A mother has shared her journey to discovering she had stage four cancer after initially attributing her symptoms to other causes.
During an interview with The Patient Story, Jennifer, a mother of two, recounted how a car accident led to an unexpected discovery by doctors that she had lung cancer.
Jennifer explained that following the accident, doctors noticed ‘a spot on the lung’ but she didn’t receive a cancer diagnosis until 10 months later. She had initially visited her doctor for what she assumed was a sinus infection.
Subsequent tests and scans revealed a tumor in her lung.
The news came as a significant shock to Jennifer, who has always maintained a healthy and active lifestyle, frequently participating in 5k runs.
Jennifer noted she had been experiencing fatigue, which she attributed to her long commute and the demands of raising two teenage children.
“It was absolute shock, how can it be lung cancer?” she expressed.
“We’re a very fit family, very healthy, we have a home gym, I was doing 5ks all the time, always very active, ate healthy, so I thought ‘oh I don’t have to worry about lung cancer’.
“You do your screenings for other cancer guidelines, it wasn’t on my radar that I would ever be diagnosed with lung cancer.
“… I have a very positive outlook on life, I really didn’t have anything out of the ordinary. I was tired, but I was commuting into Boston to work, I have two teenage kids and any kind of fatigue I just chalked it up to my lifestyle.”
Currently, Jennifer is on a targeted daily medication, which comes with its own set of side effects.
“There’s side effects all the time. I don’t look sick, but it’s still affecting me,” she shared.
Jennifer advocates for lung cancer screenings to begin at age 35, similar to other cancer screenings.
“There’s so many younger people being diagnosed with lung cancer under the age of 50, predominantly women, it’s just wild. You don’t equate lung cancer with young, healthy people,” she remarked.
Five years post-diagnosis, Jennifer has expressed gratitude for the advancements in lung cancer research and the treatments that have become available due to clinical trials.
“Being here at five years, I’m different than how I was just two years into my journey. Somebody once told me to ‘focus on the first step and not the whole staircase’, just to stay in the present moment,” she reflected.
“There’s a community out there and I think that’s our biggest strength is to be able to come together, to be together and give each other hope and support that only we can give each other.”