Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus shared some good news with fans Monday, writing on Twitter that the chemotherapy he’s been undergoing for lymphoma seems to be working.
“Scans indicate that the chemo is working!” Hoppus wrote. “I still have months of treatment ahead, but it’s the best possible news.
“I’m so grateful and confused and also sick from last week’s chemo. But the poison the doctors pump into me and the kind thoughts and wishes of people around me are destroying this cancer. Just gonna keep fighting.”
Last month, Hoppus, the bassist and co-lead singer of Blink-182, revealed that he had been undergoing chemotherapy for the past three months. Hoppus recently took questions and spoke to concerned fans in a Twitch stream reposted to YouTube on July 13, per Vulture.
The 49-year-old rocker said on Twitch that he was diagnosed with “diffuse large B-cell lymphoma stage 4-A” in late April. He explained that this means “it’s entered enough parts of my body that I’m stage 4, which is ― I think it’s the highest that it goes.”
Hoppus said on the Twitch stream that he would soon find out if “chemotherapy is working at all” for him. If it is, he said, he will still have three more rounds.
He noted that this would be “the best-case scenario” for him. But he did not sugarcoat his experience, saying that “chemotherapy sucks so bad.”
Each round of the treatment, he said, has left him feeling a completely different way.
“The first chemo, I felt like I was a zombie that fell onto an electric fence,” he said. “I felt like I couldn’t move, but at the same time I felt like I was being tased or electrocuted.”
Hoppus also described the experience of “chemo brain,” saying he has trouble with short-term memory, and sometimes has difficulty remembering things like song titles and people’s names. “I forget things that I should have on call.”
Still, he exhibited a lot of hope.
He said his mother has “beaten cancer three times ― twice for breast cancer, and once for the same cancer that I have.”
The rocker managed to retain a good sense of humor as well. He joked about sporting the “absolute worst toupee” since losing his hair.
And when a fan asked him how likely he was to transform into Walter White from Breaking Bad, Hoppus responded dryly: “I hope I get the ‘cancer in full remission’ part of Walter White, and not the ‘drug manufacturer’ part of Walter White.”