Running With Lung Cancer

How’s that for a title?

Those of you who live in my neighborhood, yes, that certainly has been me you’ve seen jogging along the streets recently. You might have thought, but, wait. Didn’t I hear she now has . . . lung cancer? 

That would be right too.

I asked my oncologist about running weeks ago, and his answer was “Yes, you can run!”  That made me really happy. So, that’s what I’ve been doing. I figure if I’m in as good a shape as I can be – considering – I will recover faster after surgery.

Which is what I’m here to talk about, recovering from the surgery I mentioned in my last post. I went to see a thoracic surgeon yesterday.

By the way, in case you missed that Instagram post I did on Monday, here’s the picture I sent out.

Talk about timing. These two pieces of mail arrived together. This actually made me giggle but maybe I have a weird sense of humor.  (French Sojourn, you can see I took your advice – thank you)

Back to the surgery visit. It was really enlightening and what I hoped and prayed for will happen. The doctor is David White, and while I was having a pulmonary test, the nurse said, “If I had to have any sort of surgery on my lungs, Dr. White is who I would want. He’s the best and I’ve worked all over the place.”

I love it when nurses volunteer tidbits like that. Either way, even after meeting him I was still curious so I Googled his name. Here’s a short video taken about three years ago where he introduces himself:

I really like him. Like my oncologist, he was thoughtful and caring.  It showed in how he talked, explained things, and the time he and his PA took.

We started off by comparing our fitness watches. Ha! We had very similar looking running watches – same color – black/lime green.  Then we looked at the PET scans I’ve had. He can’t be 100% sure of what type of cancer it is until they biopsy it. At this time however, because of the characteristics (round), he believes it’s actually a recurrent cancer and that the original cancer metastasized to the lung. My oncologist has said this would be a highly “unusual pattern.” (I’ve always joked how I can’t ever just have a common cold. If you knew my entire medical history, you’d understand what I mean.)

Dr. White said, “I bet when we look at the PET from January, we’ll see it.”

He flipped to that scan and scrolled through, but, we didn’t see anything.

He said, “Huh, that’s interesting.”

At any rate given the placement, back of the lower left lobe, (he placed his hand on my back midway to indicate about where it is, whereas all along I’ve been thinking it’s up front) he still thinks it’s recurrent. He also talked about the shape – round – and said other lung cancers tend to not be that shape, meaning the shape points to recurrent.

He scrolled through the scan and showed me other “spots.” I’d not heard about other “spots.” I honestly can’t recall how many there were, but I’d say 2-3. His PA said, “these are so small we wouldn’t be able to find them (during surgery), but we need to watch them, and see if they grow.” The watching will come from PET scans.

For the surgery it will be laparoscopic (so relieved), and he will do a “wedge resection.”  This will mean cutting out the nodule, and some of the good tissue. He said they literally cut it like a wedge. I like pictures, so I went out and found one. Like this, but in that lower part of the lung.

There will be a tube in my chest for about a day – and that will be removed before I leave. This is the best surgery for maintaining most of the lung tissue. Regardless, your body has to adjust to less lung capacity, but this is the optimum for keeping the most of the lung.

He said I shouldn’t have to stay more than a night, maybe two depending on how things go with the chest tube and its removal. At home, recovery beyond that is about ten to fourteen days. He said one of the hardest things is getting over the anesthesia, and the pain. Still, all this was right in line with what I’d been hoping for – minimal hospital stay, and a pretty quick recovery.

He then said, “Once I’m in there, if I find out it’s actually a primary cancer, that will mean a larger incision (still laparoscopic) and a lobectomy, where we would remove the lower lobe entirely.” It means a longer hospital stay – maybe an extra day, and a few more days tacked onto recovery.

So, that’s the deal. The surgery is September 24th. This was the date I was hoping for because of the SIBA Tradeshow in Florida, and the Stanly County Library Annual Friends of the Library meeting where they’ve sent out 250 invitations.

Not having it ASAP doesn’t mean increased risks. It was sort of funny because when I asked about that, and I was prepared to start emailing people to say, “I’m real sorry, but I won’t be able to make it,” he said, “No. It doesn’t make a difference. If it grows, it will only make it easier to find.”

It still sounds encouraging and hopeful despite hearing about the other spots. We’ll just have to keep the faith they won’t grow, and hope from this point on I’ll get clean scans.

As always, I find myself listening to certain songs, and the lyrics to Seals and Crofts’ We May Never Pass This Way Again, are fitting.

“Cast away our fears, and all the years, will come and go, and take us up, always up. . .”

 

Peace and love,

Donna