Lung cancer?
I am a former one-pack-a-day smoker. I smoked for twenty years between 1970 and 1990, with a short relapse a couple of years ago. In the past two months I have been experiencing symptoms that my father, my aunt, and a friend described to me, and they all died from lung cancer. My aunt never smoked.

My symptoms include pain in the left shoulder and rib cage, and the pain is beginning to travel up my neck. I can feel some pain in the lung when I breath deeply, and I also read in a home medical book that small white spots on the skin could be a symptom. I have those spots on my left hand. I am coughing up some white sputum, but there doesn’t seem to be any blood in it.

I have seen two different GPs and they both seem to think that I have a muscle sprain or strain. I know it’s more than that. I’m not imagining this.

Dr. Joshua’s Answer:

It’s impossible for me to say what causes your symptoms, and obviously I can’t make a more accurate diagnosis over the internet compared to the doctors you’ve seen in person. However, a simple chest X-ray would be quite informative in your case, and a throrough examination by a physician is needed. If there’s any sign or suspicion of lung cancer or other cancer, a chest CT scan is then performed.

Your risk of developing lung cancer in any given year is (my estimate, based on your story) about 1/1000. The fact that you’ve quit smoking (the best thing you’ve ever done for your well-being) is bringing that risk down every year.

Take the Harvard online lung cancer risk questionnaire. It’ll give you good advice on how to decrease your risk even further. Click here for the lung cancer risk test.

Tags: Back Pain

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