“I was angry and I remember thinking how is it that doctors who go to school for so many years…how do they not find it when it had spread to someone’s entire body,” explains Daphne. The doctor explained that she must’ve had cancer for years. “I was upset that the system didn’t work for my mom and that she had to be the one [to push] for the scan for 6 months, which was the worst thing because these 6 months could’ve made a difference since cancer spread so quickly.”
After the stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis, Daphne’s mother was given oral chemo in the form of a pill that cost roughly about $14,000 a month for 30 pills. Luckily, she had insurance from her husband, since he was a Vietnam war veteran and as his wife was covered by the Veteran’s Administration. The oral chemo stopped working after about a year and then she began radiation and a more aggressive form of chemotherapy and from then on, her mother’s health deteriorated.
“They told us that once cancer got to her brain there was nothing that they could do. The last four days of her life I watched how her life changed from minute to minute because in a matter of minutes she forgot who I was,” remembers Daphne. Her mother, unfortunately, died in February of 2016 at the age of 57.
After her mother had passed away, Daphne decided that she needed to do something because, before her mother’s diagnosis, she had never heard much about lung cancer. She joined a cancer walk and got involved with Lung Force and shared her story. She even went to Washington D.C. as an advocate for lung cancer prevention, urging senators and house of representatives to increase funding for lung cancer research.
Since then, she’s become more involved in helping raise awareness on lung cancer because she doesn’t want anyone what her mother went through. Before her mother’s diagnosis, she didn’t know that if you have lungs you could get lung cancer, anyone is at risk, and in fact, it is the number one cancer killer in the United States. “You can eat healthy your whole life, you can workout, you can think that not smoking is going to save you from lung cancer, but it won’t,” she says. “I knew nothing about lung cancer, I never knew that if someone has back pain or a chronic cough, they might have lung cancer.”
This is why it’s so important for Daphne to share her story because it’s something that happens every day. Check out Lung Force to learn more about lung cancer, your risk, symptoms, treatment options, and how to get involved with the American Lung Association.
