screen for lung cancer

I cannot help but notice the trumpeted endorsements by Lung Cancer Alliance and others of low dose CT screening for those at high risk for lung cancer.

Likely I am writing this today because my Nurse Practitioner over a year ago went a step further and believed a chest x-ray should be part of an annual physical.

I write about my odyssey with Stage 1 lung cancer. With increased availability of CT screening there should be more of us filling the ranks of those trying to survive lung cancer every day – DO NOT wait for symptoms!

Unfortunately, there is no “idiot’s guide to a pre-lung cancer diagnosis” – so just a few thoughts having recently walked the walked myself.  

When I heard the words ‘suspicious’ and ‘nodule’ in the same phrase with lung, I immediately wanted to know how long I had to live.

A year ago an X-ray begat a CT scan which begat a PET Scan. As all this stretched on for over a month I became mentally, emotionally and physically obsessed by the question. Time gets real relative when the word lung cancer enters your daily vocabulary.

Yet, from receptionists to medical technicians to my Nurse Practitioner and eventually Pulmonologist I was stonewalled by an ever growing conspiracy of silence or optimism, “it could be a lot of things”.  

When I tried a new tack by simply typing my scan reports into Google and calculating my own prognosis then asking my Nurse Practitioner to comment, she suggested I “step away from the Internet”.

Once diagnosed, I was buried in helpful materials like manna falling from heaven but pre-diagnosis I was wandering alone in the proverbial wilderness.

The time of waiting I learned is known as scanxiety.  Like a lot of things artists express it better. When the songwriter is also a thoracic oncologist you get lyrics like these below to “Scanxiety”:

“I long for words of warmth, support and empathy

I need your compassion

Not your dominance

Nor your disrespect”

Patrick Leer

Health Activist:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer harrisburg pennsylvania

donating blood and lung cancer

Noticing a blood donation drive by PinnacleHealth I thought I should start 2013 off on a righteous foot after all PinnacleHealth Hospital is  where I had my successful lung cancer surgery.

Plus with all the blood draws for pre-scans, pre and post-surgery, and this or that appointment, I felt kind of like being stalked by a vampire for most of last year

Soooo needless to say I was surprised to learn that as a lung cancer ‘survivor’ I could NOT donate blood. 

In further conversation I learned that since I had only surgery for Stage 1, with no chemotherapy nor radiation and that with no evidence of metastasis that I could be re-considered in 5 years. Additionally I learned that different cancers have different time protocols for blood donations.

Curiously on the other hand, for everyone and anyone else, I discovered an article reporting that donating blood “reduces cancer risks ... especially colon, liver, throat and lung cancer"

Patrick Leer

Health Activist:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer harrisburg pennsylvania

time is of the essence when treating lung cancer

Admittedly this story is not the front cover but this is the kind of coverage long overdue for lung cancer.

Tabloids are first and foremost not only read by the masses but engineered to scream loud and clear to the most people possible:

Time is of the essence when treating lung cancer

If cancer is found before it spreads to lymph nodes, the cure rate is upwards of 75 percent

The New York Daily News is the most widely-read newspaper in the New York City metropolitan area (the largest metropolitan area in the United States), and its ranked #5 among the top 25 U.S. Daily Newspapers.

For too long such health news has been buried deep in the inside pages of publications Spiro Agnew would have long ago labeled as read only by an “effete core of impudent snobs” or stories of real lives marginalized and intellectualized because of stigmas associated with smoking.

Screaming headlines save lives.

Patrick Leer

Health Activist:

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer harrisburg pennsylvania

look into the faces of lung cancer

What are 'we the people'? A mutant version of the three wise monkeys who "see no" lung cancer? Open your eyes and see your neighbors, friends, and family. 1 in 14 Americans are diagnosed with lung cancer. 

from the Lung Cancer Alliance

"We’re proud to share with you these Faces of Lung Cancer. Each person represented here is a mother, father, brother, sister, neighbor and friend, whose lives have been forever changed by lung cancer."

"We welcome you to share your photos as we represent the true faces of this disease. We hope to dispel many of the misperceptions and the long held stigmas associated with lung cancer.

