We Can't Forget The Ones We Lose

I went to an American Lung Association event last night called "An Evening in Paris" that really blew me away - in a good way. Because of the American Lung Association's history of ignoring lung cancer, I wasn't expecting to be so moved - but I was - particularly by one of the honorees.

The event was a fundraiser, but also an opportunity to honor scientists and doctors for their groundbreaking lung cancer research. As we all know, the only way that we are going to reduce the staggering mortality rates from lung cancer is from new research.

One of the doctors honored was a female cardio-thoracic surgeon from Brigham & Women's hospital - one of the few women in the world with that particular job; another was a researcher who's working on a way to determine whether or not suspicious nodules caught on CT scans are cancerous or not - which would help to further an early detection protocol.

Those researchers were inspiring, but the person who moved me the most was the doctor honored for her work with palliative care and lung cancer. Her name is Dr. Jennifer Temel, and she's one of the doctors on the front lines, dealing with real patients who die every day. I've met her several times before - the first time was two years ago when she was covering the weekend shift, filling in for my mom's doctor at MGH. She stopped in while she was "on call" and we learned that she's also my mom's neighbor's lung cancer doctor. This disease touches many, near and far.

Dr. Temel reminded us all that while we ARE making advances, the reality is that over 150,000 Americans will still die this year from lung cancer. We cannot forget the vast majority of patients for whom there is no cure and their families who are left behind to mourn.

Even at MGH, where Dr. Temel works and where they test every tumor for genetic mutations, the reality is that only a handful of people will be eligible for the latest personalized medicines based on those genetic tests. As much as she and her colleagues want new treatments to be available for everyone right now - the reality is that they aren't - and they won't be - for a while.

Palliative care is always a difficult topic to address, and it was brave of her to bring it up in a room that was all about research, hope and fundraising for a cure, but what she said is that we still need to work on helping people at the end stage of their disease. We need to help people when they die.

Sadly, the majority of lung cancer patients are diagnosed at a late stage, and for them, death is an inevitable part of their journey. As such, they should be able to leave this earth with as much dignity and as little suffering as possible.

My mom was one of those patients. Tumor testing wasn't available when my mother was at MGH and even if it had been, as a former smoker and with squamous cell NSCLC, there weren't (and still aren't) a lot of options open to patients like her. The only option for her at the time (and at one of the best hospitals in the world) was platinum-based chemotherapy - and in her case, even that wasn't an option because she got so sick so fast. My mom's case was unusually aggressive, but what wasn't (and still isn't) unusual about her case is that she was treated palliatively instead of curatively. In late stage lung cancer, all that can sometimes be done is palliative care because there simply aren't enough treatments for late stage lung cancer. Until those treatments are available, we have to treat every patient - including the ones who are going to die.

So I am so grateful to Dr. Temel and to all of the other thoracic oncologists who deal with real patients every day - real patients who die because those other options aren't available for everyone yet. I thank them for continuing to come to work every day no matter what and for continuing to do research when they're not doing their clinical work. I thank them for continuing to solider on, even when they must get discouraged in the face of so much death and tragedy.

If we all work together, someday there will be less palliative care and more curative care for lung cancer. We're not there yet - so we can't forget the ones who are left behind in the wake of all of the exciting research that we celebrate. We can't forget the ones who won't see a benefit from the research in their lifetime.

I am so glad that doctors like Dr. Temel are not forgetting those who are left behind. I am forever grateful.