Lillian met the love of her life, J

Lillian met the love of her life, Johnny, in February 1959 a few days before her 15 th birthday. In her words “it was as if when we met we had loved forever and only needed to meet.” But Johnny was 25 and a disapproving uncle warned him to stay away from Lillian (though she didn’t realise until many years later why he had broken her heart). She ended up in an unfulfilling marriage for 41 years until filing for divorce. She was reunited with Johnny when both realised their love for each other had survived a separation of more than four decades. In the intervening years Lillian’s mother died of lung cancer.

In 2002 Johnny was also diagnosed with lung cancer and Lillian says her world ended with his death at 4.55am on December 2nd of that year. Not surprisingly she has a lot to say about lung cancer – about the lack of funding for research, about misdiagnosis and the sometimes arrogant attitude of the medical profession towards the disease. So here is her story.

“Being a care giver is one of the hardest jobs a person can ever do. It can drain you physically, mentally and emotionally. It can also be one of the most rewarding things you will ever do in your life. It doesn't matter if you chose it as your profession or if it is thrust on you when someone you love needs that special care.

When someone you love is diagnosed with lung cancer those things are multiplied ten times. Not only is your world turned upside down but your heart is turned inside out. Life will never be as you know it again. Not only do they have cancer but you do as well only in a different way.

Most people who know lung cancer up close and personal describe it as a roller coaster ride. No other name could be so accurate. Just one small piece of good news can send you soaring to the heights then one unexplained pain or symptom can send you plunging down again. As a care giver there will be times when no matter how much you love someone it just gets to be too much. You just want to stop and get off but you can't because the ride is moving much too fast. Just when you think that you have given all that you have to give you will be asked for more. That is when you reach down into the depths of yourself and find more to give.

The physical side of the disease is bad enough but the mental and emotional side are often more devastating. The two main treatments for lung cancer consist of pumping poison of one kind or another into a person’s body. Poison that can not only kill the cancer but many other good body cells. Cells that are needed for a person to live a normal and comfortable life. Those poisons make a person's hair fall out and deplete the cells in the blood. Red cells that carry oxygen through the body and white cells that protect against other diseases.

All of those things produce emotional and mental side effects that destroy a person’s sense of security. Add that deadly attitude that I talk about and you have a situation that causes havoc in every life that it touches. I want to try to explain what I mean by that attitude. There are at least two sides to that attitude, each as dangerous as the other. Lung cancer is the only major disease still seen as something a person brings upon themself. Even AIDS has become a disease that people no longer see as something that people deserve because their lifestyle asked for it. Since tobacco smoke has been linked to lung cancer most research into other causes has been stopped.

Billions of dollars are spent world wide every day trying to find a cure for AIDS and other forms of disease. Lung cancer has become the biggest killer in the world yet only a fraction of the money spent for research on other diseases is spent on lung cancer. Why? Could it be the stigma attached because of the connection to tobacco smoke? The idea that people bring it on themselves?

Only 15% of smokers ever develop lung cancer. On the other hand nearly one third of those diagnosed have never smoked or been exposed to excessive amounts of tobacco smoke. The fastest growing number of new diagnoses is in women in their thirties and forties who have never smoked nor been exposed to smoke. It seems that should make someone take notice and try to find out why.

I have heard some real horror stories associated with that part of the attitude. There are actually people who have been called liars because they tell people that they never smoked but still have lung cancer. Not only by those who don't know any better but by those in the medical profession who should know better. Then there are those who are not diagnosed until they are in the latest stages of the disease. Why? Because despite having all of the symptoms their doctors would never order tests for lung cancer, in some cases not even a simple chest x-ray. The reason given was because they did not smoke so they could not have lung cancer! And that came from professionals. People that a person has to trust their life to.