What Is The Life Expectancy Of Lung Cancer?

What is the life expectancy of lung cancer? Well, when I was diagnosed, I was actually given eighteen months to live, and thirteen and a half years later, we’re still here. So, look, it’s scary when it first happens, that flush that goes from your big toe to the top of your forehead is just…It’s nothing. You can’t explain it to anyone. You don’t know until you experience it, and that fear, and no one knows that fear until they actually say that “C word” to you.

So, it’s all very real. You need people to help you on that journey when you do that. So, because you don’t know what to do. You’re so confused with your emotions that you really don’t know where to turn to and what to do. So, we hooked up with mental health straight away, and we did that through a psychologist, and they gave us some tools to manage what we did on a daily basis and things like that, which was really important for us because people would say, “Oh, you’re so positive.”

And I’m thinking, “If I have a bad day, does that mean I’m going to die faster?” Well, no, it doesn’t. You’re allowed to have good days, and you’re allowed to have bad days. And that’s part of the journey. The other couple of things that I did was exercise. I had lung removal three or four times, and so you need to keep building your capacity up all the time. And that exercise was really good, so increments of walking and things like that, just to keep busy, and it helps with your mental health a little bit too because you’re not sitting there. You’re not pondering on it all the time. And the other really big one for us was food. We went to a nutritionist. We went to dietitians, and that really helped us.

And I think those three things are really important. Do I think it gives you longevity? It did for us. It’s worked for us, and we’ve been lucky in that space, but it’s all something that to think about and certainly go to those people and look for that information and source that stuff out because it is really important, and you do need the support as you go. Lung Cancer Search and Rescue. Hope in every breath.