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| JB Baker |
The gift of gab was never something
Joel “JB” Baker took for granted. But when his body began to rob
him of his voice, the radio disc jockey’s life changed drastically.
According to dailyinterlake.com, Baker was working for Country KXDD 104.1 FM, a country
music station in Yakima, Wash., before oral cancer surgery cost him
his job and his ability to speak. Since he was a little boy, being a
radio DJ was Baker’s dream, but that may have been cut short by
disease.
The 47-year-old is still in a Seattle hospital
recovering from a Jan. 3 procedure that removed his tongue and
replaced it with a muscle graft from his left thigh to help avoid
suffocation.
“We’re all alive, so we’ve got
that going,” she said. “It was a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery. It
was a long one. We can’t say [the cancer] is all gone, but the
doctors think they got it all.”
In 2003, Baker’s dentist noticed a
strange spot on his tongue and sent him to get it checked out. That
was his first bout with oral cancer, an unusual occurrence for a man
who never smoked or chewed tobacco and drank only occasionally. A
little over 18 months ago, the first surgery removed half his tongue
with the cancer that was on it.
For a man who made his living off of
his ability to talk, it is frustrating for Baker not to be able to
communicate easily. His wife said he can get down sometimes, but has
been reading his Bible and thinking of his kids more often.
“It’s never going to be normal
again. It’s a new normal,” Kelly said. “Everything will be all
right. We’ll be all right.”
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