As a lung cancer survivor, your experiences are in some respects unique, beginning with your symptoms. It’s important to note that he process of the discovery of cancer is, by most people’s accounts, associated with great emotional upheaval. There may be a few of us who are so highly evolved spiritually or who have lived so full a life that we accept a cancer diagnosis with equanimity, but this is not the case for most of us.
Your unique illness
Lung cancer, formally called bronchogenic carcinoma, is not one disease, but a collection of diseases that affect the same organ and often cause similar symptoms. It might be tempting to compare your experiences with others who have had lung cancer, but it would be best to avoid making uneven comparisons that might upset you, as is likely to happen if you don’t know the precise
types and stages of lung cancers being compared.
If someone else experienced a treatment failure, for example, you might assume that your treatment will fail as well. Please keep in mind that the variation in lung cancer types means that your experience with symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment might well be very different from someone else’s.
Symptoms and syndromes
Some very noticeable symptoms of lung cancer, such as persistent cough, are directly associated with pulmonary (lung) function and are reasonably well understood.
Other symptoms are more obscure, involving organs outside the respiratory system. Still other symptoms involve metabolic systems that seem not to be related at all to lung cancer. In the course of getting a diagnosis, you may hear reference
to a particular syndrome. A syndrome is a collection of simultaneous symptoms with a common cause, observed often enough in patients with a given disease to characterize that disease. The lists of symptoms in the sections that follow may seem complex or ominous. Symptoms and syndromes are listed here to indicate to you the range of things your doctors may look for, to help give some reason behind a diagnostic test or exam that may seem odd on its face, and to give you an idea of the range of symptoms
that lung cancers may cause. As you can see, symptoms vary tremendously. Discuss any symptoms with your doctor.
Pulmonary symptoms
The symptoms of lung cancer that are clearly and directly related to lung function are:
• Coughing, the most common symptom, experienced by 74 percent of patients
• Bloody sputum (phlegm; 57 percent)
• Shortness of breath (37 percent)
• Chest pain (25 percent)
• Hoarseness (18 percent)
• Paralysis of the diaphragm, either symptomless or perceived as shortness of breath
• Wheezing or vibrating breathing noises (stridor)
• Recurrent pneumonia or bronchitis
• Difficulty swallowing (dysphagia)
Symptoms in other organs
Non-respiratory symptoms associated with lung cancer might be associated with pressure of a tumor on another organ or with pread of disease (metastasis) outside the lungs or bronchial tubes. The symptoms listed below have been associated with spread of disease in many patients. Unlike the list for pulmonary symptoms, the order of this list is not indicative of frequency of occurrence. In some cases, several of these symptoms might occur together.
• Swelling of the face, arms, and neck, possibly with visible veins on the skin of the chest caused by superior vena cava syndrome (SVCS), pressure of a tumor on the large chest vein known as the superior vena cava.
• Pancoast syndrome, caused by a tumor that presses on a nerve in the superior sulcus, a groove in the upper lung and its sac through which runs a major artery.
Symptoms of Pancoast syndrome include:
° Horner’s syndrome, including weak or drooping eyelid, lessened or no perspiration on one side of the face, and a smaller pupil in one eye
° Pain in the shoulder
° Weakening of hand muscles
° Destruction of bone, which might be perceived as bone pain
° Headache
° Weakness, numbness, or paralysis
° Dizziness
° Partial loss of vision
° Bone or joint pain
° Abdominal pain upon probing
° Unexplained weight loss
° Loss of appetite
° Unexplained fever
° Yellowing of the skin (jaundice)
° Fluid in the chest or abdomen (effusion, ascites)
° Cardiac symptoms, including thready or irregular pulse and difficulty breathing Rare symptoms of metastasis include:
• Lumps in or beneath the skin
• Protrusion of the eyes
• Eyelid tumors
• Perforation of the bowel experienced as severe abdominal pain with fever
• Acute pancreatitis experienced as severe abdominal pain and swings in blood sugar levels
• A lump in a salivary gland
• A lump in one tonsil
• A breast lump
• Bleeding in the gastrointestinal with fecal occult testing