, this is very treatable. You’re gonna be fine. It’s gonna be a pain in the ass, but it’s very treatable.’ But prior to that — it was about two or three weeks earlier when I got the news that it was cancerous, it was definitely cancer — I didn’t know what kind of cancer it as and how advanced it was. That’s the scary part, because, man, I was, like… It was just a nerve-racking situation because I’ve got kids. I’ve lived a great life, I’m super blessed and lucky, and if it’s my time, I’ll go, but I don’t wanna leave yet because I’ve gotta help my kids get through life a little bit.”
Doug continued: “It was definitely a setback mentally. And I just had to kind of go, ‘Look, I’m gonna leave it in God’s hands and just whatever it is, it is, and I’ll just deal with it my best I can.’ And then the doctor said it was very treatable and it would be a pain in the ass. It would be a surgery and also radiation. And I thought, ‘Okay, the surgery is the worst part of it,’ but actually radiation is the worst… Fortunately, I didn’t have to have chemo, so that was good. They took out my tonsil where it was, and then they took out a bunch of lymph nodes right here. And the scar is pretty good, actually.”
Elaborating on the negative effects of his treatment, Aldrich said: “One of the biggest things was I lost all my taste, so you could smell stuff, but you couldn’t taste it… On one side, for some reason, it was really metallic… I would gargle all day with salt water and baking soda, and that helped a bit with a lot of issues. But anyway, the bottom line is I got my blood test the other day and it’s zero, whereas prior to my surgery, it was 277, whatever that is. Now it’s zero. So that’s good. I’ve still gotta get scanned on my full body to make sure there’s no organs that got anything in ’em, but I think I’m pretty good. I’m hoping so.”
He added: “Going through that treatment, I lost a bit of weight, and so I’m trying to build back a little bit without gaining in the other spots. I like that I lost some weight.”
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