Hi All: I just read a post that I can't get out of my head. I am so disturbed by it because not only did it basically say in a roundabout way that if we smoked we deserve lung cancer, but also blamed smokers for giving non-smokers lung cancer! We don't have enough to worry about by dealing with our cancer, we now are supposed to feel guilty because "we gave non-smokers cancer". Unfortunately the person doesn't know much about lung cancer yet comes on a lung cancer board to accuse us.
Back in March, I sent the below email to everyone in my address book. I am hoping it is still going around today, but who knows. If anyone wants to do the same, please feel free to use any or all of my email. Of course, I've learned a lot more about lung cancer since I sent this email, but I hope it still makes its point. It is long and at the end it has descriptions of the different types of lung cancer that I obtained from my Johns Hopkins oncologist.
PLEASE HELP ME SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT LUNG CANCER. LET’S HELP SAVE LIVES.
There are many cancers out there that kill people every day, yet lung cancer always seems to be “swept under the rug” because people believe that those who get lung cancer “did it to themselves”. This is NOT TRUE. There are many people out there who have never smoked in their lives, yet have been diagnosed with lung cancer. More and more young people, people in their 20''s, 30’s, and 40’s are being diagnosed each day with lung cancer. In 2007, there were over 1 million people diagnosed with this horrible disease. An oncologist at Johns Hopkins told me that most people who have lung cancer do not even get it from smoking.
I am a 50 year old healthy woman that was diagnosed with Stage IV inoperable adenocarcinoma lung cancer in January 2008. There were no symptoms except a lump on my neck. I first attributed this to stress. After a couple of weeks when it did not disappear, I went to the doctor. My primary care physician insisted that it was a muscle pull and wanted to wait a couple of weeks to watch it. I knew it was not a muscle pull and after numerous struggles with my physician to get her to order tests to determine what this lump could be, advanced stage IV lung cancer was discovered. My doctor called me on my cell phone and informed me over the phone of this news!
How did I get this? I don’t know. Do I deserve this? NO! Does anyone deserve this? NO! Lung cancer does not discriminate. It can hit anyone at anytime.
Since I’ve been diagnosed, I’ve met people on lung cancer discussion boards that come from all walks of life: marathon runners, vegetarians, aerobics instructors, young mothers and fathers, grandparents, brothers and sisters, all just like you and me. One woman whom I met through a discussion board was diagnosed in January of 2008 with lung cancer, and died two short months later. She was a 46 year-old mother of small children.
When a person dies of a heart attack, do we blame them for eating hamburgers? If a person gets shot on the street, do we blame them for being in an unsafe place? No. We don’t blame anyone with any other type of cancer for doing it to themselves. Why blame lung cancer victims? Whether we smoked or not is irrelevant. We have a terrible disease that nobody deserves.
Please help me get the facts out about lung cancer. Forward this email to everyone you know. Let’s get this horrible disease out in the open and make people aware that those of us who have it do not deserve it and did not bring it on ourselves. There are screenings for all kinds of cancer: breast, prostate, colon, cervical, etc., yet no screening for lung cancer. Why not? It’s too late for me, but we can spread the word about the facts of lung cancer and by doing this, maybe we can help other people get diagnosed early or even get people interested in finding a cure and save lives. If, by forwarding this email we save just one life, isn’t it worth it?
If you want to learn more about lung cancer, below is some information I obtained from Johns Hopkins Cancer Center.
I am signing this email with my name to show the seriousness of this email. Help stamp out this killer disease.
Susan Laurents
Centreville, VA
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Lung Cancer Information (obtained by Oncologist at Johns Hopkins Cancer Center):
Lung cancer, in general, can be separated into two types: small cell and non-small cell lung cancer. Small cell lung cancer comprises approximately 15% of all lung cancer cases while non-small cell lung cancer comprises the remaining 85%.
Small cell lung cancer is highly aggressive, responds well to chemotherapy and radiation, but carries a very poor prognosis. Non-small lung cancer generally grows more slowly, responds less well to chemotherapy and radiation, but has a slightly better prognosis.
Non-small cell lung cancer can be divided into multiple sub-types. Squamous cell lung cancer is one of the subtypes. Most squamous cell lung cancer patients are active or former smokers. Squamous cell cancers tend to be locally aggressive and spread outside of the lungs much later in their course.
Adenocarcinomas of the lung tend to present along the periphery of the lungs and are seen in both smokers and non-smokers alike. Adenocarcinomas tend to spread through the blood stream to locations outside of the lungs earlier in their course of development than squamous cell lung cancer.
When putting together a plan for non-small cell lung cancer, the first thing to understand is how we stage lung cancer and how staging impacts our choice of treatment. In general we group lung cancer into four stages. To understand the staging, you first need to understand how lung cancer spreads. Spread of lung cancer develops through three mechanisms. First is growth of the tumor locally. Tumors as they grow expand in size and can grow into other structures that are near by. The second mechanism of spread is through the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is part of the cleaning system of the body. White blood cells can move through this system to clear up infections. Unlike the blood system, the vessels in the lymph system carry liquid that is moving slowly. Generally when cancer cells get into the lymph system they involve the lymph nodes closest to the primary tumor first and continue down the lymph vessel involving more lymph nodes along the way. In the lung, there are lymph nodes within the lung as well as lymph nodes that are in the center of the chest around the heart, airways, and major blood vessels. The final way for cancer to spread is through the blood stream. When cancer cells get into the blood stream they can go anywhere blood goes and set up new sites of tumor in those places. These new tumor sites are called metastases. The most common sites for lung cancer to develop metastatic tumors are the opposite lung, liver, bones, adrenal glands, and brain.
Once you understand how lung cancer spreads, the staging system is straightforward. Stage I lung cancer is a solitary tumor in the lung. By definition, stage I tumors have no involvement of lymph nodes or distant spread. Stage I tumors are optimally treated with surgery with possible chemotherapy after resection. Stage II tumors are generally larger tumors. They also may involve local lymph nodes. These tumors are also optimally treated with surgery. We have conclusive evidence that patients with stage II lung cancer that has been resected benefit from chemotherapy after recovering from their surgery. Stage III tumors are more complicated. Stage III tumors involve the lymph nodes in the center of the chest, have multiple tumors in one lobe of the lung, or invade major structures such as the main airway, major blood vessels, or heart. Some of these tumors can be removed surgically, but most are treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. Stage IV lung cancer patients have distant spread of the cancer. By definition this means the cancer has entered the blood stream and is setting up new sites.
When approaching stage IV lung cancer, the main treatment approach is chemotherapy. Surgery and radiation are both local treatments. Surgery only removes the cancer cells the surgeon can see. Radiation only damages the cancer cells that are in the path of the radiation beams. Chemotherapy is a systemic approach since it travels through the blood stream. Chemotherapy can affect not only tumors in the lungs but also tumors in the new sites that may be set up. The one place that chemotherapy has difficulty reaching is the brain. The brain is a protected site and many medications including chemotherapy cannot reach into the blood vessels of the brain. In stage IV or metastatic lung cancer, we generally recommend chemotherapy alone unless there is a specific problem that needs to be addressed such as spread to the brain, a painful site of spread to the bones, or tumor compressing an essential structure such as the blood vessels that go in and out of the heart and lungs or the main airways. In these scenarios we often use radiation to treat that local problem and then use chemotherapy for a systemic approach. Surgery generally does not offer any benefit.
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