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My story begins with a persistent unproductive cough in April of 2017. I went to the walk in clinic in May and being a healthy, young non-smoker, the doctors thought it might be allergies. Allergy treatment didn't improve the cough, so I went back to my primary care doctor in June and we tried another of the three main causes of persistent cough in healthy non-smokers: adult onset asthma. The inhaler got my through my Ragnar relay race in July, but the cough was still there and not improving. A repeat trip back found me on drugs for reflux, the third main cause of persistent cough. A few weeks on the drug didn't seem to improve the cough, so then I headed to a specialist, had an endoscopy and a study with a chip implanted in my esophagus and a device I wore and pushed a button each time I coughed for 48 hours. The results of that study told us that yes, I had mild reflux, but the refulx events were not aligning with my cough. This was September of 2017, I'd started back to work for the 2017-2018 school year, and I found myself missing days of work. By Friday or even Thursday I'd be so tired and nauseated I couldn't function. My primary care phyiscian schedule an appointment with a lung specialist and as a prerequisite for that visit, a chest X-ray was ordered. That was October 9th, and I went in that day for the x-ray and that started a whirlwind of tests. A CT scan, which led to my lung appointment being moved forward three weeks, then a biopsy that told us it was cancer. It was still another week or so before I finally received my full diagonosis: stage 4 adenocarcinoma of the lung. This is a cancer that is increasingly being seen in young female non-smokers- even what they call "never-smokers" like me. The good news is that I appear to also have a gene mutation that is responsible for the abnormal cell growth called ROS1. The mutation can be treated with targeted therapy.
I started treatment with Xalkori (crizotinib) targeted therapy November 4, 2017. Initial scans showed reduction in all tumors, and have continued to show small reductions since.
Just a quick update for you all. Mostly because I see my last update was in October, and I tend to start getting questions if I wait too long to share how things are going.
I went down yesterday for another chemo infusion. This was supposed to happen on Dec 28th, but with Luke's knee surgery being rescheduled to the 27th, I asked to push chemo back a week so I could better support Luke's recovery. And it's a good thing I did! Nursing a post-knee surgery teen is a full-time job!!
I had my regular 12-week CT scan the week before which showed everything is still stable. Bloodwork was mostly good, with some of my infection-fighting cells being low, but not low enough to make it so that I couldn't do the chemo infusion.
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