@babs1956, Tagrisso has been the proverbial godsend for those of us with certain types of EGFR mutation. It's a small molecule targeted therapy that has dramatically extended both PFS (progression-free survival) and OS (overall survival). My lung cancer (LC) metastasized to my brain in 2020, which is when I started Tagrisso. Four and a half years later, I'm still doing well on it and am currently cancer-free. I have two friends who have been on it for over 7 years and are both still active. One is a personal trainer!

My experience with Tagrisso is that the initial side effects, like the ever-popular diarrhea, die off after a few months. That's how long it takes the body to adapt to it. Hopefully, your side effects will also disappear over time.

The one thing I learned later that I wish I'd known early is that the most important thing is to decide what time of day to take it and then stick to that time to maintain a constant level of the drug in your body. Initially, I chose two hours after breakfast and two hours before lunch, and that's still when I take it. Consistent time is more critical with some people than with others, but it turned out I'm one of those people. I had a slight recurrence about a year ago that we successfully treated with 1 round of targeted radiation. My friend Larry had a similar experience. Neither of us has had any other recurrence since the first one.

Targeted therapy is the future of lung cancer treatment; new ones are being developed almost daily! It's actually a challenge to keep up with them all. You can learn more at lungevity.com, go2.org, and, if you're ready for a deep dive, you can join the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer and see the same information your oncologist is reviewing. Lungevity and GO2 are much more user-friendly. 🙂

Welcome to the club no one wants to belong to, where there are more of us living our lives with lung cancer than ever before.