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.