UneasyRider
Regular
Joined: 21 Aug 2008
Posts: 20
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 Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 7:21 pm Post subject: Early Stage NSCLC |
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When I was researching lung cancer shortly after my own diagnosis, I found this forum. The posts here reminded me of what I had already found out: lung cancer is usually diagnosed late, and the prognosis is usually pretty bad. Seeing no other early diagnosis patients posting, I never did either (but I still kept coming back, caught up in the stories here, and knowing what might be waiting for me). tgp's post today served to remind me that there are still early diagnosis people checking here, and the information I have and knowledge of my experiences might be useful to some of them, so here I go.
I am 57 years old, and quit cigars in August, 2003. I quickly put on weight, searched to find what exercises someone with a bad back could do, and in September 2004, started riding a recumbent bicycle. I found that I loved bicycle riding as much as when I was a kid, kept riding more and more miles, and in 2007, I rode over 6,000 miles, including a number of 100 mile rides and 200k brevets.
As a long distance cyclist, I thought the effects of my smoking were long gone, but I was mistaken. In November 2007, less than two months after racing as part of a 500 mile 4 man relay race team, a chest x-ray, done as part of a pre-surgery check before thyroid surgery, showed a nodule in my left lung, then a ct scan showed it to be a 2.8 cm nsclc nodule (its spiculated edge made the doctors pretty certain). Because it was well contained within the upper lobe of my left lung, and the ct scan suggested no lymph node involvement, surgery was to be the only treatment, and on December 20th, the upper lobe of my left lung was removed.
January 5th, I had 40 staples removed from my side, and the next day, I was back on my bicycle, doing short, easy neighborhood rides. The supposed slam dunk cure was a no go, though, when biopsies, which identified the cancer as squamous cell, also showed a single lymph node on the outside of my lung to be cancerous. That raises the risk of a recurrence a lot, so from February through April, I did three rounds of adjuvant chemotherapy. Gemcidabine was paired with Cisplatin, after an allergic reaction to Taxotere sent me to the ER. I can testify to the fact that being very physically fit is no guarantee that you won't struggle with the chemo drugs; they made me very sick.
Recovery from open thoracic surgery is no easy thing, and the chemo kept me off my bike even more days than the surgery did, but by June, I was back to doing 200k rides (albeit a little slower than before), and my July 1st six month ct scan still showed my lungs to be clear, so I'm hoping for the best. It's five full years before doctors will call lung cancer cured though, so I still have a long time left to sweat a recurrence.
Because of my fitness level, and the early diagnosis of my disease, I have thus far avoided many of the horrors experienced by posters and loved ones here; some posts can be pretty tough to read. But, knowing that early diagnosis is starting to happen more often, and that there are bound to be more people doing the same research I did, I'll do my best to help those with questions, hoping all the while that my lung cancer experiences are behind me. I was surprised at how little information I found in forums and blogs that was pertinent to me, and so far, I've only found one other long distance cyclist on the planet with a lobe of a lung missing. So, I'll try to add a different perspective to the mix here.
Hang in there, tgp. Even if your tiny nodule (6mm is just .6 cm) does end up being lung cancer, the prognosis for someone with a nodule that small is very good. And for anyone else diagnosed with an spn (solitary pulmonary nodule), just the fact that they called it a nodule is good. Under 3 cm is called a nodule; 3cm and over is called a mass.
Bud
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57 year old male in Texas diagnosed with Stage II NSCLC
Upper left lobectomy on December 20, 2007, then 3 rounds of adjuvant chemotherapy
July 2008 CT scan - NED
December 2008 CT scan - NED
My story is in this thread: http://cancerforums.net/viewtopic.php?p=39609#39609 |
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