In a new interview with Get On The Bus, POISON drummer Rikki Rockett offered an update on his health, more than 11 years after he was diagnosed with oral cancer. The 65-year-old Rikki, whose real name is Richard Allan Ream, said: “Once I was diagnosed (in June 2015), I did the whole normal sort of path to be treated for it, standard of care, as it was. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work.

“I remember the doctor told me, he goes, ‘What are you doing for the next three months?’ He goes, ”Cause this is gonna be your job.’ And I said, ‘Okay. Uh, nothing, I guess,'” Rikki continued. “So, I did 37 rounds of radiation, five days a week, where they make a mask and they put you down on a metal thing. They twist these things so your head can’t move, and the machine comes over. It’s very scary stuff. And then you get chemo. I had that. I had a good type, a better type of chemo — Martha Stewart drug, they call it. At least I thought it was better. But it didn’t work. And at the end of the five months, because it was three months of treatment, then two months you have to wait until everything calms down so they can do the imaging, and it was like it had jumped to the other side, and I had some on the front of my tongue now. And there wasn’t that many choices. But there was something called immunotherapy. There was a doctor in San Diego that was heading up some clinical trials, and I did some research on him, and I said, ‘I’m gonna meet this guy.’ They made the introduction… I got in a car, and met with him. And he said, ‘I think I can get you on a trial.’ I said, ‘Well, my surgeon told me I may not have time.’ I said, ‘If I let this go and try immunotherapy, and therapy doesn’t work, it’ll be too late to do surgery.’ And he goes, ‘I don’t think so, ’cause I don’t think that’s the case. I think if it doesn’t look like we’re going the right direction, I’ll get you on something to shrink the tumor right away. It’ll buy more time. We’ll figure this out. Somehow we’re gonna figure this out.’ So, within nine weeks, I was 90% cured. Within another few weeks, it was gone. It’s never been back. I celebrated my 10-year anniversary on July 13th.”