My family has a long history with lung illnesses like asthma and COPD as well as lung cancer. I have chronic asthma which, on occasion, impacts my ability to do simple every day tasks. My mother and grandmother have had lung cancer and while my mother is still with us, we did lose my grandmother about 30 years ago to the disease. Neither considered themselves a classic candidate for lung cancer but nevertheless found themselves in one of the toughest battles of their lives. Advances in research helped my mother’s cancer be detected sooner than that of my grandmother and helped my siblings and I be better prepared to help her through chemotherapy and surgery.
My mother’s battle with cancer also raised a number of questions about whether my siblings and I might be genetically predisposed to developing lung cancer and how we could find out if we have a likelihood of developing the disease. I have two young children and I worry if I may have somehow passed on some genetic predisposition to lung disease and lung cancer.
So much is not yet known in the field of lung cancer research and respiratory illness by funding incredibly groundbreaking research through the NIH, I hope that someday families like mine will have a better understanding of where we stand with this disease and improve our chances of survival. I also hope that by investing in the public health efforts of the CDC, families like mine will not have to walk alone in their fight against cancer.
