The week before Thanksgiving 2018, my father went to the emergency room with severe dizziness, he couldn’t stand unassisted. He was diagnosed with an ear infection and sent home. When he followed up with his primary care physician, they ran tests and determined he had cancer. He was diagnosed with metastatic squamous cell lung cancer. The extreme dizziness was a result of a brain tumor, the cancer had metastasized to his brain, and we learned to his bladder.
He was beyond treatment and passed away less than five months later.
My father was a smoker, he was exposed to chemicals in the Vietnam War and during his career in the oil field. My father started smoking in the 1950’s, almost a decade before The Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health released its first findings that there is a link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Two years later, the first warning label was placed on cigarettes.
All these factors put him in a high-risk group. He did not seek early testing, even when a suspected spot on his lung was discovered years prior to his diagnosis.
I cannot say exactly why he didn’t seek early detection. He was good at getting his yearly check-ups and kept regular appointments with his dermatologist to address other health issues. I believe that had he known how much we would miss him, what an empty space his passing would leave in our lives, that he would have sought early treatment – when his cancer was more likely to be curable.
I share my story with the hope that if there is a father, mother, grandparent, or anyone out there that is ignoring their health, who is high risk, or suspect something is wrong, will hear me and go for early screening and treatment if necessary. So that their children and grandchildren will have more time with them.
We must keep funding for the NIH and CDC in place in order to continue lifesaving research for causes and cures of lung cancer and lung disease. We cannot lose the advances we have made in the last century and so we must continue gaining knowledge and saving lives.
