DOUG ALDRICH Looks Back On His Cancer Battle: 'I Kept A Good Attitude'

In a new interview with Anthony Bryant of The Hair Metal Guru, former WHITESNAKE and DIO and current THE DEAD DAISIES guitarist Doug Aldrich offered an update on his health, nearly a year and a half after he underwent a "very successful" surgery following a throat cancer diagnosis. Asked if he was "scared" when he got diagnosed with throat cancer, Doug said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I was scared in the beginning, 'cause I was actually — we were off and I was in Texas at the Junior Olympics with my family. My daughter was running. So I'm laying in bed, I'm laying in bed with my wife and my kids are in the next bed right next to us, and I get a call from my doctor. We had been doing a little testing and poking and stuff, and I get a call from my doctor. It was, like, at night, and I'm, like, he never calls me. First of all, he never calls me, and then he never would never call me at night. And he said, 'Yeah, we got the test back and it's positive for cancer.' So, HPV 16 square cell, carcinogenic, whatever. And I was, like, 'Oh, man.' At that point you don't know how serious it is, and you're just going, like, 'I got cancer. It's confirmed now, and I got my family here and I gotta be cool because I don't wanna freak anybody out.'"

He continued: "But, yeah, it took us a while to get answers about how far it was and that it was actually the kind of a cancer that was a little bit easier to deal with. It was a little more slower growing, and the success rate, after five years of still being alive, was pretty good. I mean, you can get hit by a car every day; you never know. So, once I got the word on what to do, we found a surgeon that my wife and I liked. And he took out one tonsil on the inside, and then he took out the lymph nodes and the bump, the stuff. And then I had to do radiation. So the surgery sucked, 'cause after the surgery I couldn't do a [THE DEAD DAISIES] tour. So Reb [Beach, WHITESNAKE and WINGER guitarist] actually came and filled in. 'Cause I couldn't open my mouth. I mean, to do the surgery inside, they had to pretty much open my jaw, and they cut here and took out a bunch of stuff. And so then theoretically they cut out everything they could, and then you have to do radiation to just blast the rest, whatever little particles. So I did six weeks of that, which was — that was really a bummer, because it just kicks your ass. You're tired and your neck is basically down to just raw skin… And then eventually after two weeks, you lose your taste, your skin starts peeling off. And my wife helped me a lot to where I got through it. And I kept a good attitude. I kept trying really hard to eat, keep my weight up as good as I could, and eventually got done with the radiation and got checked and came back as a really good negative for cancer. So that's where I stand right now. I got some scans and stuff I gotta do later this month to see where we're at. But I do my best, and God willing it'll be clear."

In February 2025, Doug was asked by Ernest Skinner of Canada's Border City Rock Talk how he found out about the seriousness of his diagnosis. Doug said at the time: "Once I met with the oncologist, he said, 'Hey, this is very treatable. You're gonna be fine. It's gonna be a pain in the ass, but it's very treatable.' But prior to that — it was about two or three weeks [earlier] when I got the news that it was cancerous, it was definitely cancer — I didn't know what kind of cancer [it was] and how advanced it was. That's the scary part, because, man, I was, like… It was just a nerve-racking situation because I've got kids. I've lived a great life, I'm super blessed and lucky, and if it's my time, I'll go, but I don't wanna leave yet because I've gotta help my kids get through life a little bit."

Doug continued: "It was definitely a setback mentally. And I just had to kind of go, 'Look, I'm gonna leave it in God's hands and just whatever it is, it is, and I'll just deal with it my best I can.' And then the doctor said it was very treatable and it would be a pain in the ass. It would be a surgery and also radiation. And I thought, 'Okay, the surgery is the worst part of it,' but actually radiation is [the worst]… Fortunately, I didn't have to have chemo, so that was good. They took out my tonsil where it was, and then they took out a bunch of lymph nodes right here. And the scar is pretty good, actually."

Aldrich previously discussed his cancer battle during an appearance on the December 16, 2024 episode of SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". Regarding how he got diagnosed with throat cancer, Doug said: "I never thought I would get cancer. It just never occurred to me. I've always been super healthy and — knock on wood — I never had a major anything. And one day, I think it was in May [2024], I was about to go on tour with THE DAISIES and I was shaving and I saw a little lump on my neck. And I was, like, 'Well, that looks when you're sick, you've got swollen glands or something.' It was on one side. And I thought, 'That doesn't hurt at all. My throat doesn't [hurt]. Nothing hurts.' And I went on tour, and I said, 'Hey, something like that could be a viral thing. Let it roll for a couple weeks, and if it doesn't change, then make an appointment to see your doctor.' And so I went and did the dates — it was, like, three weeks of dates or something in the U.S., I believe. And I got home and got an appointment. It took a little time. As you know, to get a doctor's appointment it takes a minute. So it was another few weeks before I got in. And immediately they looked at it in order for me to get a CT scan, [and] after reading that they were concerned there was something in there. It wasn't a major concern. Then I did a little MRI of the neck, and that's when they could measure the bump, and they realized that this was really concerning. [And they told me] I should go see an ear, nose and throat doctor. And my doctor was, like, 'Hey, it could be cancer. It could be cancerous, but it could be benign. It could be whatever. Don't worry about it yet.' But already my mind was starting to get a little bit nervous. So I go to the ear, nose and throat doctor, and he goes, 'I see it. It's on your tonsil. And if you don't mind, I'm gonna grab a piece of it with the tweezers and I'll send it in for a biopsy,' which, actually, just for those people that care about this stuff, you could go get a biopsy and it would cost you thousands of dollars or insurance or whatever. The way this guy did it was old school — he just ripped a chunk off my tonsil and sent it in and it saved me a ton of money to do that. So it came back positive for HPV 16 throat cancer. Definitely not good. So, right then you start freaking out, like, 'Oh, man. Okay, what stage is it?', whatever. And it's very difficult to get definitive answers on stuff, 'cause nobody really knows until you do all these tests and all this stuff. So there's probably three or four weeks before you find out what stage it is or whatever."

