Joan is a lung cancer warrior. She is only alive today because of participation in clinical trial research. Joan is an Asian female never smoker under age 60 Stage IV NSCLC patient who has been battling the good fight for almost three years. She thought she only had eight months based on the averages, but that is outdated statistics in today’s precision medicine world. 
She is living a life compressed, but living it with joy.
Joan is alive today because clinical trials determined if you were an East Asian female never smokers under age 60, then 60% had an EGFR mutation driving the cancer. which is way higher than the general American population. As a result, targeted oral therapy was determined very effective in keeping Joan alive without enduring traditional chemotherapy.
Joan is alive today because clinical trials provide closer monitoring of patient health than the standard of care. A clinical trial screening brain MRI surprised us all because 13 brain mets showed up. Joan was asymptomatic. Consequently, we were able to do whole brain radiation and stop the cancer cold before it did real damage. Joan is alive today because liquid biopsy research helped determine genetic changes in her blood quickly without a tissue biopsy. The new mutations discovered helped guide us to a treatment plan that would be more effective for her genetic profile instead of guessing.
Knowing if your genetic profile is EGFR exon19del or exon20 or exon 21L8568R is critically important in picking a therapy that will keep you alive longer. Not all treatments work the same for all EGFR cancer sub-types, so we are thankful for the research. Joan is alive today because while every day is a gift and you never know when your time is up, there is hope with the continued advances in lung cancer research. We are on Plan J looking for our 3rd clinical trial and continue to hope to continue to beat the long tail end of the survival curve.
We hope you will join us in November Lung Cancer month to raise awareness that (1) anyone can get lung cancer; (2) there is no easy method of early detection of lung cancer yet; (3) More than half of lung cancer patients die within one year of diagnosis (4) lung cancer kills more people in America than any other cancer type (5) yet lung cancer research is severely underfunded and (6) consequently 5-year survival rates are quite dismal compared to other types of cancer.
We support the Addario Lung Cancer Foundation efforts and have raised almost $50,000 to support research, awareness and patient advocacy. We are not just surviving with lung cancer. We are living with lung cancer in a life compressed with joy for God.
P.S. – Dragons are powerful. In Cantonese Chinese, dragon is pronounced “lung” So, we think saying we are dragon warriors means we are powerful warriors fighting the good fight against lung cancer.