I was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer at 28 and had never smoked. These are the warning signs young people need to know
When Aurora Lucas started feeling chest pain in August 2021, she initially dismissed it as stress.
She was busy. She had recently moved to Chicago to start a new teaching job and was in the second year of her doctoral program. But when the pain wouldn’t go away and she developed a cough, fatigue and back pain, she went to the emergency room.
She never thought she would receive the diagnosis that finally came three months after that first hospital visit. It was advanced lung cancer – at the age of 28. Aurora had never smoked before.
It took tests carried out by three different doctors to reach the correct conclusion, with two dismissing her symptoms as being due to a lung infection.
‘DOctors over and over again did everything else and suspected everything else except the word cancer,” Aurora, now 31, said in a video posted to her. TikTok channel.
Ms Lucas was diagnosed with lung cancer when she was just 28 years old. She had to give up teaching to improve, but was able to continue pursuing her doctorate in educational sciences. Now, at age 31, she is entering the dissertation phase of the program.
As she recovers from treatment, she wants to raise awareness about the signs of the disease and remind others that no one is immune – no matter their age.
“The scary thing is this is a hidden disease, you know it’s not diagnosed until much later, until stage three or four, and it’s usually quite aggressive,” Aurora said.
Aurora’s story takes place amid a global increase in early-onset cancer cases, with more and more patients under the age of 50 being diagnosed.
All early-onset cancers increased by 79 percent globally between 1990 and 2019, according to an analysis published in the journal BMJ Oncology.
Although these percentages increase most strongly for colorectal cancer and breast cancer, some measurements indicate that cases of lung cancer under the age of 40 are also increasing.
In recent decades, lung cancer rates have declined in almost all demographic groups, except those under 40 years of age.
Only 1.4 percent of all people with lung cancer are diagnosed under the age of 35, about 3,000 Americans.
However, when the disease affects young people, it is often diagnosed at a later stage when treatments are less effective.
By the time Aurora’s cancer was noticed, the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes and was classified as stage three.
About 37 percent of those diagnosed with lung cancer at this stage live for five years after their diagnosis.
The symptoms started in August 2021. They included chest pain, persistent coughing and back pain. She also developed fatigue so severe that she had to stop driving for fear of falling asleep at the wheel.
“Those were huge signs that I thought was just stress as a 28-year-old,” she said.
Shortly afterwards she made an appointment with her GP. He told her she looked great and advised her to eat some honey for her cough.
About a week later, her chest pain hadn’t gone away, so she went to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a rare condition that affects the way the heart connects, called wolf-parkinson-white syndrome.
That’s when doctors scanned her chest and saw a ‘haze’ that they thought was an infection or tuberculosis.
But her insurance wouldn’t cover further testing, so doctors sent her home. Three weeks later, she returned to the emergency room because the coughing got worse and she could barely speak.
She had to “beg” the nurse to allow her to be tested further and offered to pay for the expensive scans as insurance wouldn’t cover it, Aurora said in a podcast called Patient from Hell.
The nurse performed a biopsy, which was inconclusive, and she was sent back home.
Finally, on December 1, 2021, her insurance changed and she went to a new doctor who labeled her case as urgent and sent her for a barrage of tests.
Within five days she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“So many doctors denied that this was actually lung cancer,” she said.
This came as a shock to her and her family. She had never smoked, and although her grandmother developed the disease, it did not happen until she was in her sixties.
She was recommended two rounds of chemotherapy and 30 days of radiation.
That first phase ended in February 2022, and shortly afterward she was given a drug tailored to treat her specific type of cancer.
Her doctors told her that the unnamed oral therapy, which she still receives today, was akin to a “cancer police.”
She is scanned every three months to make sure the cancer has not gotten worse.
At any point, the medication could stop controlling her cancer, and she could find out her cancer has returned, she said.
Despite this looming concern, she leads an active, busy life. She is now entering the dissertation phase of her PhD and is spending time traveling with family while advocating for patients online.
On TikTok, she answers viewers’ questions about lung cancer and explains the importance of regular screening, because for many people, symptoms don’t start until the disease is advanced.
Especially for young people, Ms. Lucas said, “It’s super important to get screened and get checked and be connected to your body.”