Stage IV Lung Cancer: Thierry's Survivor Story
This lung cancer diagnosis at a glance
- Stage at diagnosis
- Stage IV
- Sex
- Male
- Spread to
- Brain
- Treatment
- surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and surveillance
- Outcome
- Survivorship / Completed Treatment
Treatment course, step by step
- May 2014 neurologic symptoms led to scan/MRI showing a left upper-lung lesion and a brain lesion
- urgent surgery removed the brain lesion, which proved to be a metastasis
- radiotherapy plus 2 chemotherapy series over 5 weeks for the lung
- late July 2014 lung tumor surgery/resection; surgeon reported no spread in the rest of the lung and no other body metastases
- close monitoring after later seizure.
What happened, in summary
Thierry was 55 when unusual neurologic symptoms led to his lung cancer diagnosis in May 2014. He had headaches for a week, seemed “strange” to people around him, struggled to handle objects, felt numbness around his mouth, and behaved unusually while driving. At the emergency department, doctors first thought of stroke. A scan and MRI showed something in the upper left lobe of a lung and a small lesion in the brain. He had urgent brain surgery to remove and analyze the lesion. It was not a primary brain tumor; it was a metastasis, which led doctors to search for the original cancer. Thierry then began radiotherapy and 2 series of chemotherapy over 5 weeks to treat the lung cancer. By late June, surgery was planned to remove the lung tumor, and he had that operation at the end of July 2014. The surgeon reported that the tumor had not spread through the rest of the lung and that no other metastases were found in the body. Treatment caused nausea, appetite loss, and major weight loss, but Thierry pushed himself to eat, stopped smoking, and later tried a therapeutic half-time return to work. Ongoing seizures and surveillance kept cancer part of life, but he focused on family, usefulness, and the future.
Where this story comes from
This is a lay summary of an account first published by Vivre avec un Cancer du Poumon. Read the original in full
These are lay summaries of published cancer stories, for information only. No two cancers behave the same way, and nothing here predicts your own diagnosis or replaces advice from your oncology team.