Doug continued: "So that's how it started. And then I went and started going through the process. By that time, I was doing a lot of tests and stuff. I have insurance for me and my family, and I maxed out my deductible. So that was good. But insurance is a whole another thing. Doctors' bills — you get bills; every day there's bills from this and that, and you don't know what to pay and what not to pay. It's very confusing. But anyway, that's how it started. That's how it was diagnosed. And I immediately got in with… My wife got me into a doctor at UCLA Medical Center, which is close in L.A. And then my sister's boyfriend is a plastic surgeon, and he got me in with a doctor for a second opinion from Cedar Sinai in L.A. And that's the guy I went with, a guy called Dr. Ho."

Asked by host Eddie Trunk to clarify that he "had no symptoms" beyond this little bump and that he wasn't "in pain or anything", Doug said: "Nothing. Sometimes people lose weight. I had no symptoms — nothing. It was just a bump, and it was not super noticeable, but then, of course, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And another thing that's important for people [to know] is that the most important thing you can do to protect yourself is get checked. Well, this particular cancer, it usually gets discovered by a dentist. But I don't have many problems with my teeth, and a dentist is expensive. So I would be, like, 'Look, my kids, I wanna make sure they're checked, and [they have] braces and whatever they need to do. That's what I'm gonna spend my money on.' I was, like, 'I don't need to go to the dentist. I just brush my teeth and floss. That's it.' But had I gone to the dentist, he would have seen this before it… It's called metastasizing when it switches from the actual tumor to a lymph node, and that's what my neck bump was; it was a lymph node that had gotten swollen. So a dentist would have seen that thing on my tonsil a lot sooner and it would have been much easier to deal with, or my treatment would have been much easier to deal with. But it got discovered when it was already metastasized in the lymph node and then the question was, what stage is it? How big is it? How far did it go?"

Doug added: "So the bottom line is you've gotta get diagnosed of where you're at, and you need to go to an oncologist. And I would recommend [for you to] go to a big hospital in your area and make an appointment, start making appointments with whoever you can. And that's what my wife did. She reached out to UCLA because we've used them before for kids and stuff. And so she got me that one. And the guy, he had been there a long time, had a great record, and UCLA is great and everything, but he said, 'We don't really do stages anymore. It's kind of an old thing that they did with cancer. They call it stage 1 through 4, whatever.' Basically, he goes, 'I don't know what yours is exactly. It could be 2, it could be 3, it could be 1 and a half, whatever. But you're gonna need surgery.'

"When it's in your throat, you've got all these things that are connected in there. So they're looking down your nose, looking in your throat, looking at X-rays and scans and all this stuff. And by the way, around that time too, the doctor ordered a PET scan, which is a full-on body [scan] to see if the cancer has spread to like your lungs or your liver or kidneys or whatever, and that's scary. When you start thinking, like, 'When is my appointment? Oh, it's in two weeks. It could be right now growing anywhere.' And you don't know, so you've gotta get this PET scan. But, fortunately, so far and at that time, I was all clear everywhere except for that spot. So he said, 'You've gotta operate,' and he goes, 'The good thing is I'm a great surgeon. I can do the outside part on your lymph nodes, but I can't do the inside, which is gonna be a robotic surgery. I need somebody else to do that.' And then when I met with Dr. Ho at Cedar Sinai, he was younger. He had probably had more up-to-date kind of training in terms of robotics. And he goes, 'I'm gonna do both surgeries myself.' And he was very confident."

According to Aldrich, another issue had come up during that time which affected the way he went about his surgery. He explained to "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk": "There's a nerve in your neck that connects your shoulder that's involved in this area. And when they do the surgery, if they clip that nerve, then you're have a real hard time lifting your arm, which wouldn't affect my guitar playing, but I wouldn't be able to lift my arm up very well. And I'm thinking not just about playing guitar, but I'm thinking about, like, shooting a basketball with my kids or something. So I asked him about it, and he goes, 'We'll do our best. I think we can save that nerve.' And he did. So first thing [they did was the] surgery, and then after surgery, they decide what kind of treatments, whether they got it all and you don't need to do anything, or if you have to have radiation, or chemo, or both. And I had to get radiation."

In late September 2024, Doug's wife Daniela "Danni" Aldrich said that his surgery, which she described as "five long hours of multiple steps", "went incredibly well", adding that "Doug pushed through like the fighter he is. Even the nurse called him a superhero for his strength and determination right after!" she wrote. "He is the strongest person I know."

Aldrich played with DIO for a short period between 2002 and 2006. He was also a member of WHITESNAKE from 2002 to 2014 before leaving to spend more time with his family. The guitarist played on two WHITESNAKE studio albums, 2008's "Good To Be Bad" and 2011's "Forevermore", and appeared on several live releases, including 2013's "Made In Japan" and "Made In Britain/The World Records".

Aldrich left WHITESNAKE 12 years ago, saying in a statement that he "had several recording and live commitments," so he "needed a more flexible schedule to conclude these before going full force as normal." He added: "Unfortunately, my schedule was not workable."