My Mom's Letter

After my letter to the Globe was published last week, something amazing happened. I remembered that my mother had also written a letter to the Globe, the night before her stroke, on October 2, 2007. It was in response to this article:

http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/articles/2007/09/30/cancer_scares_grow_as_screening_rises/

That night in October, she emailed her letter to me to see what I thought about it. Last Saturday, a year and a half later, I realized that I had saved it in my inbox.

After re-reading it (the day before Mother's Day) I truly believe it was shown to me as a gift from her, to help me focus my advocacy efforts, to be reminded of how she felt when she was diagnosed with lung cancer - as my friend Lori says, when she was punched with her lung cancer diagnosis.

I wanted to share it here to share how she felt back then. It's a beautiful letter, and it makes me realize that if she was here today, she'd be right beside me in the fight against lung cancer. She was only 6 weeks into her diagnosis and she was already acting as an advocate, emailing letters to reporters, trying to do what she could to fight against the awful disease that was taking her life.

For the record, her letter was never published and the writer responded with a cursory 'thanks for writing but there's nothing I can do' message.

Here's her letter:

Scott-
I read with horror your article on cancer scares. That poor Jane Lee did get a scare, because she had a tumor that might have been cancer that had to be removed, and also got something many people with cancer would trade everything they have for: proof, corroboration that she does not have cancer. She is certified cancer free, while most women with ovarian cancer, as your article states, only learn about their condition when it is too late, because it is undetectable.

So are many other cancers, but the most egregiously unscreened cancer is lung cancer. Usually, the cancer grows undetected in the lungs, which have no nerve endings, and cause no pain until the tumors have metastasized into the lymph glands or other parts of the body. Most lung cancers that are discovered early are only discovered accidentally, while looking for something else.

Every year over 200,000 people contract lung cancer and every year over 160,000 people die of lung cancer. There is no screening.
More women die from lung cancer than from breast cancer. Yet there is no screening. We do not even know that we are at risk.

In case you are wondering, I am one of those women, 58 years old, otherwise extremely youthful and healthy who just found out that she has advanced stage, inoperable lung cancer. Tell poor Jane that she should be on her knees every day thanking the almighty that she is cancer free.
She is so lucky, and yet all she can see is that her very concerned and thorough doctors had the courage to look at all inevitabilities and prove that her tumor was benign.

Scott- If you want to do a true service to the Globe readers, you will get educated on the subject of lung cancer and help expose the sad, but undeniable fact that there is no screening for lung cancer and that there is little or no awareness on the part of most women that lung cancer kills more of us each year than breast cancer. That it is often viewed as a preventable disease, caused by smoking, sometimes causes people to accept their death sentence as inevitable.

I smoked at one time, just like my mother, father, grandmother, doctor, boss, and co-workers, and most of my friends. We smoked in hospitals, at the workplace, in restaurants and at family gatherings at schools in the teacher's room. And yes, when the pressure to quit was great enough, about 20 years ago, I did quit.

Lung Cancer Organizations are expecting an explosion in the number of lung cancer diagnoses over the next few years as the baby boomers age. Please understand that articles like yours could work against adding screening for this deadly disease.
And by the way, you will hear some of the same arguments against testing, against lung x-rays and CT scans, but what the heck, it is only a chance to prove you don't have the disease. I suffer my yearly mammogram with nary a positive result, have annual PAP smears with only an occasional second look, but do so willingly in order to try to catch the deadly cancer early, while it is still treatable. Those cancer scares are really cancer free certifications that any cancer patient would trade anything for.

Regards,


Kristine Matson
Cancer Survivor.