Def Leppard Guitarist Starts Chemo as Cancer Returns

Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell has started chemotherapy to treat the Hodgkin’s lymphoma that he first revealed he had last summer.

By November, Campbell had said that the cancer was in remission, a statement which, unfortunately, may not have been true. Within a couple of months, a regular check-up showed that the cancer was returning and doctors went about putting together a plan of attack.

According to Campbell, in an interview with the Salt Lake City Daily Herald, “…the remission was a little bit premature. It came right back. I don’t know if the cancer came back or it never totally went away, you know, but the initial scan I did last fall after doing my chemo, the scan came back clean. But there was something about it the oncologist was unclear about and didn’t feel good about, so I was referred to another specialist.”

It was after a needle biopsy and, later, a surgical sectioning that it was discovered that the cancer had returned. “I’m actually doing this new high-tech chemo treatment, I’m about halfway through it already, and it’s really kind of easy going. It’s the first new drug that’s been discovered for Hodgkin’s since 1977 and they made this discovery in 2011, and it’s actually being pioneered here at City of Hope, so I’m part of this research clinical trial that’s going on. It’s very, very benign chemo, actually it just targets — I don’t know how it works, obviously I’m not a medical person, but somehow or other it just manages to target the cancer cells.”

“Then as soon as the tour is over in early September I’m going to get a stem-cell transplant, which I can’t say I’m looking forward to, but I’ve been told if I don’t do that, the cancer’s going to just keep coming back every couple years.”