Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell is giving fans an update on his battle with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Campbell appeared on the podcast Lymphoma Voices, a show aimed at helping people living with cancer.
He compared his decade-long cancer battle to “Whack-a-mole. You beat something back and then it pops up somewhere else.”
Campbell says he began treatment with a new chemo drug called brentuximab in July, and says it’s “So far, so good” – other than losing his hair.
“I had to go and get this stunning haircut yesterday because the brentuximab does have hair loss as a side effect. So I could start telling in the last couple of weeks, every time I touched my hair, it was coming out.” Campbell explained, “So, I’m a little bit more proactive by going and cutting it super, super short.”
Campbell discussed the difficulty of losing his hair for the first time ten years ago, partly because his hair gave him something to “hide behind.” He said, “It was a big part of my identity for so much of my life. So it was difficult letting go of it the first time again.”
“There’s no shame in going through treatment and wearing the effects of your treatment physically, and even being in a very public position as I was, going on tour with Def Leppard and playing in front of tens of thousands of people,” he continued. “Like I say, there was there was something kind of really liberating about it.”
Def Leppard is currently on a World Tour in support of their latest album, “Drastic Symphonies.”