Anyone Can Get Lung Cancer
- You don’t have to be a smoker to get lung cancer.
- You don’t have to be old to get lung cancer.
- Targeted therapy allows many people to live with lung cancer, just by taking one pill a day.
"Twenty minutes after my x-ray, he called me and told me that he saw something concerning in my lungs," Hunting recalls.
Read MoreAnyone Can Get Lung Cancer
Hunting wasn't a smoker and lived a healthy lifestyle, complete with exercise, good eating habits and staying on top of all her preventive health care. The diagnosis has taught her an important lesson that she wants to share with others."It's not a smokers' disease. If you have lungs, you can get lung cancer." In the years since her diagnosis, Hunting has become an advocate for lung cancer awareness and research. She's visited Washington D.C. twice, where she's rallied for more funding for research. During that time, she has met people of all ages and lifestyles who are living with this disease.
Targeted Therapy Prolongs Life
Hunting is one of many people with lung cancer who thanks to advancements in treatment can live with the disease by taking a pill every day. After her cancer was diagnosed and staged, pathologists performed a genetic analysis of her tumor. Some tumors have gene mutations that help the cancer grow and spread. Drugs called targeted therapy can disable those dangerous gene variations. Genetic tests, also called comprehensive biomarker testing, reveal whether a tumor has any of those mutations.
Related: How Checkpoint Inhibitors Work in Lung Cancer
Hunting's lung tumors had a mutation in a gene called EGFR, so she was able to take a medication that blocks the gene. "After 50 days, miraculously, my PET scan showed no evidence of disease," she says. She stayed on the drug for over a year.
Sometimes these medications work very well for some time and then stop working so well. When that happened to Hunting, her doctor put her on another daily medication.
"Cancer is a part of my life now," she says, "but it isn't my whole life. I'm not letting cancer define me."
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