22 year old Olympic Skater, lung cancer!

[Donna G]

Saw a small blip in the new Cure Magazine that motivated me to do a web search. We watched all the Olympics , they never mentioned this or I missed it.

http://www.usfsa.org/event_story.asp?id=33040

2/7/06) - U.S. pairs skater Rena Inoue, 29, spoke for the first time today about her experience with lung cancer eight years ago.

Doctors diagnosed Inoue with lung cancer in the fall of 1998 after she went in for what she thought was a case of pneumonia. The doctors, however, were confident that they had caught it early enough for a full recovery.

“It was at the really very beginning,” said Inoue, who explained the cancer was found in only one lung. “The doctor [said] ‘You're lucky.' He was very confident.”

She began a six-month treatment of chemotherapy in the Los Angeles area and has been clear of the cancer since.

Complications since chemotherapy have been few.

“[After chemotherapy] my immunity system was so low that I was getting colds easy and getting tired easy,” she said. “I had a higher chance of pneumonia. But I recovered really quick.”

She returned for check-ups once every six months for the first five years but now needs follow up only once a year. The hardest part of the ordeal, she said, was making the call to her mother to tell her about the cancer. Her father, Masahiko Inoue, had died just 18 months earlier from lung cancer.

Inoue said she told very few people about the cancer but recently the word has spread.

“When somebody asks me I don't really hide it,” she said. “It's just not something I would have told.”

Donna G