Gail B., WI

I had a slightly heavy feeling in my chest and I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought perhaps it was a panic attack, even though I was not anxious about anything. I did not have a constant heaving feeling, I would only feel it occasionally. I was driving one day and saw a billboard for a heart calcium scoring test and decided to have one done in May 2019, because I thought the feeling in my chest might be related to my arteries. A spot was found on my right lung and they could not get a biopsy because it was by a main artery. I had two doctors in my city tell me they would not do a biopsy because it was too dangerous. They thought it was adenocarcinoma which is slow-growing, so they wanted to just wait and see if it would grow.

I was not happy with that response and sought treatment at a well-known hospital two hours away. The doctors there did a bronchoscopy to get the biopsy and it showed I had cancer. I had surgery on July 16, 2019, and had one whole lobe of my lung removed from the right side. It was adenocarcinoma stage 1 and they got it all. It was not in my lymph nodes, so I did not need any treatment. I never smoked, but I was around a lot of secondhand smoke as a child and my house tested high for radon gas, so I’m sure that played a part in why I got lung cancer. I have my next scan on April 24, 2020, and I am hopeful it will be good news. Listen to your body and if something feels like it’s not right . . . get it checked out!