Lung Cancer Awareness Month occurs in November each year. Read this piece for a personal message from Heather Von St. James, a 16-year cancer survivor, and advocate.
November. Just the thought of the month brings up all sorts of negative feelings. The days are shorter, the weather is colder. It also happens to be the month that I was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and a few years later, after some health problems, my dad was told he had stage 4 cancer as well.
So suffice it to say, November arrives wrapped up in a boatload of anxiety. I’ve spent the last decade or more working on this. It took a year of therapy to learn the tools on how to deal with this sort of thing. I try to look at November with thanks and put that anxiety into action.
When I learned November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, I knew that it was something I could use to my advantage to change the narrative of Bad November, to one of hope and a positive message.
Even though pleural mesothelioma is not technically lung cancer, it often gets lumped in with it because of the involvement of the lungs. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the lung and often the treatments for it are incredibly invasive.
I had my entire left lung and all the surrounding tissue removed, including the left half of my diaphragm and my pericardium. They also removed a rib to make the lung resection easier and replaced my diaphragm and pericardium with surgical gore-tex. It was a lengthy and scary surgery but ultimately saved my life.
Like most lung cancer patients, the survival rate for mesothelioma is most often talked about in months, not years. This is why supporting Lung Cancer and Mesothelioma awareness is my life’s mission now. When I started on my advocacy journey, I’ve gotten to know many lung cancer warriors, and although we don’t have the same diagnosis, the treatments and the effects of those treatments can be similar. Surgery, chemo, radiation, and now immunotherapy has been added to many treatment schedules and proves to be a game-changer.
Did you know that lung cancer kills more people every year than breast, colon, and prostate cancer COMBINED? It is the second most diagnosed cancer in both men and women not counting skin cancer. Lung cancer alone makes up for about 25% of all cancer deaths, yet funding lags far behind.
There is also the stigma surrounding lung cancer. Every single person I know that has been diagnosed with lung cancer gets asked WITHOUT fail, this question: Did you smoke?
As if by smoking they somehow deserve cancer. The overwhelming answer from most of them though is no. It’s time to stop the stigma. If you have lungs, and all of us do, you can get lung cancer. No smoking is needed.
This is why Lung Cancer Awareness Month is so vital, to educate people about the disease, raise badly needed funds for lung cancer research, and remove the stigma. The more research that goes into Lung Cancer, the better the treatments become and people survive long past their initial prognosis.
I’ve seen in real life the difference this research makes. I’ve survived far beyond my 15-month prognosis and will be celebrating 16 years on November 21. I’ve witnessed friends continue to live with cancer, and have new and innovative treatment options that were not available 16 years ago when I was told I had cancer. I’ve been able to turn around the doom and gloom that used to hang over the month of November and turn it into one of activism and hope.
Hope is something every single cancer patient needs throughout their entire journey. As my thoracic surgeon and mesothelioma specialist, the late Dr. David Sugarbaker used to say, “When hope is in the equation, the odds don’t matter.”
Help raise awareness about Lung Cancer Awareness this month and share my story, perhaps it will give someone you know the hope they so badly need.
Additional Resources
There are many resources available to both cancer patients and caregivers. If you are interested in joining a support group, please visit the Cancer Pathways website. We have over 10 support groups to choose from and are all currently being implemented virtually, via Zoom. Cancer Pathways, formerly Gilda’s Club Seattle, is a nonprofit that provides social and emotional support to anyone impacted by cancer. Our mission is that no one faces cancer alone.
If you are looking for additional information about mesothelioma or How to Support Someone Living with Mesotheolioma, please visit mesothelioma.com.