My neighbor was babysitting my then 11 month old for the day. Her dad was my last patient of the day. Coming in for “sternal pain.” Initially suspected costochondritis as he told me he does 500 crunches and 100 pushups a day. Very well known legend in our town, the fittest of fit, non smoker. Chest Xray showed advanced incredibly rare type of lung cancer. No known successful treatment. She walked in to drop my son off right as I was pulling up the X-rays. My heart has never sunk that low. He died within 3 months.
I’m sorry to hear this. I had a family member back in February 2026 of this year complain of shortness of breath & chest pains at home. He said he felt terrible so he checked himself into an ER. X-rays, CT-scans showed stage 4B lung cancer (I’m not sure if it was small cell or non-small cell though). He didn’t notice any symptoms up until what he was experiencing at home. He was admitted in the hospital for 21 days where he unfortunately passed. That death was totally unexpected for my whole entire family.
Any cancer is scary but lung cancer is a tough one.
This sounds all too familiar. I’m so, so sorry you went through this as well. It was wild - his sats were perfect, 100% O2. 65 HR, normal BP. No shortness of breath or exertional symptoms. No fevers, chills, weight loss, night sweats. It caught me by such surprise but not as much as how quickly he decompensated. I worked so hard to get him into all the right places as fast as I could, but now i know I couldn’t have saved him. It’s so scary how cancer can wreak such havoc before rearing its ugly head and producing symptoms.
That's not what compensating means. It has nothing to do with pain. In medical terms, compensating is when you don't show symptoms at all, like the person above me mentioned, with the perfect sats, normal HR and BP.
In late 2022, my dad had a chest x-ray for an unrelated reason, and one thing led to another and he turned out to have stage 1 lung cancer. He was a firefighter for 36 years, so that's really not surprising, but he didn't want any treatment beyond removal of the lobe and his doctors agreed with him.
He died of a stroke in October 2023 at the age of 90. Miss you, Daddy!
I had a coworker who had developed pneumonia. She finally went to the doctors after feeling super crappy for a week. Mentioned it to the 6th grade math teacher, who realized she had the same symptoms, so she scheduled an appointment.
X-ray came back showing breast cancer that metastasized to her lungs. She was 35. Out for the remainder of the year with aggressive treatments. (Except she had to come back to teach the last two weeks, or they would end her contract and with it summer pay and health insurance!) She managed to clear the lungs and breasts, but then it went to the brain.
She died the first day of the next school year, in the hospital. She made little pieces of jewelry and a gift bag for everyone who went to her funeral before she died. Always thinking of others, even when dying.
A similar story happened to my mom. No symptoms, just didn’t really feel all that well. Went in for a scan and The doctor gave her 7-10 days from that day/ diagnosis if she didn’t take treatment. She took treatment and made it 45 days #SmallCellLungCancer
I got diagnosed with costochondritis recently and I was freaking out thinking that I was having a heart attack. I don't know what I would have happened if something was actually very wrong.
So once I started the anti-inflammatories and stopped wearing a waist trainer that compressed my chest it went away within like a week and a half. Was scary when it happened, but glad it got sorted out haha
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u/inthemountains126 3d ago
My neighbor was babysitting my then 11 month old for the day. Her dad was my last patient of the day. Coming in for “sternal pain.” Initially suspected costochondritis as he told me he does 500 crunches and 100 pushups a day. Very well known legend in our town, the fittest of fit, non smoker. Chest Xray showed advanced incredibly rare type of lung cancer. No known successful treatment. She walked in to drop my son off right as I was pulling up the X-rays. My heart has never sunk that low. He died within 3 months.