“A billboard saved my life.” It’s almost poetic to read, but this poetry was the reality for Denise Lee. On her daily drive to work, caught in the Bay Area traffic, she would see a billboard encouraging her to get tested for lung cancer.
Denise, a former smoker, started smoking at the age of 14. Her addiction grew over time from occasional smoking, to smoking a pack, to a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. She tried many times to quit but was repeatedly unsuccessful. At the age of 56, she tried once more, and this time was successful. Still, every time Denise saw that billboard on her drive to work, something inside of her stirred.
After several months of seeing the billboard, Denise requested the low-dose CT scan from her doctor at her annual physical exam. “I went to SavedByTheScan.org and took the lung cancer screening eligibility quiz. From that quiz, I knew I was high risk and I wanted to be tested,” Denise said. After completing her physical, Denise’s doctor let her know that she didn’t need to complete the low-dose CT scan at this time. Denise, although a bit uneasy about this reply, obliged and left the hospital.
Soon after her annual check-up, Denise came down with a cold. She was gearing up for a vacation and didn’t want to travel while feeling under the weather. Instead of risking her health on an airplane, she made an appointment to see her doctor once more. While receiving treatment for her cold, Denise mentioned to her doctor, again, that she wanted to have a low-dose CT scan. This time, her doctor agreed.
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Not wanting to rush and have the scan before her vacation, Denise made her appointment for two days after her return.
On the day of her scan, Denise was pleased to find out how simple it really was. She was able to keep her clothes on while laying on a bed that went through what she calls, “a donut,” a few times. It was an easy process that took only 10 minutes.
The following day, Denise received her results and a fear she’d had for some time now became reality. There was a mass on her lungs that the doctors diagnosed to be cancer. From there, Denise went into autopilot following the orders of her doctors. She had several more tests done to decipher staging and see if her body was healthy enough to undergo surgery. In addition to the testing, Denise got a second opinion from another doctor to verify everything she’d found out thus far was accurate. In confirming what she’d been told, the second doctor couldn’t help but be stunned by her story, repeatedly asking her, “how did you catch this so soon?”
The next few months were tough for Denise, but not as tough as the day she flew to Arizona to tell her mother what was going on. “The hardest part was telling my mom because my dad died from cancer and that was very painful for all of us. I'm not a parent, but I can imagine the hardest thing for a parent to hear from their child is that I have cancer,” Denise recalls. “I didn't want my mom to worry about me, but the good part about it was that I was able to say to her, they found a lump in my upper left lung, but because I had this scan, they caught it early and this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna take it out and I may or may not have to have chemotherapy. They'll figure it out, but that's what we're going to do.”
With her mom and support system by her side, Denise underwent surgery to remove the left upper lobe of her lung on March 7, 2018 and started chemotherapy the first Tuesday in April. She went through 4 cycles of chemo over the course of 84 days.
In addition to leaning on her support system, Denise found ways to stay motivated and keep going. “I made sure I got out of the house every day and walked. That helped a lot both physically and mentally. I also journaled quite a bit,” she recalled “I had to learn to stay off of Google because too much information isn't always a good thing. Most importantly, I prayed.”
Once Denise’s chemotherapy cycles ended, she went through additional scans and showed no evidence of disease. She currently gets regular check-in scans to monitor her lungs.
Now, at 58 years old, Denise is a lung cancer survivor who remains motivated from her world travels. “I have to stay healthy for my next trip,” Denise exclaims. She’s also become an advocate for early detection and is sure to constantly remind friends and family that are former smokers about how the billboard and lung cancer screening eligibility quiz saved her life. “I am heartened to see that more individuals in the medical profession are referring more people for scans and that I think is in part due to Saved By The Scan.
The number of great stories that are on SavedByTheScan.org about other individuals’ lung cancer screenings has almost doubled since I put mine on there. More people are getting tested, which is a benefit, and it's just a matter of getting the information out there and reaching more people.” When asked what she would want others to know about lung cancer and her journey, Denise replied, “There's nothing to be afraid of. The earlier you can find out, the better, the more options you have--that’s what happened for me. I had more options because I looked at that billboard. I’m just so thankful I saw that billboard.”
Bryana Holcomb is the Editor of BlackDoctor.org and graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Gender and Women's Studies, an MBA in Management Strategy, and Life Coaching and Nutrition certifications. Connect with Bryana on Instagram, @BryDelicia.
