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Living with lung cancer - Introduce yourself & come say hi
Lung Cancer | Last Active: Sep 25 12:58pm | Replies (1044)Comment receiving replies
Will introduce myself. I am a senior woman who has recently been diagnosed with a cancerous nodule in my lower right lung. Am schedule for a VATS lobectomy on 3/6/19. Doctors don't think I'll need chemo, or radiation since the nodule is less than one centimeter and a needle biopsy did not indicate spread to lymph nodes
. Anyway, for that I"m grateful, but find myself bouncing from one emotion to another--times of fear, anxiety, relief that the thing was found so soon, etc. I guess that is normal. Am with a great medical team in my city and trust them. I am really interested in what people have experienced with eh VATS surgery--after the procedure during the hospital stay, recovery at home, and then handling the needed CT scans, PET scans, or whatever to make sure the patient is free of cancer. Don't know what else to say, but I appreciate any and all comments. So glad to have found you.
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Hi Alamogal,
As you can read here, I'm a bit ahead of you. I was diagnosed last June with a larger cyst than you (turned out to be 3 cm) in my upper right lobe. I can't help you with VATS as I was lucky enough that my surgeon was one of only 3 in my county that is proficient in the use of the da Vinci robotic system. It's similar to VATS only the surgeon manipulates 4 robotic arms to perform the surgery.
I don't know what you mean by "senior", but I'm 58 and was pretty happy when the doctors kept referring to how young I am! I'm a pretty positive person by nature and never needed any medication to keep up my spirits. I'm also lucky enough to have a great wife. She probably could have used some meds, as I think she worried more than I did!
My doctor was not a fan of staying in the hospital "People get pneumonia in hospitals!", so I had surgery Monday morning and was discharged Wednesday evening. The surgery went fine and I really had minimal discomfort. However, I will tell you that when the hospital nurse asks, "Would you like Percocet or morphine?", the answer is morphine! Part of the reason is that you will initially be in ICU and it seems like they are waking you up every couple of minutes to take your blood pressure again. I don't remember if it was every half hour or every hour, but it seemed like I just got to sleep and then they were waking me up again. I asked for morphine just because I wanted to get back to sleep as quickly as possible.
One other thing: I have a bad knee. In late June I had an X-ray taken and when my primary care physician saw the result, she referred me to an orthopedic surgeon for an MRI and probable surgery. 2 days later I was diagnosed with lung cancer. My PCP and I agreed: 1 medical condition at a time! My wife did rent me one of those chairs that lifts you up to a standing position. We rented it for one month. It was a great help when I first came home. (Quick update on the knee. Still haven't had surgery. 2 1,000 mg tablets of Curcumin or Tumeric have greatly helped reduce the pain.)
I was also told the initial plan was surgery - no chemo or radiation. Didn't work out that way. The cyst turned out to be closer to the cutline than the CT scan indicated. So close, that after surgery the cutline tested positive for the presence of cancer cells. That got me 33 rounds of radiation. Radiation made me tired and that was the major side effect. It irritated my scar tissue a bit, but doubling down on the deep breathing exercises I've been doing since after surgery solved that problem. No damage to the skin whatsoever. I had IMRT, Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy, which is why I had so few side effects.
Pathology after the surgery also showed the cancer had spread to a lymph node. That got me 4 rounds of chemo. Compared to the people around me, and my friend who is currently finishing up chemo for her breast surgery, I feel that I got chemo-lite. I got Carboplatin and Alimta. I took steroid tablets the day before and after and received steroids the day of each round and never felt any nausea at all. Never lost my hair. I'm a food judge on the side and never noticed any change in my taste buds.
Just had my 3-month follow up PET/CT scan yesterday. No follow up doctor's appointment, so I guess I hope I don't hear from them! Personally, I think the PET scan is a walk in the park. I just sleep during the 1-hour wait and lightly nap during the procedure itself.
Emotionally, I personally find the long-term side effects of chemo and radiation to be the most depressing. If my doctor feels she told me that it would be a year or more before I recovered my stamina, I forgot that. I'm still sleeping 8 to 8 1/2 hours a night which is a lot more than the 7 hours max that I used to. I'm currently training to climb 1,400 stairs as an annual fundraiser for the American Lung Association. The training involves climbing stairs 5 days a week. Those days I sleep 9 hours. I keep telling myself that as side effects go, sleepy is not so bad.
I don't know if this helps you get an idea of what you're in for, but I hope so. The overall message is that the medical community is getting sooo much better at all this stuff all the time. Your experience will be better than even people who had the same procedure as little as 10 years ago.