Vital Voices: Challenges getting diagnosed with cancer

“I’m young, I’m African American, I’m seemingly healthy … and I’ve got a cough. He didn’t really care.” -Jaymie, non-small cell lung cancer patient

Transcript

00:00

He didn't care what I had going on. I'm young. I'm African American. I'm seemingly healthy, and I've got a cough.

00:06

He didn't really care. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:14

So when I first started experiencing symptoms, I went to the pulmonologist, and they gave me breathing tests. And by the end of that test, he was like, oh, it's

00:22

probably asthma or allergies. And he gave me an inhaler and basically sent me on my way. He just didn't care. And he didn't-- he didn't feel like he needed to go any deeper

00:31

into my symptoms. He was very dismissive. I came back and, you know, same situation, sat in his office for a couple of minutes,

00:38

and he was like, I'm going to write you a script for a cough suppressant. And he wrote me the script, and he sent me on my way. And I went out, and I sought out a second opinion

00:45

on what was going on with me. The first thing he asked me was, have you had a chest X-ray? And I said, no, not at all. And so he sent me upstairs. I got the X-ray, and then I came back down.

00:53

And I never forget when I came back into the room to sit with the doctor again, it was like all the blood had drained from his face. And he was just like, are you feeling OK?

01:01

You never want to hear that from a doctor. And he's like, well, your entire left lung is covered in fluid. And I was just like, I'm sorry?

01:07

And he showed me the X-ray where it's like you could see one lung on one side is perfectly fine and healthy, and then on the other side

01:14

is literally just white space. You can't see anything. Lung cancer never, ever entered my mind as a possibility at all

01:21

during this whole time until they said, hey, you have lung cancer. And I was just, you know, taken aback by that whole entire sentence.

01:28

So advocating for myself is important to me because it's why I'm here. So you kind of have to stand up for yourself,

01:35

and you have to-- you have to value yourself, because if you don't value you, you can't expect other people to value you.