Interview with Patient 1
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Advice for patients with lung cancer
DR LOVE: Well, this has been great. Anything you want to add to what you said today?
PATIENT 1: When I saw my surgeon recently for my annual check up, – great, great guy – and I asked him “If you were to talk to a group, what would you tell them about lung cancer?” And he would say, “Tell them it’s not necessarily your fault and you don’t necessarily die from it.” And those were the two things that stuck out for him. And with me, it is that if you were diagnosed with this, do everything you can to help yourself. I did acupuncture. Let me mention that too, to help with the nausea.
Anything you can do to feel like you have some control. And communication with your physician or the PA, whoever he has working with you is very important and I would encourage the medical world to spend a little more time on that field.
DR LOVE: I’m thinking too about somebody who’s in that year window that you talked about when you really didn’t feel well, and I guess another message that I get just from looking at you today is the fact you got passed that. You felt better again and I wonder if there are people out there who think “well, they’re never going to feel good again.”
PATIENT 1: You will. You really will. You’ll feel better again. You do. Yes, I feel great. I’m really great. And I was at a physician’s office for something else last week and I mentioned to her something that I had lung cancer a few years ago. And she said “Oh, you’re in remission.” And I looked at her and I said, “No. I’m cured.” It never occurred to me that it’s remission. No, it’s over. It’s history.
