I have never smoked and I have lung cancer

I explained my symptoms to my brother, an anesthetist. I had held back from discussing my condition with anyone other than my husband because I didn’t want to worry unnecessarily. But that’s when I started to worry.

“Did you answer?” asked my brother.

That made me pause. I actually lost some weight. But I also trained a lot and did more hikes than usual.

“Did anyone mention a tumor?” he asked.

I was speechless. A tumor? What? Where? As?

I had a million questions. A series of appointments with a pulmonologist and hematologist / oncologist, along with a visit to the emergency room and a couple of nights in the oncology department, resulted in a malicious answer: I had stage 4 Lung cancer with Brain metastases.

My world swayed and turned. Just a few weeks earlier, I was afraid of having a mild Covid case. Now I was facing the most aggressive type of lung cancer. Life as I knew it had just made the craziest leap.

As much as I was shocked, I was also terribly confused. How on earth did I get lung cancer? I was 47 years old and had never smoked or lived with a smoker. To the best of my knowledge, lung cancer did not occur in our family.

I also took great care of myself. It was all totally unthinkable.

I am of Asian American descent and learned from my oncologist that Asian lung cancer patients are more likely to be non-smokers and that women of Asian descent who have never smoked make up more than half of all Asian American women diagnosed with lung cancer.

I learned from my doctor that a genetic mutation could be the driving factor behind my lung cancer. If that were the case, I could be a candidate for a new drug that can be used to treat certain types of lung cancer with the specific mutation.

I was hoping I had this genetic mutation so that I could be treated with this drug, but it turned out that no, I didn’t have the genetic mutation. I was so disappointed.

So now I had moved from hoping not to have Covid to hoping not to have cancer and learned that I had cancer in my lungs and then in my brain too. What was next Would I be excluded as a candidate for lung surgery? I would undergo chemotherapy and Immunotherapy and be sick for months only to find out that the treatments weren’t entirely successful?

Puppy. Pretty much that happened. Although chemotherapy reduced the cancerous lesions in my brain, it was clear that the tumors in my lungs, even though they had shrunk a little, were going nowhere. They remained viciously pressed against my heart.

I felt like my future was being pulled away from me. I was plagued by morbid ideas – I thought I would only live a few more months or less.

I was devastated that chemo didn’t eradicate cancer. It was my husband too, who was so supportive and a pillar of strength throughout this ordeal.

Our children, too, had been tremendously brave. As much as we tried to protect her from all the evil, my cancer treatments were harsh on her. The very thought of them worrying about me brings me to tears. I never wanted to take the light out of her eyes.

Although I was frail and exhausted from chemotherapy, I refused to give up. I stormed my doctors with questions about the next steps. I would have to defeat this cancer.

My doctors were just as passionate as I was, but they were more knowledgeable and wanted to explore other options. Instead of completely destroying cancer – which seemed less possible and more traumatic to my body and my life – they asked, “Why don’t you focus on surviving with cancer?”

The idea of ​​going on with my life with cancer was completely alien to me, and yet, when my doctor informed me, a burden fell off my chest.

I wondered, Is It Possible To Live A Good Life With Cancer?

My doctors stated that it is entirely possible. It’s just about dealing with the cancer instead of trying to blot out all evidence of it. That meant no more chemo and ultimately no more feeling like I was going to lose a final fight.