My Non Small Cell Lung Cancer Diagnosis at 33 Years Old (Adenocarcinoma)

hello i am making this video to document my cancer journey as well as possibly help anyone else going through something similar my name is jenny i am 33 years old i have a five-year-old and a one-year-old and i um have cancer i was diagnosed with cancer on march 19 2021 i have stage three adenocarcinoma stage 3a and it's non-small cell which is non-smoking lung cancer it is the next day and i realized i forgot to say that we were surprised by this diagnosis because i'm a pretty healthy person i'm 33 years old i don't smoke i've never smoked i don't drink alcohol i haven't had alcohol since before i was pregnant with this cutie here um i'm vegan so i eat a plant-based diet i use natural cleaning products i try to use natural products that go on my skin because i know my skin's going to absorb it all so we were quite surprised that living a pretty healthy lifestyle i was still able to get cancer but i guess that's not how cancer works one of the oncologists that i saw said that if you have lungs you can get lung cancer so there there it is hi ellis a little back story i have had rib pain since right after my daughter was born the root pain i've heard could be related or could not but i've had rib pain since a little after my daughter was born so about a year and a half ago it started a little over and i went i wanted to go to the doctors for it in march of 2020 but i the covet lockdown happened so i decided to wait till covert was over and go didn't end so i went in august of 2020 and i went in for rib pain i told the doctor that it had started in my lower back ribs and then eventually the pain after months started going to the side of my ribs and i was having a lot of spasms and then eventually i started getting sharp pains in my chest right here in my ribs and that i was now having shortness of breath i could no longer sneeze like i used to my body like had to adjust it i couldn't yawn like i used to um i told him all those symptoms and he said that i probably injured myself from lifting my babies and or my kids and to stop lifting and to continue stretching and doing yoga as i do and i i requested blood work i thought maybe the shortness of breath breath was due to low iron but my blood work was perfect the doctor actually thanked me for being so healthy and the i asked for an x-ray to see if there was a fracture or a broken rib and there was nothing and then i asked for um an ultrasound of the spleen to see if there was anything because it's down where the some of the root pain was and that was fine um i wish i would have known to ask for a chest scan at the time because i'm sure it would have been there but i didn't know and i'm surprised that my doctor didn't suggest checking my lungs if i was having shortness of breath but um over time the pain got worse even though i wasn't lifting my kids um i would do it a little bit but barely and so in january of 2021 i decided to do as much yoga and stretching as i possibly could i thought okay this is my final like this is the only other thing i can do to fix it because i've been resting it i've i don't know what i don't know what to do so i did yoga like five to six days a week with stretching um all of january and it flared up my ribs so much i was having so many spasms and it was awfully painful but it was okay like i was able to do it and then as soon as february of 2021 hit i tried to do my regular yoga routine i do the same one every time and i couldn't get through i could only do about a quarter of the routine before i was huffing and puffing and i had to sit down and that was a few days in a row where i couldn't do it and i knew something was wrong i didn't know what um but if i couldn't even do a simple yoga routine it wasn't right and then one day at the beginning of february i was walking my kids to the park and i had to stop like three times and we live right by the park to catch my breath and by the time we got there i was like leaning on their little wagon like so out of breath like there's a mommy play i couldn't play my son wanted me to chase him i couldn't chase him um it just broke my heart and so i knew i needed to go back to the doctors so i tried to book with my regular doctor he was booked for months and i so i went to urgent care as my sister told me to do she's a nurse and she and my husband coached me on being an advocate for myself because i tend to be too nice and just go with the flow do whatever is said but this had been going on so long that i needed to stand up for myself and so when i went to urgent care the first thing i did was explain the situation and i said that i was like an mri of my chest and i didn't know what kind of scan i needed i just knew an mri was a scan um but i said i wanted to see i wanted someone to look inside my chest and see what's wrong because i've had this pain for too long and the pa that was helping me said no we won't do that i can do blood work see see how if you're having a pulmonary embolism or i can check your heart and i said no that's not what i want i would like someone to scan my chest and i started crying and she was very uncomfortable and i like begged and pleaded i