As best I can remember, I've dipped the same brand of tobacco for about 30 years. In seventh grade I started hanging out with a few cowboy types. My father chews tobacco and did back then. But chew never interested me much. A few of my friends dipped, thus I dipped too. The warning labels on the cans of smokeless didn't appear until 1986, and I remember I didn't need to be a certain age to buy it. I even won a trip to the Daytona 500 in 1991 from the makers of my dip.

So I dipped. I learned how to hide it from teachers and bosses. I could dip all day and no one ever knew I had one in my mouth. If I was hunting, I dipped. If I was fishing, I dipped. I was never hooked on it of course. RIGHT! I was hooked big time. Though I had quit a few times I never gave it up. If you ever dipped, gave it up, then started again, you most likely know the high you get from it. It is addictive. It is a drug.

Last year I noticed a spot on the inside of my cheek. Was I worried? I guess in a way I wondered about it, but I knew it wasn't cancer. I couldn't get cancer. I finally went to an oral surgeon in September 2005. When I got the phone call, the news wasn't good. Squamous Cell Carcinoma. As it was explained to me, this was basically a skin cancer. What made it bad though is it had gone unchecked inside my mouth since it was out of sight. Thus it became what the doctors called moderately invasive.