Mets??

mets to lung
I am head/neck cancer survivor (squamous cell carcinoma) who also ended up with SCC in a lung lobe (lower right). They could not definitively determine whether it was mets or new cancer, so they decided to take the better of two roads and do a lobectomy.

I have been cancer-free for five years now (seven for h/n).

It was not a pleural effusion that got me back in for the chest scan, but merely a simple question to my doc about why i still had a little cough two years after quitting smoking. MOST of what they originally found turned out to be a lung infection that was accidentally cured by an anitibiotic I was taking for something else.

Three months after being told i had as little as 10 months to live, a second scan revealed that i was clean except in that one node. You should know that lesions or the appearance of lesions can be caused not just by cancer but by scarring related to smoking, bronchitis, pneumonia, the aforementioned lung infection, radiation therapy, and, I'm sure, many that I am not aware of but that your doctors can certainly elucidate on.

If it turns out indeed to be cancer and is restricted to one lobe or even one lung, there is hope that they can remove the problem, depending on other factors such as your age, physical and mental health, any probable spreading to lymph nodes and/or other organs, those sorts of things.

Which is the bummer way of saying there is hope.

If you smoke, quit. If you drink alcohol, quit. If you don't exercise, begin, in as large a measure as you are up for, even if it is only a walk around the house/apartment.

Hope and Humor!

Take care, Kim,

Joe