Nov. 29--Nancy Young did everything right when it came to her health, or so she thought.
Three years ago, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
"It blew me away," said the trim, 53-year-old Frederick woman. Young never smoked and only briefly ever lived with people who smoked.
Young has Stage 4 lung cancer, which means the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes.
Her voice is scratchy, a result of the cancer. "I didn't use to sound like this," she said.
November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and Young wants people to be aware that this cancer kills more Americans than any other. "If you are having a tightness in your chest or you can't breathe, and you don't know why, it may be cancer," she said. "This is a cancer that does not have an early detection" screening test.
Before she was diagnosed, Young usually walked at lunchtime at her job at State Farm. While walking in October of 2008, she felt an extreme tightness in the left side of her chest, and she became short of breath. She had suffered from asthma since childhood, and she thought that was the cause.
Her general practitioner switched her to a different asthma medicine and an acid reflux prescription. Neither helped. She went to a cardiologist, who found nothing wrong. Nothing abnormal showed up on a chest X-ray.
By July of 2009, she still felt bad, and she was given a breathing test. She failed that, and another chest X-ray was ordered.
This one showed a plural effusion, which signaled a lung problem.
She was sent to Frederick Memorial Hospital, and more than a quart of fluid was removed from the plural lining of her left lung. Surgery was performed 18 days later that would allow her lung to expand, prevent the fluid buildup and re-inflate the bottom half of her lung, which had collapsed.
Young's house has been tested for radon, a gas that has been linked to lung cancer, and was found not to have a high level of radon. She cannot recall working around asbestos, which has also been linked to lung cancer. She has no family history of cancer.
Young said that much attention is given to curing breast cancer and prostate cancer, but lung cancer kills many more men and women, and yet survival rates have barely budged in nearly 40 years.
Young has been treated with chemotherapy and drug therapy. She has many malignant tumors in the plural lining of her lung, and the tumors are considered inoperable. The cancer has not spread beyond her lymph nodes, however.
Young still works at State Farm, but she has cut back to halftime. She lives alone, but friends cook for her and drive her to work, to medical appointments and to grocery shop.
"I used to travel a lot for vacation," she said. She was hoping to travel overseas after retirement. The traveling stopped after her cancer diagnosis. "I felt as if all my hopes and dreams were washed away," she said.
The side effects of the cancer and its treatment have taken away most of her quality of life. Her immune system is compromised. She has gotten numerous infections, and once came down with chickenpox, a disease she never had as a child. She recently developed acute renal failure as a side effect from a drug she is taking.
Young would like to see more research dollars raised for lung cancer. Only 15 percent of people diagnosed survive beyond five years of diagnosis. More than 220,000 people nationwide are diagnosed each year, and 157,000 people die from lung cancer annually.
"I used to take things like a heart beating and breath- ing normally for granted," she said.
Young lives in a tidy little house in Frederick that is decorated for each season. She has medical insurance that pays for her treatments and enough money to pay her bills, but she's worried that her safety net will be pulled if something should change.
"Someone has to get the word out about the No. 1 cancer killer in the United States, which is lung cancer," Young said.
___
(c)2011 The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Md.)
Visit The Frederick News-Post (Frederick, Md.) at www.fredericknewspost.com
Distributed by MCT Information Services