Sometimes Love Is Not Enough

About the Book

Every year, thousands of people are diagnosed with some form of lung cancer. Some can be operated on and the cancer taken out. Additional forms of chemotherapy might be needed. Newer targeted drugs might be employed. And still, the fear of all who are diagnosed is whether the cancer will spread to other organs and, eventually, lead to one’s demise. Treatments in the last decade or so have resulted in longer lives as oncologists work with pharmaceutical companies as trial drug regimens have become more and more specific to each person’s DNA. When drugs stop working and there appears to be no hope, there is at least one type of lung cancer—bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, a type of adenocarcinoma—that might avail itself to a radical “cure” or at least a very good temporary fix. That fix is a single-sided or double-sided lung transplant. While there are many transplant centers around the country, most would not even consider a transplant when there is any type of cancer involved. There are very few—and especially one, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—willing to take such a risk for BAC patients. If it is determined that a BAC is staying within the alveoli of the lungs, and not metastasizing to other organs, UPMC will consider taking this risk because of all their experience in lung transplantation since the late 1980s. That is why our oncologist recommended we find out more about this program and why we ended up choosing to work with them for my wife’s condition. Susanne is my wife of thirty-seven years. She hugs my soul every day. She has gone through many, many medical procedures, but this one was the most important procedure of her life, and it all started with a cough.

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