October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so pay attention.

First off, we won’t be doing any jokes about offering women “free breast exams” because

Proving that talent, fame, wealth, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as your wife still doesn’t guarantee an easy life, actor Michael Douglas has a throat tumor, it has been announced. The actor, now age 65, is due to undergo treatment for the tumor in the next two months, including both radiation and chemotherapy procedures.

That is going to suck, not two ways about it.

It goes without saying that Michael Douglas is known and beloved to millions of TV and movie fans, so how about we just take that at face value and not mention it? OK? Great.

So what are the chances that headlines shouting “Michael Douglas has a throat tumor” will be supplanted by headlines sobbing “Michael Douglas is dead”? Not very likely, according to top cancer experts (Oncologists to you… don’t any of you people watch House?) but that doesn’t mean he has an easy path ahead of him either.

Michael Douglas has a throat tumor that is somewhat more advanced than his doctors would like. Simple Stage I & II cancers usually respond to radiation treatment. But stages II & IV require severe cures that, as the old cliche would have it, are as bad as the curse they are addressing.

Following the two months where it is likely Michael Douglas will require tube-feeding due to throat soreness, and inability to swallow. Patients also report mouth sores and pain requiring the likes of morphine to calm. Thereafter, not only can he not smoke (Michael Douglas is an ex-smoker anyway) he will have to avoid even second-hand fumes. And drinking alcohol will be right out.

Still, he’ll have Catherine Zeta-Jones, and that doesn’t suck at all.

Hopefully, the cancer will not return as second treatments are not known to work well. While Michael Douglas has a throat tumor, let’s all reflect on smoking, hmm? Make what he’s going through mean something.