My ribs hurt today, a reminder of my old friend lung cancer. How I met my lung cancer.

It is a shooting pain that starts mid back and follows my 8th rib around to the front on my right side, sometimes it is mild, sometimes it doubles me over. I have pain off and on along my ribcage since 2019. It is a nerve pain I have gotten since I had my lung lobectomy almost 5 years ago. 

I was 35 years old with a 2 month old baby when I was officially told I had non-small cell adenocarcinoma in my lung. Lung cancer. I felt like I was hit with a freight train, like an alternate realty had just became my life.

I am sure you are wondering as many people do when they realize I am a lung cancer survivor is how could this happen and how did you find out? 

This is where luck plays a roll. 

Rewind 2 more years to when we were trying to get pregnant. I have suffered from abdominal pain on and off due to a sensitive GI tract since I was a teenager. I was having one of these painful bouts and in the emergency room. To confirm that this was just my normal digestive problems and not an ectopic pregnancy, a CT scan was done of my abdomen. They found no issues with my abdomen but I was told, "Oh by the way you have a mass in your lung that we caught on the top of the CT scan, you should go see a pulmonologist." As with most things in human medicine it took months to be seen for the follow-up.  

The pulmonologist thought that since I am not and haven't been a smoker and since I was fairly young there was no way this could be cancer, a biopsy is definitely not needed. Clearly, because I am a veterinarian that is exposed to weird animal diseases, it must be some strange zoonotic disease. I was then tested for all sorts of weird diseases. I was given a PET scan which came back negative for being an active mass. This string of testing lasted about a year. Needless to say, I did not have any weird animal disease. While the pulmonology and infectious doctor teams were busy scratching their heads, I surprisingly got pregnant. So no more testing for me until my sweet baby was born. No biggie, I wasn't worried if the doctors weren't worried.

Three whole weeks post my emergency cesarean section, I got another CT scan. Uh-oh the doctors said, we have a problem. The mass had more than doubled in size, likely from the pregnancy hormones. We now need a biopsy ASAP. So in I went to the hospital, still sore and tired from my recent birthing experience. With some heavy sedation, a 6 inch large biopsy needle was punctured through my back and into my unwanted friend in my lung. The procedure was uncomfortable but I was certain the doctors were right and this was going to tell us that it was some weird growth from a strange animal disease I had picked up. I would get some pills or steroids and bing bang boom, be rid of it for good. I had a new baby to take care of, a successful veterinary career to get back to, I did not have any more time for medical tests and procedures. And I certainly did not have time for the C word.

The morning after my biopsy I got a call from the nurse asking me to come in the next day. I immediately said to the nurse "I have cancer," she told me she could not say that. But my doctor brain knew that the only test they would have back in less than 24 hours was a pathology review showing cancer cells.

And sure enough the next day I was told that in fact I did have cancer. I needed to have an entire lung lobe removed. But, hey I should be grateful because most people do not get diagnosed with this type of cancer until it has metastasized all over their lungs and they are at end stage of disease with a poor prognosis. 

I am grateful now in retrospect that this was caught early before it had metastasized. At the time being told I should be grateful that I only have to get a lung lobe removed did not sit well with me. Heck, none of it sat well with me. I was in disbelief and shock.

Facing my own mortality at age 35 with a young baby in my arms, merely a year after helping my 4 year old son get through open heart surgery. It felt like too much. It felt like I couldn't do it all. I luckily had the help of a huge DVM mom online community, a DVM cancer support group, and my family and friends from all over supported us in so many ways including a gofund me to help with the medical bills. I was in fact SO lucky. And I am so lucky to be here 5 years later complaining about nerve pain in my ribcage. 

I had practiced veterinary medicine long enough at that point in my life to know that cancer and life altering diseases are non-discriminatory, I think that helped me face my challenge and move from disbelief to acceptance and action. Do not get me wrong I am still scared every day that I will wake up and find out my cancer is back and I only have a few months left. That is why we need to try to make every day a good day and be present each and every minute.