Marcia Cross wants the world to know that the sexually-transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) caused her anal cancer.
For months, she's been an energetic ambassador, hoping to erase some of the stigma that surrounds getting anal cancer while also advocating for how best to prevent it.
"It's not my dream job!" she said at The Atlantic's People v Cancer conference on Tuesday in New York, to laughter from the crowd. "There's a huge void and a lack of knowledge and education."
More than 9 in 10 anal cancers like Cross's originate from HPV, a nearly-ubiquitous virus.
It's not well understood why some people with HPV get cancer while others who contract the virus don't, but the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that some 44,000 cancers — in both men and women — are caused by HPV every year. In addition to anal cancer, HPV can prompt cervical, throat, penile, vaginal, and vulvar cancers, too.
Cross not only hopes that her speaking out will help reduce embarrassment for people with anal cancer, she also wants others to know that there are simple things they can do to prevent HPV-related cancers, and that there's no shame in having HPV.
HPV can also get passed around in saliva
Almost everybody gets exposed to HPV at some point in their life, and the virus can then lay dormant for years or decades before cancer may sprout up.
"You don't have to have actual sexual contact to transmit the virus," Dr. Marshall Posner, the director of head and neck oncology at Mount Sinai, said at the conference, pointing out that the virus can be transmitted by saliva and secretions, and could even be transmitted on a pair of pants. "Everybody's infected with it by the time they're in their 20s," he said.
Cross found out that she had anal cancer (a relatively rare diagnosis, but one that is on the rise) about eight years after her husband had throat cancer. It's possible that the two cases were related.
Today, she "highly recommends" the digital rectal exam that first picked up on her cancer, and also encourages regular pap smears for cervical cancer, the most common HPV-related cancer in women (for men, throat cancers are most common).
In younger generations, it's possible to prevent both of these diseases. Since 2006, an HPV vaccine has been available for pre-teens.
Cross, a mother to 12-year-old twins Eden and Savannah, says both girls have "had their first shot" of the multi-shot course (it's two shots for pre-teens, three shots for people 15 and up).
But the decision to vaccinate her kids against HPV with a safe, effective anti-cancer vaccine, wasn't an easy one for Cross.
Cross is vaccinating her pre-teens with a shot that can prevent many different cancers
"Even though I'm with sane mind, I'm also a mother, and that the internet is ripe with terrifying stories," Cross said.
There have been scary tales about HPV vaccines making teens faint (they don't, at least not more so than any other needle might), while others have suggested that it's improper to vaccinate kids against a sexually transmitted infection, even though we know sexual contact isn't the only way the virus spreads.
Cross says she "grappled" with weighing the voices of her "scientific mind" and "mother mind" when considering whether to vaccinate her daughters, but ultimately, the cancer-survivor (who's now in remission) decided that a vaccine that could prevent her own cancer in the next generation was the way to go.
The decision to vaccinate can be life-saving. Cervical cancer, which is almost always a result of HPV, kills more than 4,000 women in the US every year. The earlier that teens get vaccinated, the better protected they are (HPV shots are less effective in adults.)
"I think you need to have a lot of compassion with parents going through the process," she said. "There's fear. Fear has been instilled, and we need to deal with it."
Cross hopes others will educate themselves about the vaccines, and come to their own decisions, too.
"I don't want to tell other parents what to do," she told Insider. "For me, the benefits outweighed the risks."
