SCLC

[JoJo52]

Newly diagnosed with small cell lung cancer. Starting chemo this week. 

[JoJo52]

sorry. I meant SCLC

[LexieCat]

Hi, JoJo, and welcome.

Sorry about your diagnosis, but glad you are here--this is a great place for information and support. 

Small cell is a tough thing to have on your plate. If you'd like to share more about your stage, treatment, etc., we can probably be more helpful. Because small cell is rarer than nsclc, we don't have quite as many members dealing with it. Just in case you didn't see it, we do have a small cell section of our forums, here: https://forums.lungevity.org/forum/5-sclc-group/. 

Even though small cell is hard to treat, there have been advances in the past several years, including immunotherapy drugs. And more research is going on all the time. I have Stage IV nsclc, and after my most recent scan showing signs of progression, I'm starting a clinical trial soon. There's always hope.

Glad you found us.

[Tom Galli]

JoJo,

Welcome.

Here are some suggestions for improving your chemotherapy experience. As Lexie told you, there are now additional tools in the oncologist's kit for successfully treating small cell in the form of immunotherapy drugs. Do consult with your oncologist about these very effective drugs. Here is information about immunotherapy and how it works.

Small cell is hard to treat but hard is not impossible and immunotherapy is changing the treatment dynamic. I'm a stage IV NSCLC Squamous Cell survivor diagnosed in 2004. For a long time, Squamous Cell lung cancer was very hard to treat. It resisted all of the new Targeted Therapy drugs recently introduced, but immunotherapy has now emerged as very effective treatment for Squamous Cell. I believe that Small Cell patients will also be beneficiaries from emerging immunotherapy treatments.

Stay the course.

Tom