MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine spoke about his battle with throat cancer in a new interview with Rolling Stone.
“I’m on the other side of the majority of the treatment, and I feel really strong,” Dave said. “After the radiation, the guy said all of my test results looked amazing. ‘You look like you’re in a stage 1 and you’re supposed to be in stage 3 right now.’ And then the oncologist said the same thing: ‘You look really strong.’ So we kept moving through the process.”
Even though he’s not officially in remission, he recently finished the necessary treatment and has started rehabilitation.
When asked how did he find out about cancer, Dave responded: “I was on tour, and I just had some dental work done when I was at home. My teeth are really, really, really sensitive, because I’m a redhead. When I had a temporary crown replaced with a permanent one, I told the dentist, ‘It feels like they broke off one of those little pointy tools in my gum.’ It just felt like something was wrong in my tooth area. So the dentist goes, ‘Well, you should go see an oral surgeon.’
“So I see the oral surgeon, and he was such a c*ck,” he continued. “I was in the chair, and he looks at me and then he takes off. And I’m sitting there, and I’m waiting and waiting and waiting, and he comes back in and he goes, ‘It looks like the Big C. You need to go see an ear, nose, and throat doctor.’
“I was just stunned with his bedside manner; he was just such a d*ck. So I went out into my car and I was obviously very upset. And then I went back out on to the Experience Hendrix tour.
When speaking how he handled the news, he said: “I went, “F*ck.” And I thought, “OK, Mustaine. You can do this.” And we commenced kicking this thing’s a—s. I thought about every single trick that I had learned about healing my body and the things I’d learned from martial arts, and I did everything that the doctor said to a T, and hopefully this is the end of it and I never hear of it again. But I feel great.
