As a child, I never thought it was gross to see someone smoking because my mother smoked. Little green cartons had a permanent place on the countertop in my childhood home, and I would, on occasion, steal a cigarette to break open and examine. A cigarette wasn’t intimidating, and I certainly never thought it could do serious damage. Smoking was a very normal thing to see, like taking the dog for a walk or watering the garden. Cancer was something people I didn’t know got. It was a stranger’s disease, I could only name it by definition. I had no idea that it would end up impacting my life, or my family’s life, in such a profound way.
Before I was 18, I only ever saw lung cancer as an anti-smoking advertisement. Lung cancer commercials were funny to me. Not satirically in the “haha” kind of way, but in the “you have no idea” kind of way because they only scrape the surface of the struggle that my family has undergone since last November. This disease is depicted to be aesthetically horrifying in commercials, the most impactful of these showcasing young people buying cigarettes and having to slide their skin or teeth across the counter along with their dollars. What these commercials couldn't depict was the terror a person feels when they first see the x-ray with the mass in their lung. They can’t capture how my mother cried when she got the diagnosis. The second opinions and the biopsies. The time that was taken off from work to go to doctor’s appointments. The surgery that was only supposed to remove a quarter of my mother’s right lung but ended up taking the entire thing because the tumor spread even farther than they had originally thought, growing from the size of a grape to a lime in less than a month. How the port they inserted in her chest would ache as it rubbed up against her shirt. That after it all, she couldn’t go for her daily run anymore, or even be out in public, or pump her own gas.
Living with cancer is a lot more terrifying than seeing it on TV because it’s a waiting game, leaving the patient and family members wondering, constantly: when/where/how will it come back? But I think, in my opinion, is that the most terrifying aspect of lung cancer is that it’s virtually undetectable in its earliest stages. By the time my mother was diagnosed, she was well on her way to Stage III. She never felt the tumor growing in the lower half of her right lung, she didn’t have a persistent and nagging cough, she was incredibly healthy. She would eat organically and exercise often. Her blood pressure was always fantastic — nothing ever indicated that she had cancer until my brother got pneumonia and she coughed in front of his physician. The doctor looked at my mother and told her that her cough sounded funny, and being the worrier that my mother is, went and saw her doctor later that week.
Fast forward seven months and the little green cartons have lost their place on the counter to her nausea medication. She’s nearing the end of her chemo treatments and is feeling a weird combination of both exhausted and elated. She can go out in public if her white blood cells are high enough — which isn’t often enough for her, and she’s living her life on a day-by-day basis, recovering. Some days, she’s so tired she can’t do much. Others she has enough energy to leave the house for a bit. We joke about her wig (I told her to get something bold — specifically bright blue), and we call her the “One Lung Wonder” because no matter what, she never stops going. She started moving around the house and doing things for herself a little over a week after her surgery. She was back, mostly, to her daily routine in less than a month, save for lifting heavy things that could potentially reopen her surgery site. We’re done with chemo, but for the next five years we’re going to be playing the waiting game — to see if it comes back, or how, or where.
Cancer transitioned from a stranger’s disease to something my family knows very personally. It’s a constant conversation that affects every aspect of our lives: from the food we can eat to what kind of chemicals we can use to clean the bathroom. Seeing cigarette cartons gross me out now, and although my mother has quit, too many of my family members still smoke and seeing cigarettes serves as a reminder that something small has the capability to completely turn your world upside-down. It completely changed our lives, but my mother is recovering. She’s on her way to being healthy, and although it is a journey, we’re all with her every step of the way. I’m thankful that my mother listened, and that we caught it in time. I’m thankful that my “One Lung Wonder” is still living. For many, the lung cancer diagnosis comes late, and the outcome is bleaker than what my other endured. To see my mother continue to fight against her cancer and move forward, and take the necessary precautions now to live a longer life is inspiring, and I am proud of her. How she continues to laugh as loud as she did before she lost a lung proves, to me, that life constantly moves forward. And we’re moving forward with it.
