It just seems so unfair, since smoking is known to be one of the major causes of lung cancer. If anyone is going to get the dread disease in their lungs it should be those who choose voluntarily to bathe their vulnerable pulmonary alveoli in smoke laden with noxious chemicals.
Lung Cancer Awareness Month draws to a close this week. The drive continues to educate and inform people about the disease and other factors, apart from smoking, that can cause it, that include the environment, occupational risks, ionising radiation and family history.
Cape Town ceramic sculptor Carla Jane Gluckman has another factor to add: traumatic loss - death of a loved one, divorce, separation. She believes it helps to contribute to creating the conditions under which cancer can survive and thrive in the body.
Gluckman speaks from personal experience. A nonsmoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer 10 years ago, aged just 32, with two children aged three and six at the time.
"I literally could not believe what the doctors were telling me," she says.
Three years before she had her first child, Gluckman had to terminate a pregnancy at more than four months for medical reasons. The experience was so devastating, she is convinced it played a part in the later development of cancer.
Yet while Gluckman agrees life hasn't exactly been fair to her, she has a remarkable propensity to look on its bright side.
She counts herself lucky to have been born "at the right time". That has meant she got lung cancer at a time when orthodox medicine was sufficiently advanced to extend her life significantly.
"The prognosis for lung cancer used to be poor," Gluckman, "but here I am 10 years later, still going strong."
She has had radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, but recently developed a resistance to the drug she has been on for past three years.
Once again, Gluckman says she is lucky: a new drug is on its way from Germany, and the drug's makers have told her she is "an ideal candidate" for it.
She is "blessed" too to have a "wonderful medical aid" that has helped her afford treatment.
Gluckman believes it is also her positive mindset ("I have the right attitude," she says) that has allowed her to survive so long, and "amazing" support of family and friends.
"I can feel their prayers and positive feelings," she says.
True, her marriage collapsed in the wake of the diagnosis. But Gluckman says simply that cancer "brings with it many changes" and she now has "a wonderful partner" to share her life journey.
She hasn't relied on conventional medicine alone. She uses alternative and complementary therapies, including acupuncture, a bodywork therapy called body stress release, and meditation.
"Whatever resonates with me, I will use," she says.
Gluckman will go on fighting to survive, not just for her children, but "for other lung cancer patients, so they can see there's hope".
Clearly, education, information and a holistic approach to living with cancer are important. Science has advanced in recent years, with new drugs that have improved outcomes for patients, says Johannesburg oncologist Dr Georgia Demetriou, of the Wits Donald Gordon Oncology Centre in Johannesburg.
Doctors are looking at different types of lung cancer, no longer viewing it as one big group, she says, and at different biological markers, among these the over-expression of certain growth factors or genes on the cancer cells.
"Cancer cells grow by certain pathways in the body. If we can block those pathways with certain drugs, we can reduce cancer growth," Demetriou says.
Early detection remains the key, and can equal cure.
"If lung cancer is detected at an advanced stage, all we can do is slow it down," she says.
Thankfully, though, research is ongoing and positive.
A study online in the journal Cancer Discovery this month, shows that for the first time "epigenetic" therapy that targets the proteins wrapped around DNA that regulate changes in gene expression has shown promise in certain cases of advanced lung cancer.
According to a HealthDay news report, of 45 patients in a trial of this experimental treatment, two had a complete response to therapy, one had a partial response and one is still alive more than four years after therapy.
The report quotes Dr Stephen Baylin, a US professor of oncology at John Hopkins University and co-author of the study, as saying: "It's not a home run, but this trial has opened the door for further research into epigenetic therapy."
Demetriou's message to patients is to be aware of symptoms: a persistent, nagging cough that progressively worsens, increasing shortness of breath, and in advanced cases, weight loss, bone pain and a change in voice. Once diagnosed, patients should follow through with all treatment.
As smoking is a major cause of lung cancer, there is often little sympathy for patients.
"People need to understand that anyone can be diagnosed with lung cancer, even nonsmokers," Demetriou says.
Source: Business Day
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