If you are not part of the solution then you're part of the problem.

"Did they smoke?"

This is the response I get every. single. time. I tell people that both of my parents died of lung cancer. Every time! I take a deep breath, I compose myself and simply answer "yes, they did." For a while I was so mentally drained from the grieving process that this is the only response I could muster up. I wanted to go into a 40 minute dissertation about the facts of lung cancer but it was too exhausting.  

Too exhausting? Who am I to complain about being too exhausted? Why? Because I have lost both of my parents to an illness that people refuse to acknowledge? How selfish of me.  What about the people that are still suffering from this disease? If I don't speak up about it who will?  I'm exhausted? Try being a patient with lung cancer.

I have a quote in the signature of my email that says "We are all responsible for any evil we could have prevented."  So true. It dawned on me that if I'm not part of the solution than that means I am contributing to the problem. It's time to change that.

I speak up now. I tell people about the environmental factors that my parents were exposed to during their lifetime that also contributed to their disease. I tell them that almost 1/4 of all people with lung cancer have never smoked. I tell them that my parents quit smoking a decade before they were diagnosed. I tell them that children get lung cancer and that radon causes lung cancer too.


If you want to know what you can do to help people that have been affected with lung cancer; stop the stigma. Be that one person that responds differently. Be the one person that says "I'm so sorry" when someone says that they or a loved one has been diagnosed with lung cancer. The point is that it doesn't matter if the person smoked or not. The point is that they are suffering and no one deserves to suffer.