Lung Cancer: Symptoms, Treatment

We believe that your diagnosis is lung cancer. Lung cancer is the growth of abnormal cells in your lungs that spread to lung tissue which causes the formation of a tumor. These abnormal cancer cells can also spread to other parts of your body, including your lymph nodes. Being a heavy smoker, it was highly probable that you would acquire lung cancer. When the lungs are constantly exposed to the smoke from cigarettes, which is full of carcinogens (cancer-causing materials), it damages the epithelial cells of the lungs, and therefore causes the cells to develop cancer. Currently, you have a persistent cough, shortness of breath, and fatigue. The dyspnea can be caused by the tumor blocking your airway.

Additionally, lung cancer may cause fluid to build up which also leads to shortness of breath. With shortness of breath, not enough oxygen is able to enter the body, therefore it is more difficult for cellular respiration to occur. This means that not enough carbon dioxide is being released from your body and not enough ATP is being produced for your cells. Seeing as your cells are are unable to access a sufficient amount of energy, you’ve become lethargic and fatigued. After doing a chest x-ray and a CAT scan, we found that you have a tumor on your upper-right lung field. We also did a sputum cytology, examining your mucus to look for cancer cells, which usually detects the cells 60% of the time, but it came out falsely negative. We also suspected you to have Bronchitis or Pneumonia. We ruled out Bronchitis because that would require you to have a persistent cold for two weeks prior, which to our knowledge, you did not suffer from.

Additionally, after doing the chest x-ray and a CAT scan, the possibility of Bronchitis was eliminated because it would not cause you to have a tumor. Pneumonia was initially our first guess, but similarly to Bronchitis, it isn’t probable because it would not cause you to have a tumor. For treatment, you may want to seek surgery or get chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is a medicine used to kill the cancer cells. It can be taken as a pill, an injection, or a catheter. Another option is radiation. Radiation is using x-rays to kill cancer cells as well as shrink tumors either externally or internally. Luckily, your cancer has not spread outside of your lungs, so hopefully the surgery will be effective. This process is very difficult, so we suggest keeping close and talking to your loved ones, as well as a psychologist and support groups.

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