I’ve never touched a cigarette. So why was I diagnosed with “deadly” lung cancer at 43?

A Kentucky woman has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and given just six months to live, despite never smoking and being physically active.

Leah Phillips was just 43 in September 2019 when she developed a dry, persistent cough. Two weeks later, doctors concluded it was simply a remnant of a generic virus she had contracted.

A few days of corticosteroid therapy relieved the cough, but it returned a few weeks later, along with shortness of breath. A long-distance runner, Phillips now had trouble keeping up with her jogging group and suffered from a “heaviness” in her chest.

After returning to the doctor and insisting on further tests, scans showed consolidation in her right lung, which occurs when the air in the airways is replaced by fluid, blood or other material. This can be a sign of multiple health complications, and the mother of three was diagnosed with pneumonia.

She was prescribed antibiotics, but halfway through the treatment, she started coughing up blood. Doctors prescribed stronger antibiotics and then admitted her to the hospital for four days for further tests and observation.

The medical team insisted that Ms Phillips simply had a lingering case of pneumonia, despite the fact that she was losing weight, had a cough, could barely walk up stairs and had pain in her right shoulder and right rib.

“I looked horrible,” Ms. Phillips, now 47, told The Patient Story.

“I was in the doctor’s office, crying in front of the ladies at the front desk, saying, ‘There’s something seriously wrong with me. I need someone to see me. I need someone to listen to me.’”

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“I said, ‘I’m not leaving here until someone sees me.’

A few months later, in December 2019, scans and bone biopsies revealed stage four non-small cell lung cancer.

She said: “It was a shock to my mother, my husband and me because none of us knew you could get lung cancer without smoking.

“This oncologist told me that I had six to twelve months to live and that I needed to get my affairs in order. I was 43 years old and had young children.

“I remember bursting into tears. I was like, ‘This can’t be happening. You die of metastatic cancer, and now I’m alive.'”

Lung cancer is the deadliest form of cancer in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). It accounts for one in five cancer deaths, and just over half of cases are diagnosed after the disease has spread to other organs.

In Ms. Phillips’ case, her cancer had spread to her spine and pelvis.

Only one in four lung cancer patients survives after five years.

Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common type, accounting for nine out of ten lung cancer diagnoses. It generally grows more slowly than small cell lung cancer and usually does not cause any symptoms until it has progressed.

Ms. Phillips is part of a growing group of people being diagnosed with cancer at an early stage, that is, before the age of 50.

In the United States, one in ten lung cancer diagnoses are in patients under 55, but experts have warned that the rate of early cases has been rising for two decades.

And although smoking remains the leading cause of lung cancer, the proportion of young patients who have never smoked is also increasing.

Genetic testing revealed that Ms. Phillips had a mutation in her EGFR gene, which is more common in non-smoking lung cancer patients.

About 10 to 15 percent of the 234,000 patients diagnosed with lung cancer each year have an EGFR mutation.

She also wrote for Project Environmental that her doctor believes radon exposure increases her risk of developing cancer.

Radon, a known carcinogen, is an invisible, odorless gas produced by the radioactive decay of uranium in rocks, soil, and water. The World Health Organization estimates that radon is responsible for 3 to 14 percent of lung cancers.

She believes living in Kentucky increased her exposure to radon, as the chemical is common in that area.

Dr. Laura Mezquita, a medical oncologist in Spain, said at an oncology conference earlier this summer: “Radon is the leading cause of cancer in non-smokers. Radon is also a risk factor in younger populations.”

She said this could be due to exposure to radon from birth, which could happen if radon enters a home through contaminated soil. A 2019 report in Nature found that radon exposure in homes is increasing due to modern construction that is more airtight and traps the chemicals.

Ms. Phillips quickly started taking the oral chemotherapy drug osimertinib, which is used specifically to treat non-small cell lung cancer in patients with genetic mutations.

After a year of treatment, the main tumor in his right lung had shrunk by 70 percent and the disease in his bones had subsided.

In November 2020, she began eight sessions of intensive radiation therapy to attack the remaining cancer.

Since then, the cancer has been stable, although chemotherapy should only control it for two to three years. It can then grow and spread again.

Although Phillips’ condition has been stable for four and a half years thanks to treatment, her doctors believe the drug will work. And even if it continues to work, her tumors will not shrink.

“It’s not a question of if I’m going to progress, it’s a question of when,” she said. “I’m on borrowed time, I guess. There’s no official next step.”

“I will never be in remission. I will never be cured.”

Although Ms Phillips’ outlook is bleak, she is now urging other young people to stand up for themselves with doctors and not take no for an answer.

She said: “What if I hadn’t been educated? What if I hadn’t taken responsibility? What if I hadn’t had the financial means or the insurance to continue going back to school. That’s why my heart breaks.”

“Being fired has never been my style. I’m not a confrontational person, but when I’m passionate about something… I stand up for what I believe in, and I knew I deserved better care than I was getting.”

“You have to be your own advocate, and if you don’t think you can be, you have to find someone who will.”