I was born on 5/1/1950 in Schenectady, New York. At age 7, we moved to Cheshire, CT. I am the oldest of 7 children and attended schools in Cheshire. By the time I was 12, my friends and I were stealing cigarettes 2 or 3 at a time from our parents. We thought it was very cool to smoke just like Brando, Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Babe Ruth, FDR, Winston Churchill, Bette Davis, John Wayne etc. etc. Cigarette smoking was acceptable everywhere. We were allowed to light up in any seat on any airplane (ALL seats had a built in ash tray), we could smoke in grocery stores while shopping (or stocking shelves), we smoked in indoor movie theaters. In hospitals, nurses and doctors could smoke at their desks, visitors and patients could smoke in their rooms unless they were near flammables or oxygen. There were NO non-smoking areas in the 50's, 60's or early 70's. Cigarette advertising was every where even on radio and tv.

If there was a Surgeon General, we never heard of him. I continued to smoke more and more, and when I was about 15, I was buying a pack or more per day. I got married at 23, had a son (Adam) at 28 and was smoking about 3 packs per day. If I found myself with only one dollar in my pocket and I had a choice of eating a meal or buying a pack of cigarettes, smoking would win every time. It was easy to miss a meal or two, but there was no way I was going without smoking for even one hour. By the time I was 30, I changed my smoking choice to menthol, because regular cigarettes didn't have enough of a "bite".

I was 30 in 1980 and it was about that time that smoking was being put under a microscope. Everyone had been calling cigarettes cancer sticks, or coffin nails for some time, but the strong, medical links and warnings were being squashed by the tobacco companies. By the time I was in my early to mid forties, I was coughing so hard in the middle of the night that it would awaken my wife. By the time I was 46-47, I knew in my mind that my throat was slowly dying and the idea of having cancer was something I lived with, because I could not even consider quitting. My voice became more and more quiet, people had to strain to hear me speak. I finally relented to see an ENT (ear nose and throat doctor). The ENT told me I had acid reflux disease not cancer. He said "don't wish cancer on yourself, you are too young and healthy for that". For the next few months I took medication for acid reflux disease. I knew I didn't have acid reflux, I knew I had cancer!!!

My wife Lesley is a nurse and her sister Jackie has been a nurse at Mass General for over 30 years. Lesley asked her sister to get me an appointment with the best surgeon in Boston. Several days later, I was being examined by the director of ENT at Mass Eye and Ear. After a brief examination and a scoping of my vocal cords, he declared that yes indeed I did have cancer and had about 2 months to live if I did not have surgery. He said I could have chemotherapy and radiation, but in his opinion, that would only delay my need for surgery.

On March 20th, 1998 at 7:00am I entered surgery for 11 hours. I had my voice box, vocal cords, adams apple, 1/2 of my thyroid and the entire lymph node section on the right side of my neck removed. At that point, my ability to breathe through my mouth and nose stopped, from there on I would breathe through a hole in my neck smaller than a nickel. I can no longer do my favorite thing in the world, snorkel and swim. The hole in my neck is connected directly to my lungs and one spoon full of water can now drown me.

When you have your larynx/vocal cords removed like I did, you have to learn to speak totally differently than you did before. First pencil and paper, and then with an electro-larynx (a battery operated machine) that vibrates like your vocal cords used to. You can also train your esophagus to vibrate by taking air into your throat and use it to make words without air from your lungs. The final option is to get a TEP (tracheo-esophageal puncture) implant and put your thumb over your stoma (neck hole) when you try to speak.

I can speak with the machine and I have trained my esophagus to work like my voice box used to (only with much more difficulty). Shortly after my operation, I had to endure 6 weeks of intensive radiation in Boston. While I was in Boston receiving the radiation, I was asked by the nurses if I would mind talking to other laryngectomees post operatively. I saw many people, mostly older than I, mostly ex-smokers and mostly sad and scared. I would talk to them, show them my scars, show them that I had the same thing done to me and how to try and speak again. The more patients and their families that I saw, the more the nurses wanted me to do. When I came back home to Connecticut, I went to Yale New Haven hospital and offered to help their patients as I had done in Boston. In the mean time, I was asked to speak to children on National Smoke Out Day and then in classrooms.

I still see patients when I am in Boston, I have been volunteering at Yale for almost 3 years and I will soon be doing more of the same for Saint Raphael's. I went to SCSU's department of communication disorders for 3 semesters to learn to use esophageal speech to its fullest. While there working with the young, speech language pathology students under the direction of Marianne Kennedy. I wanted to give them something back for helping me. My wife and I decided that for our 50th birthday's we would start a scholarship fund for the young SLP's at Southern.

We bought a condo in the Fort Pierce/Vero Beach area and are now starting to be snow birds. When we are in Florida we meet with the Vero Beach and the Stuart Lost Cord, Nu Voice clubs. I have been speaking in dozens of schools in Ct. and Florida for 6 or 7 years now.In Florida at one school I was confronted by a local principal,who wanted me to speak to his students.He asked to see my "certificate" before I spoke to the kids. After speaking to thousands of kids I was now told that I had to get certification in order to enter Florida classrooms. To make a long story short,I had to be mug shot,finger printed,investigated by "government agencies"and if I passed their scrutiny I would and have received a "Contractors" badge,so that I may give free speeches in Florida's school systems.I guess episodes like Columbine have made every one much more security minded.

On October 10th, 2001, I was officially named a torchbearer for this years winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. On December 26th, I was honored to carry the Olympic torch in New Haven. I work in Wallingford, CT. at Intergrated Industrial Systems (a steel mill manufacturer). I exercise 3 days a week (2 hour sessions), I visit throat cancer patients in hospitals and some times at their homes, I spend time with children answering questions about smoking and I fight my wife for control of the kitchen.

Bob Herbst