It was Halloween 2019. I had a biopsy a couple of weeks earlier and wasn’t worried about the results until my doctor called and said the sentence that is tattooed in my brain: “This is the worst part about my job. I know you’re young and have a young family, but the biopsy showed that the nodule was cancerous.”
I was immediately lost. I had run 44 full marathons. I had never smoked. I was the picture of health—until I had lung cancer.
I decided to act quickly. I chose a medical oncologist. I chose a radiologist. I chose a surgeon. In the following discussions, I found that my tumor was small and slow-growing. My surgeon and I decided, based on my scans, that a lobectomy was the best course of action. My surgery was scheduled for Nov. 11. I ran my 45th marathon on Nov. 9. I celebrated my 18th wedding anniversary on Nov. 10. At 4:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, I walked across the bonus room to kiss my sleeping daughters. That was the one moment I was scared. If something went wrong in surgery, this would be the last time I would get to kiss them.
Flash forward five years. Everything went as expected in surgery. I recovered quickly. I am back to full strength. My family has grown to include another daughter. I have since run six more marathons, and I currently have two more on the calendar.
What I learned was the following: Don’t wait—hit it head-on. Be patient—things won’t happen as quickly as you want them to. Trust your doctors—they know what they are doing. There is no “typical” lung cancer patient—I was a healthy 47-year-old, non-smoking marathon runner... with lung cancer.
