Byron Lee Diagnosed with Cancer Kingson, Jamaica: April 11th 2008 Source: jamaicastar.com Byron Lee is not going to let his ongoing battle with cancer take him away from his true love Carnival and soca. His battle with bladder cancer, made worse by the unpleasant effects of chemotherapy, is not slowing down the 73 year old veteran. Although his doctors encouraged him to rest for a year, Lee simply could not stay away from Jamaica Carnival, and especially not the road march. "Music is a vitamin," he said, "The doctors say I'm a crazy fellow, but they don't understand what it means to me. The road is my life, so I will treat it that way. If I have to die, what better way than on the band playing Tiney Winey. There's nothing better to me than playing. The adrenaline pumps because I'm doing what I love." He continued: "This year, I was in the middle of chemo, but when I went on top of the truck and saw the people, I forgot about that until I got home. Now I'm paying for it." Lee was diagnosed with stage three cancer in November 2006 and did surgery a year later. This caused him to miss a December 2006 performance in China, the land of his forefathers. Lucky to have caught the disease before it got to stage four, Lee immediately underwent chemotherapy. Although a CAT scan, bone scan and biopsy, told him that the treatment had been successfully completed, a decision to do a PET scan may have been the one that saved his life as this revealed that a few cancer cells had survived. "I'm so lucky. God has blessed me," he said, "There are two little dots that they're trying to eradicate now." Lee left the island for Miami yesterday, both to work and to seek treatment.

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