“I thought it was only smoking-related,” Hunt said in a recent interview of her early impressions of lung cancer. Now she knows better. “It’s in our environment. It’s what we breathe. It’s in our genes.”
Hunt’s older sister died of lung cancer only six months after being diagnosed with the disease. That diagnosis was preceded by three years of being misdiagnosed with pneumonia.
That ordeal prompted Hunt, now 58, to take her health into her own hands. She began pushing for a screening of her lungs to identify any cancer. She ultimately got the screening and, when she did, doctors discovered a small tumor. Her other siblings followed suit, with all of them ultimately diagnosed with tumors of various sizes.
Hunt was treated, having a lobe of the affected lung removed. At that point, she said, she was told she was cancer free. But, in a few months, troublesome symptoms -- a cough, a pain in her back -- resurfaced. She returned to the facility treating her and was diagnosed with a lung infection and assured her cancer did not return. After months of antibiotics, her symptoms worsened. She was diagnosed with cancer -- this time in the opposite lung, and the doctors wanted to remove the entire lung. She was 53.
...
Hunt now has some advice for people diagnosed with lung cancer, or any cancer.
Get a second opinion. Hunt was first diagnosed with a lung infection, so she had lung surgery. But surgery alone did not address her illness. When her cancer returned and was misdiagnosed, she was frustrated, to say the very least. To go from being told it was an infection to her doctor advising her to remove an entire lung finally pushed her to a getting a second opinion. “I was so afraid to hurt a doctor’s feelings, I didn’t put my foot down.”
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