Hi everyone, I'm new here. This is my mom's story:
Back in late November 2009, my 56 year old mom fell down the stairs in her house. She lives in an old fashioned row-home in Baltimore with steep hardwood steps so she dislocated her shoulder and had to go to the emergency room. While there, they were able to get her shoulder back in but did some x-rays just to be sure she was okay and didn't get any other injuries. What they found was completely shocking. Some of her lung showed up on the x-ray and they saw a small mass. At this point, they had no way of knowing what it was, but they told her she should get a chest x-ray and make sure its nothing to worry about. We were very confident that it wasn't cancer. She is extremely healthy, one of the healthiest people I know. Physically fit, non-smoker. But she of course got the chest x-ray to be sure. The results from her chest x-ray were unclear, and they ordered a PET scan. This is when it started to get scary and we all started to worry. But keeping in mind that she has no symptoms and doesn't smoke, we were hopeful. The PET scan was also not enough for them to diagnose anything so next they ordered a lung biopsy. The biopsy results were astounding. Not only did she have lung cancer, but it was in stage 4. Last week me and my brother took her to a new oncologist at John Hopkins and discussed her treatment. She will be getting 6 treatments every 3 weeks of full body chemotherapy. Considering she has no symptoms and is perfectly healthy, we are all extremely confident in her beating this cancer. But of course we know the survival rate isn't great for stage 4. Its scary being that I'm only 25 and having to face the thought of possibly loosing my mother. I'm getting great support from family, friends and coworkers, but I thought I'd seek the support of others going through the same thing as me. Thank you for reading!