Quick - what's the biggest cancer killer of women?
If you said, "breast cancer," you'd be in good company. But you'd be wrong.
Lung cancer kills more women in the United States than breast cancer and all other gynecologic cancers combined. The American Cancer Society says nearly 70,000 American women are expected to die of lung cancer this year, compared with about 40,000 who will succumb to breast cancer.
"Women don't have this on their radar screen," said Dr. Kathy Albain, professor of medicine at Loyola University Chicago, "and it's a travesty."
Lee Ann Gaal, 50, one of Albain's patients, learned the hard way. The longtime schoolteacher started having mammograms in her 30s. An aunt had died of breast cancer, making Gaal well aware of that danger. But even though her father had died of lung cancer, Gaal smoked at least a pack of cigarettes a day from age 13.
"I guess I thought lung cancer was just for men," she said.
(That was true in the past, because far more men smoked cigarettes. In recent decades, women have about caught up: 21 percent of U.S. women and 25 percent of men now smoke.)
About six years ago, Gaal noticed that her ankles were swollen. Her primary-care doctor sent her to an arthritis specialist, who poked and prodded and eventually pronounced, "I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you have lung cancer."
Shocking news
It was a bolt from the blue. Gaal turned out to have an 8-centimeter tumor on her lung that eventually spread to her brain. But after surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, she's alive to tell her story.
The majority of lung cancer patients are dead within two years of diagnosis, but Albain stressed that increasing numbers are beating those odds, thanks to improved treatments.
"I need to say `Thank you, Jesus' every day," Gaal said. "It's only by a miracle that I'm alive."
Her biggest regret is that she put her family through hell. "Women who smoke need to know they're risking their lives," Gaal said. "But what they do to their families is so much worse."
Gaal and Albain (who specializes in both breast and lung cancer) are trying to spread the word. Three years ago, Albain helped found Women Against Lung Cancer, which brings women oncologists and medical professionals together with leaders of women's advocacy groups.
This year she and other researchers are launching a large clinical trial that will attempt to establish why some people get lung cancer while others don't, and why some patients do better once they get it.