Add a Face to end the stigma!"

Patrick Leer

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer harrisburg pennsylvania

I hear and see dead people

actor Aaron Paul portrays Jesse 

Watching my favorite lung cancertainment, a past episode of “Breaking Bad” on DVD from local library last night Jesse repeatedly dials his dead lover’s phone number just to hear her voice on her phone message until mercifully a robotic phone company voice announces “We're Sorry, The Number You Are Trying To Reach is No Longer in Service.” 

In real life do people do this? Is it morbid or just some high tech denial of the 5^th stage of grief, acceptance?

I found it weirding me out especially since last week I had dialed a number on a contract and got the voice of a friend who died two months earlier and her family and/or business had not changed the recording.

Then again I’m kind of creeped out out every time I sign onto Facebook and I see a real life friend who died over Memorial Day weekend who also happened to be a Facebook friend showing as “friends on chat” because his family left his Facebook page active.

My daughter has tried to patiently explain to me that in the 21^st Century families often leave Facebook pages up us as testimonials, kind of like cyber tombstones ... or have no idea how to get rid of the stuff.

Maybe it's an age thing and treasuring technology bites is just a variation of the lockets of hair of yore. 

I'm old school and starting to feel rather technology haunted. To paraphrase Mister Rogers, “Hello Boys and Girls! Can you say, ghost in the machine?”

There should be a business to clean up your cyber mess but then again how can you trust them, it would be like Ted Williams head and cryonics all over again.

Considering most people don't even have a will I suspect even less give any thought to cyber undertakers. 

No question a diagnosis of lung cancer empowers me with glimpses of 'one foot in the grave vision' ... but even that is progress as a year ago I did not even know survival was possible with lung cancer.

Survive is the vibe, no question! 

But is it wrong to confess there are some people I am so going to enjoy haunting one day ... just not in the foreseeable future. I plan to keep both my feet out of the grave. 

Patrick Leer

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer harrisburg pennsylvania

lung cancer now out of the shadows

"This is a new era for lung cancer. We are now out of the shadows," Lung Cancer Alliance President Laurie Fenton-Ambrose

President Barack Obama today signed into law the first legislation requiring comprehensive plans of research action for high mortality cancers, with lung and pancreatic cancers given priority status for expedited attention.

It's Official! Lung Cancer Alliance Hails Landmark Victory! President Obama SignsHigh Mortality Cancer Bill Into Law

Research even if begun today likely will not help those of us already diagnosed but it can and will begin to increase hope into surviving lung cancer and pancreatic cancer.

Patrick Leer

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer

real men, manly men and lung cancer

When it comes to trying to outlive lung cancer, statistically men have a slightly lower survival rate than women.

To arms! Get the American Civil Liberties Union on the phone! Personally I am always up for a donnybrook with Big Pharma and Big Medicine.

As guys we are raised with more silly codes to govern our masculinity except when we find ourselves fighting to live.

What is the Manly Man way to approach lung cancer? What does the Bro Code say about lung cancer? What would a Real Man do? Where have all the Cowboys gone?

I even found myself reading about ‘death by machismo’ when it comes to stereotypes impairing screening for and treatment of other cancers such as testicular, or colorectal.

Soooo as 4” of snow fell before the year ended I heard Friedrich Nietzsche in my head whispering in English (with a German accent), "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." After all when one has had a wedge of their lung removed due to successful lung cancer surgery 9 months earlier it is 'essential' to be 'the first in the neighborhood' to shovel my driveway and sidewalks clear.

Though as a concession to my daughter who has invested much in my recovery I did alternate shoveling with relaxing while playing Assassin's Creed III on xBox.

Noticing a neighbor’s driveway and sidewalk unshoveled who had back surgery earlier in the year, I didn't need a code to tell me, as picking up my shovel I headed across the street ... "a man's got to do what a man's got to do." 

Patrick Leer

Caregivingly Yours, MS Caregiver @ http://caregivinglyyours.blogspot.com/

My Lung Cancer Odyssey @ http://lung-cancer-survivor.blogspot.com/

health lung cancer harrisburg pennsylvania