said i've been in this pain for over a year please can someone scan my chest and look at my chest and see what's wrong and she said she would do the blood work and if the blood work showed anything alarming then she would do a chest scan and so then i had to be more pushy and say no please even if my blood work is perfect we please still do my chest scan and she agreed to and a couple of people in the that were helping me thought it was weird like oh why are you getting a chest scan your blood work is perfect and i was just saying because i don't know so i had to wait at the hospital for the results i was there for probably six hours the blood work was good my heart was good they tested my heart and then at the very end the pa called me into her office and said we found something on your left lung and she kept calling it something and there's opaqueness around it yeah i don't know what it is i'm gonna send you to a pulmonologist i'll refer you to a pulmonologist and they'll tell you what to do next they'll send you for testing and i said what kind of testing do you mean for cancer and she said yes and my heart sank and i knew in that moment that there was a very good chance that i had cancer and i um the pulmonologist called me a couple days later and sounded very alarmed she said that it was very odd and i asked her do you think it could be cancer and she said yes i definitely think it could be cancer so when she said that my husband and i kind of accepted it as cancer even though we didn't have an answer we grieved that night like it was cancer the next night like it was cancer we had our lowest days we broke down um and then i had a biopsy on march 17 of 2021 and a lung biopsy and i will do a video about that for anyone who's interested in how that works um and on march 19th is when i got the call that i it was in fact cancer they called in the afternoon my pulmonologist did and said it was cancer that i'll be getting calls next week for more tests um they need to see if it's spread to my brain because i have a history of aura migraines they need to see if it spread anywhere else in my body and they kind of just left us with nothing like no information to look up like you can check out this website to learn about cancer treatments or the process nothing just you cancer so i was diagnosed with my cancer on friday and then by sunday sunday night i reached a state of panic and i was in a state of panic for probably 12 hours after that that sunday night i think i had about four panic attacks i couldn't sleep um i called my sister asking her what to do and um the strongest medication i had in my house was kids benadryl so i took kids benadryl and it didn't really do much but um the next day i was rocking and shaking uncontrollably i was in a state of panic i couldn't function i couldn't do anything luckily my husband was home on spring break my sister was on spring break from work um so my sister came right over she started calling a psychiatrist a therapist they got me anxiety medication to get me out of this state of panic and they got me a therapy appointment which was so amazingly helpful so if you're having anxiety from your diagnosis i highly recommend calling a psychiatrist and a therapist because they will definitely help you they helped me that day and that day i was able to go pick up medication to help me get out of this panic attack that was just ongoing and then i had a pet scan and the pet scan showed that i for sure had the mass in my lung was cancerous it was like the most lit up from the scan and then in the center of my chest i have lymph nodes that flared up none of the lymph lymph nodes flared up as much as the tumor but they flared up in the middle and then i think one down in my armpit and then i think one in my lung like a long weird one in my lung and so tomorrow i'm actually going for an e-bus to get a biopsy done on the center lymph nodes and they said if it's non-cancerous if it's inflammation then that means it's not cancer and there's a chance that my other lymph nodes could not be cancer they said that if it is cancer then they'll just go ahead and proceed uh forward with um chemo and radiation as the first step of my plan but if it were inflammation then they would open me up and check all the other lymph nodes right while i'm open if none of them are cancer then they would cut off part of my lung right then if even one of them was cancerous then they would just close me up and start chemo and radiation it's already been a month since i was diagnosed and i have yet to start treatment but i think that's because of all the tests and waiting for results i had to do genomic testing and that took like two weeks and yeah we don't know if the rib pain is related to the lung cancer but i think the front rib pain is and i can no longer yawn sneezing hurts hiccups hurt i don't know if all of that's related to lung cancer or my other rib pain i don't know um but well that is it um thanks for watching i hope this was helpful i will be making more videos on this journey bye

Channel: The Apples

Views: 1,086,151

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Id: SU5Stka9kW4

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021