Best-selling Author Offers Reassuring Voice After Larynx Cancer Treatment

Hearing author Robert Skimin speak in strong, assured tones gives no hint that larynx cancer nine years ago nearly ravaged his voice.

Today, the nationally known historical novelist is fully recovered. He returns to Houston, not for annual checkups at M. D. Anderson, but for book tours.

The first tickle in the back of his throat began in 1991. Skimin was told he had a digestive problem. He raised his bed, dined earlier in the evening and took heartburn medicine.

The tickle continued. One day he noticed a lump on his neck half the size of a pea. A biopsy indicated cancer for the former U.S. Army major who had retired to El Paso, Texas.

When he first heard his diagnosis of larynx (voice box) cancer, his physician said removing Skimin's larynx was the only choice to preserve his life. This surgery would cripple his speech, a professional handicap for an author who makes a living writing books and promoting them on television and radio shows.

At the time, he was on tour promoting his latest novel, "Renegade Lightning." "I thought, 'I'll never be able to do this again.' Having a laryngectomy was a clear indication that my future as a writer was limited. Promotion is a major part of the game," he said.

Numerous bestsellers, including one nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994, are among the 16 books he has published since retiring from the Army. Skimin, like many people, had lived his life with little consideration of its finite length.

"I was one of those people who feels indestructible. I was going to live forever. Then, for the first time in my life, I was facing my own mortality. I was devastated," he said.

A physician friend recommended that Skimin receive a second opinion at M. D. Anderson. There, Drs. David Callender and William Morrison offered a larynx-preserving protocol that involved radiation therapy only. Skimin was told there was a 75% chance of his treatment being successful.

"The moment I heard that, my spirits just shot through the roof. I said, 'You take care of that 75% and I'll take care of the other 25%," Skimin said when he began treatment in early 1992.

Skimin carried his wry sense of humor through two months of radiation therapy. Throughout treatment, the author never put aside his work.

"Writing occupied my time and my mind. There was no way I would be a moping patient. This was something I had to go through to get on with my life," Skimin said.

To keep his spirits up, he listened to motivational tapes and read books such as "Head First: The Biology of Hope & The Healing Power of The Human Spirit" by Norman Cousins and others by Dr. Bernard Siegel.

"When you're in that unknown, it is absolutely vital to find peace of mind. Confidence is what constitutes peace of mind for me. I had no doubt that this was going to work," he said, despite his increasing level of pain and difficulty swallowing while undergoing radiation therapy.

For more information on the author and his historical novels, visit Skimin's website.