Screening For Oral Cancer Pushed

Hayden Bates didn't wait long - just a few weeks - to seek medical attention for headaches that wouldn't go away. When doctors discovered he had cancer at the base of his tongue, he was surprised, even though he knew, as a pack-a-day smoker since age 15, that tobacco use made him more susceptible to cancer in the mouth and throat. "You know how some of us be about the cigarettes," said Bates, 61, a Mississippi native and Springfield resident. "You can't get off of it overnight. I never tried." He is glad to see the Sangamon County Department of Public Health pushing a campaign to get more people screened and know the risk factors for oral cancer because he believes early screening may have detected his condition....