Jane Holmes has quite a story to tell. A shock diagnosis at 43, doctors initially thought Jane’s cancer had been caught early. However, a PET scan revealed it had spread to the nodes in her neck.
Suddenly, Jane’s cancer went from stage 1 to advanced lung cancer. Stage 3b. Inoperable. Incurable.
But that was 11 years ago so clearly there’s a lot more to Jane’s story, and she shares it all on our Talk of Hope podcast.
Here’s 5 things we took away from our latest Talk of Hope podcast…
Just because I had lung cancer doesn’t mean I’m ill
My lung cancer was caught through an incidental finding. My one and only ‘symptom’ was a slight pain, or discomfort, in my nose. It felt cold when I breathed in. When the tests on my sinuses came back clear, my GP sent me for a chest x-ray, but no one was thinking lung cancer. I was 43, very fit, an avid runner and felt well.
And as shocking as my diagnosis was, it didn’t change how I felt. I didn’t suddenly start to feel ill after we found out what was going on, so I wasn’t going to start acting ill. I just continued with my life the way I had before the diagnosis.
‘BRAN’
I learnt this acronym when my doctors started talking about treatment. It stands for:
B – Benefits. What are the benefits of having this treatment?
R – Risks. Are there any risks involved?
A – Alternatives. Are there any alternative treatments available for me and how do they compare?
N – Nothing. What happens if we do nothing?
Having my treatment broken down for me like this really helped, especially when I stopped my chemo and started radical radiotherapy.
Living out in rural mid-Wales, I was suddenly having to embark on a 4-hour round trip to Cardiff for treatment. Monday to Friday. Five days a week for six weeks. To commit to this amount of travel, you need to know it’s worth it – and in my case it certainly was.
No one offended when I got a second opinion
When I found out my cancer had progressed, I had hoped surgery was still an option, but my team told me it wasn’t. Instead, I was set to have chemotherapy.
It was after hearing this that I decided to get a second option from the team at Velindre, a specialist cancer centre in Cardiff. It was nothing against the team at my local hospital. I wasn’t criticising them in any way. It was important for me to know I had the right information, which it turned out I did.
I then returned to my original local team and there was no animosity, no ‘I told you so’. They understood why I got a second opinion. When it comes to your life, you shouldn’t take any chances.
From chance of survival to chance of recurrence
When my diagnosis changed to stage 3b, conversations focused on my chance of survival. At one point, I was told only one in three people would be here in a year’s time. The doctor did caveat that a little by saying I was younger and fitter than a lot of other people with lung cancer so my odds were probably a little better than that.
However, after my surgery the language changed. The doctors weren’t talking about the chance of survival, they were talking about the chance of recurrence. I’m sure some people might find this a negative – you don’t want to think about it coming back when it had only just gone. But for me, this was a huge positive. I no longer had a small chance of survival. At that point, it had gone.
Changing minds
When surgery was a possibility again, my consultant warned me that it may be difficult to find a surgeon willing to take on my case. The amount of radical radiotherapy I had meant there was likely to be a lot of scar tissue so the surgeon would be entering into the unknown, especially as the plan was to have keyhole surgery.
My consultant said 98% of surgeons would say no. But he then said we’d keep going until someone said yes! That’s when I knew he was on my side.
Fortunately, we did find a surgeon who was willing to operate. That may have had something to do with my polite yet pushy attitude!
Afterwards, the surgeon said she would definitely take on more cases like mine in the future. She had been concerned with the amount of scarring, but it was actually an easier operation that she expected.
It fills me with joy knowing my experience has helped shift attitudes and potentially given more people the chance that I got.