In January 2012, I walked up five flights of stairs to our seats at DPAC, and my lungs felt off, not like they usually did after walking five flights of stairs. I thought, “I wonder if I have lung cancer.” I dismissed that thought quickly because of how far-fetched an idea it was. A month later, I went to Colorado to ski and could not walk across the parking lot without becoming winded. The first aid clinic told me that my right lung was filling with fluid and gave me oxygen. I dismissed it as a reaction to the altitude. A few weeks later, I started having chest pains, and my husband called 911. The EMTs stated that I was not having a heart attack, but they took me to the hospital for a cardiac work-up. The hospital’s conclusion was that I had no heart problems, but the chest x-ray showed a mass on my right lung. Suddenly, that stray thought I had two months earlier did not seem so far-fetched, and indeed, I had lung cancer.
That was the beginning of a nightmare I would not wish on anyone. I was diagnosed with non-small cell adenocarcinoma, stage 3a. I had surgery to remove the middle lobe of my right lung, four rounds of chemo, and many radiation treatments. When I went online to find out more about lung cancer, I faced the grim statistic of a 15% five-year survival rate. Why did I think I was so special that I would be in that 15%?
Three weeks after my surgery, I attended a Relay For Life event, and I was sitting in the grass feeling very sorry for myself. I looked up to see a friend of mine who had been diagnosed with lung cancer two years earlier. I was so grateful to reach out to someone who understood what I was going through. Together, we walked the survivors’ walk around that track. I knew then that I needed to find more survivors. Through word of mouth, I managed to find three additional lung cancer survivors in Greenville, NC, where I was living at the time. The group of survivors had lunch monthly to give each other emotional support. Sadly, of the five, two have since died, including my friend who walked with me at that first Relay For Life.
The fact that I am a lung cancer survivor never leaves my thoughts for very long. My life has changed forever. But shortly after moving to Raleigh in 2013, I attended an event sponsored by the Lung Cancer Initiative, and I have been so grateful that I did. Through this organization, I have met many more survivors and have been filled with such hope that I began to believe I would be part of that 15% that survives five years. Now it has been nearly thirteen years since my diagnosis! WOW!
The staff and volunteers at LCI work so hard to enrich the lives of survivors and give grants to researchers who are trying to find new treatments for this deadly disease. In the nearly thirteen years since I was diagnosed, the five-year survival rate has begun to tick upward and is now 28%. I am so grateful to be living in an era of hope, where a lung cancer diagnosis is no longer a death sentence.