Sharon A.: Stage IV Throat Cancer at 37 After Menthol Cigarettes From Age 13

Sharon grew up in the seventies, when it seemed to her that everyone smoked. She took her first puff at 13, in junior high, because her friends smoked and it seemed the way to fit in. Casual smoking quickly became a heavy, costly addiction to menthol cigarettes — which she smoked for 25 years. Her story is part of CDC's Tips From Former Smokers campaign.

The diagnosis

A wife and mother of two, busy making lunches, driving her children to school and taking part in parent-teacher groups, Sharon began feeling tired and nauseous much of the time, and noticed a lump on her neck. A biopsy found a cancerous tumor in her throat, big enough to see through the skin. It hurt so much she could hardly drink water.

In 1997, at 37, she was diagnosed with stage IV throat cancer, and she quit smoking.

Sharon on finding a lump in her neck and learning it was cancer. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Losing her voice box

Doctors treated the tumor with radiation and chemotherapy and tried to save her larynx. When her symptoms came back a year later, removing it was the next step. After several surgeries, Sharon lives with a stoma and speaks with an electronic voice box.

Her life changed completely, but she says life goes on after cancer. She takes things one day at a time, and walking every day helps her feel like herself again — almost.

Sharon's "Treadmill" ad. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Why she speaks out

Sharon remembers waking in the night to smoke, and lighting up first thing every morning. If she could quit, she believes, anyone can. She most wants to reach young people, who face strong pressure to fit in — and she worries about her 12-year-old granddaughter, now in junior high herself. Kids, she warns, don't realize how quickly they can get hooked.

She also appears in a Tips ad with Shane T. and Shawn W., who also live with stomas from smoking, sharing advice on life with one, and in another with Tiffany R., urging people to get help quitting — with counseling and nicotine replacement therapy — before it comes to losing a voice box.

Sharon on her fear that her granddaughter will give in to peer pressure. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Tiffany R. and Sharon urge people to get help quitting. CDC, Tips From Former Smokers.

Free help to quit

Sources

Based on "Sharon A.'s Story," Tips From Former Smokers, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the campaign's videos with Sharon; a work of the United States government in the public domain; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The page says both that Sharon quit when diagnosed at 37 and that at 58 she had been smoke-free for 14 years, so how long she has been smoke-free is not given here. The videos, missing when the page was imported, are restored from the Internet Archive's copies of CDC's files (2026-09-27).