November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month

November 11th, 2007 | View Comments

The ribbon is clear to symbolize that lung cancer is an invisible cancer.

There are no standard protocols for early cancer detection. There is no lung-cancer equivalent of the mammogram or the Pap smear. You cannot keep an eye on a spot on your lung and go to the doctor if it changes. Even large lung tumors are difficult to see on a chest x-ray and doctors often do not order chest CTs unless they already suspect cancer. There are often few symptoms of lung cancer until the cancer is advanced.

There is no media hoopla about lung cancer, even though lung cancer kills more people than breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined. I believe that lung cancer is the deadliest of all cancers in terms of the total number of people who die from it, and the second deadliest cancer in terms of 5-year survival rates after diagnosis.

There is this perception that lung cancer is exclusively a smoker’s disease and that it would go away if people would just stop smoking. When I tell people about my dad’s cancer, I invariably have to answer, “Does he smoke?” No, he doesn’t. Never has. Dana Reeve didn’t smoke either. Lung cancer is on the rise in non-smokers, particularly in non-smoking women.

And yet, funding for lung cancer research and support is both small and stagnant. While death rates for other cancers decline, death rates for lung cancer remain stable.

Let’s stop letting lung cancer be an invisible cancer.