I’m Mel. I’m 58 and have stage 4, not-yet-curable lung cancer. I live with radical hope, a positive life force and joy.
In March 2020, the world locked down in response to the pandemic. In the early summer of this strange year, like so many other people across the globe, I developed long Covid. I felt like my body was failing me. My GP ordered a chest x-ray. Neither of us were expecting to find a three-centimetre mass in my left lung.
After CT and PET scans, a consultant called me to let me know it was malignant. I had lung cancer. I felt as if a crater had appeared in my beautiful, flower-filled garden.
I’m a non-smoker, a vegetarian. I’m usually in good health. It was incomprehensible. Was this all due to coronavirus? I couldn’t compute what was happening to me.
Since then, I’ve learned that lung cancer can affect anyone, regardless of gender, smoking history or age. I have non-small adenocarcinoma with an EGFR mutation. Increasing numbers of women and younger people are being diagnosed with this and other genetically driven lung cancers and enormous amounts of research is attempting to find out why. The profile of lung cancer is changing.
Cancer angels
My partner, Sarah, and I somehow navigated each step of this ordeal. Together in spirit but not always in body as I faced surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy alone due to covid restrictions. It was truly a traumatic experience.
To anyone facing treatment, I say this; we’re all different. Our bodies respond to medical interventions in individual ways. It’s astonishing what we can endure with the love, support, care and attention of those around us. We can do hard things. For me, chemotherapy was gruelling. For others I know who had the same regime, they were much less toxically affected.
Sarah was my cancer angel. She still is. Together, we got through it. My three adult children are my constant champions and best friends. When the darkest moments hit, when I was hit by terror, I said their names repeatedly to myself. My mantra; Eloise, Fred, George. In fact, I still do except now I add my two granddaughters name too.
A post-cancer world
In 2021, treatment over, I stepped tentatively back into my life and tried to make sense of the world post-cancer. My mind, body and soul needed recovery time. The pre-cancer me thought that once people had finished treatment, they were better. Oh boy, how wrong I was. For many of us, we need as much compassion, kindness and love after as we did during the ordeal.
I bought a step counter and started to build my stamina by walking 10,000 steps a day. During cancer crater time, there were days when I couldn’t manage a hundred. I began to develop a remarkable appreciation of a blue sky, a field of daffodils, a smile from a stranger, of my truly wonderful tribe of friends and my precious family. I began to untangle myself from cancer and build a new, changed but positive identity.
Recurrence
In 2022, a scan showed tiny suspicious nodules on both lungs. Too small to biopsy, the team of superheroes at my wonderful hospital monitored them every six months as I lived in this in-between phase. The nodules were described as indolent. A fabulous word meaning lazy. I don’t think I have ever been lazy in my life. But lazy tumours? I’ll take them.
I finally had a lung biopsy in April 2024. It was confirmed that I have a recurrence. The nodules are now classified as tumours. I have inoperable stage 4 lung cancer.
I’m lucky as I take a daily targeted therapy drug, Osimertinib. The drug inhibits tumour growth. So far, my side-effects are minimal and a scan in May this year showed I am currently no evidence of active disease which is remarkable. It’s now six years since my diagnosis and I fully intend to be here for years seven, eight, nine and ten.
What next? When my drug stops working, and it will, I trust that dedicated, remarkable researchers and clinicians will have other options up the sleeves of their white coats. There is much progress in lung cancer treatment. We are beginning to see it as living with a chronic health condition, not a death sentence.
I’m an optimistic person. I live for each day. None of us know what the future holds. My ‘now’ is full of joy. Hope really is my rocket fuel. It means options, a future, another chance.
It’s why I share my story, to share hope and awareness about lung cancer. I work closely with Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, another research focused lung cancer charity called Oncogene Cancer Research and I’m a regional ambassador for EGRF Positive UK. Meeting others on planet cancer offers comfort, solidarity and even… fun.
Taking on the Tour de 4
When Sir Chris Hoy announced his stage 4 cancer diagnosis, I followed his story closely. He and I don’t have much in common — he’s a six-time Olympic gold medallist; I had a rusting bike in the back garden — but we share a belief in living joyfully and meaningfully with advanced cancer.
When I saw his Tour de 4 cycling fundraiser, I turned to Sarah and said, “Let’s do this!” Surprising, perhaps, since I’d done almost no aerobic exercise since my diagnosis and not much before it either. But I was inspired by his commitment to show what’s possible when you live with hope and determination.
When I found out the event was happening on 7th September 2025, my 58th birthday, it felt like fate. Sarah and I signed up for the Blue Ride: 37.5 miles of cycling in Glasgow.
Keeping the wheels turning
My first ride was nearly three miles around our local park. I felt like a six-year-old again on my shiny red Raleigh in the 1970s. Despite having one and a half lungs and a good bit of wheezing, I successfully completed the 38 mile route on my 58th birthday.
I love being on a bike. I feel free. I notice blossom trees, magnolias, canal paths, swans nesting, and smiling cyclists and I wonder what each of them might be carrying, mentally or physically.
I’m proud of myself for turning the pedals, for getting out there and doing something so completely out of my comfort zone. A friend said to me, “It’s a ride, not a race. Enjoy it.” And I did. I’m cycling the 57 mile ride this year and I can’t wait to see familiar faces and meet news ones.
My Lovely Lungs
I write about my cancer experience on a platform called Substack. The creative connection with others is gratifying, humbling and beautiful. It heals me. I hope that my writing raises awareness about lung cancer, about all cancers. After all, one in two of us will be diagnosed in our lifetimes. I want to open the conversation, to speak up and voice the lived experience of people with lung cancer. I have an Instagram account too @mylovelylungs; it’s helped me find others in the cancer community and that connection helps minimise the loneliness of cancer.
Cancer shouldn’t be a taboo. People with cancer can and do live with va-va-voom whatever their diagnosis, stage or treatment status. We carry on with the beautiful business of living.
You can visit Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundations World Lung Cancer Day website here.
