Lung Cancer Survivor Reina Honts Is Fighting Back Against the Stigma: ‘You Have The Power To Change Your Future’

Honts's mother received her lung cancer diagnosis at just 50-years-old. "So when I was approaching my 50th birthday, I felt this overarching fear…due to the fact that she passed away from lung cancer and my grandmother passed away from breast cancer also in her fifties,” Honts said.

When Honts asked her doctor for a screening test, the doctor said it wasn't necessary. She told her that Honts’s mother's cancer was not hereditary, and she didn't have anything to worry about because she was not a smoker. But Honts insisted.

"She sent me down that day," Honts told SurvivorNet, "And sure enough, within the hour, she actually called me back to tell me that she saw something on the x-ray that she didn’t like." After further testing, Honts was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Honts beat the disease, and now, she is a vocal lung cancer advocate, serving as the chair of the Lung Cancer Research Foundation. "I feel like somehow it’s come full circle from my mom’s diagnosis to mine, to what I do today," she said.

In addition to being a mother, Honts spends her days raising money for lung cancer research. "It's really challenging trying to raise funds for lung cancer research because of the stigma," she told SurvivorNet. "I think people assume that you have brought lung cancer on by not taking care of your lungs, but there's many ways for people to get lung cancer.”

"I think most people do not know that lung cancer is the number one cancer killer for both men and women combined,” Honts said.

Honts thinks that the only way to fight the stigma associated with lung cancer "is to get out there and talk about it openly." Above all, she wants people who have lung cancer and people who have an elevated risk of developing lung cancer to take the initiative to get ahead of the problem.

"You have the power to change your future," she says.

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

---