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Lung CancerArrow
Aged 61-70
Interview LC42  

Interview LC42

Age at Interview: 67
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 66
Background: Buyer (retired), married, 3 children.
Brief outline:Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002, treated with radiotherapy from outside the chest to the lung in 2002, and then cryosurgery between May 2002 and May 2003 (died July 2003).


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Male
Although cryosurgery cannot cure him it had helped him to feel less wheezy.

 



How did the consultant explain to you how the cryosurgery actually works?

Yes indeed they use a tip which is in fact colder than liquid nitrogen and actually freezes the tumour which in fact will kill some of the cancerous cells. And in my case at the last, the fourth session I had they did explain that in fact it had been reduced by some fifty percent in size (laughs), of course being greedy I suggested if they kept going could they get rid of it?  But that wasn't something they would be drawn on and quite rightly so.

So the therapy really opens up some of the airways to make breathing easier?

It does, that's the whole purpose.

It has improved my health, I'm not as wheezy and I can do a bit more than I was doing before that. The difficulty is that with cryosurgery it seems to last for three or four months and then the condition starts to come back again and become a bit more wheezy. That, I think we discussed it with the consultant, could be outside influences, it could be pollen, it could be elements that I'm particularly allergic to. The consultant did tell me that after the fourth session of cryosurgery that he had actually shrunk the tumour by some fifty percent which was very good news and at the moment it's just ongoing. And I have just recently had my fifth sessions of cryosurgery and am waiting to go back to out-patients.
Karol Sikora - Lung cancer
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