May O. is a 40-year-old warrior, wife, and mother thriving with metastatic lung cancer in Houston, TX. She has a positive outlook on her situation and views it as a blessing. She loves spending time with her husband, Darren, and her 3-year-old daughter, Mia. She loves gardening, cooking, baking, and traveling with her family. Her daily mantra is to “keep your mind where your feet are.” She lives in so much gratitude that it leaves little room for any anxiety that cancer may bring. She thanks God for all her strength and perseverance.

My diagnosis 

Getting diagnosed with lung cancer was a long process for me. Throughout my pregnancy in 2020, I was coughing relentlessly and throwing up repeatedly. It felt different than morning sickness. However, the coughing went away after giving birth to my daughter, so I didn’t think much more of it.

When she was about 7 months old, we put her in daycare and I immediately got sick, and then I kept getting sick over and over again. As a new parent with a kid in daycare, you expect that you’ll get sick a lot, so I didn’t think much of this either. However, when my husband got sick, he would get better again. When I got sick, I’d be sick for weeks. I’d finally feel a little better and then immediately get sick again.

In January 2022, the cough I experienced during my pregnancy returned. If I leaned back to a certain angle when I was rocking my daughter, I would start to cough. We had had a mold problem in the house before that, so I thought, “Maybe there’s mold in her room.” I also developed a bad pain in my back, but I thought I was coughing so hard that I broke something. I was willing to think anything to excuse the symptoms I had.

In March of 2022, I got the flu, and the pain in my back got even worse. I found a doctor who was taking on new patients. I asked for an X-ray and to have her listen to my lungs. My lungs were clear, but the X-ray showed a 6 cm mass in my lung. The doctor explained that it could be cancer, or it could be an infection, and she sent me to get a CT scan.

I had no known risk factors for cancer, so I was shocked when the CT confirmed that it was a solid mass. I was sent to a pulmonologist after that who was just as doubtful as me. He said that because I didn’t have any family history of cancer, and because I was young and relatively healthy, that we could wait a few months and revisit it. I was so worried about cancer, though, that I scheduled a biopsy as soon as possible, which ended up confirming that it was lung cancer.

Treatment and surgeries 

My biopsy was followed by a PET scan, an MRI, and pulmonary function tests, all of which confirmed that my cancer was localized except for one lymph node that needed to be biopsied, too. I started chemotherapy and immunotherapy in June of 2022 to shrink the tumors from my pleural lining before they operated to remove it. Three months later, when my tumors were operable, I had a successful lobectomy. I recovered quickly.

In June of 2023, however, I started feeling something in my leg that reminded me of sciatic nerve pain. When you have cancer, you fear that anything and everything could be something bad, so I asked my oncologist for a bone scan, which showed something in my left femur. It was confirmed to be cancer, and I had radiation to treat it.

In January of this year, the cancer came back in that same femur, which meant it might be resistant to radiation. Because of this, I had surgery in March 2024 to remove the cancer and put in a femoral nail. Unfortunately, just last month, in September of 2024, the cancer progressed again, this time in my left hip/gluteus muscle. I started chemotherapy immediately. Although this has been a scary and sad development, and I have certainly been experiencing grief, I am also excited for my treatment and healing process.

My ever-growing faith

During my diagnosis and then treatment, I kept experiencing what seemed like magical coincidences that helped me feel like I was on the right path and that I was being well taken care of by a power stronger than me or my doctors. I wasn’t a Christian at the time of my diagnosis, but as soon as I heard the word “cancer” for the first time, it was like hands were placed on me, telling me to brace myself and that I would be cared for. It quickly became impossible to believe that all the coincidences were just good luck. I knew something bigger was working on me, and I became open to discovering faith and its new role in my life.

I experienced a lot of scanxiety at first. When you know that your cancer may recur, the further you are from your initial diagnosis, it’s almost like the closer you are to your next one. With my 2nd follow-up scan, I was up late the night before scrolling on the internet and I happened upon my horoscope. It read, “Be mindful not to project a previous experience’s fear into your present moment. Just because something turned out one way before doesn’t mean it will again. Your vibrations and consciousness are at a higher level, and you are attracting new higher vibrating experiences to you. You have a lot to look forward to.” I immediately started crying and said to my husband, “I think Jesus is trying to talk to me. I’m going to be okay.” And that night, it all clicked for me. It made me a believer and I decided to put my faith and trust in God for the future.

My faith takes the burden off me and the medical providers because I know I am in God’s hands. I often hear people – even other people living with lung cancer – say that I am a breath of fresh air because I don’t seem to worry like everyone else. And it’s not that the worry isn’t there, it’s just that I have accepted that I am a passenger on God’s train. Knowing this is so freeing. I accept whatever His will is, and I know that some good will come from all of this.

My faith has also taught me gratitude. I’ve learned that being thankful is an art and a muscle. You have to practice it as a habit in your life. Yes, I have cancer, but I have stability too. I have a great family. I have running water. I get to stay up late watching Korean soap operas when I want to. I have all these things that people who aren’t living with cancer are still desperate for. I have endless things to be grateful for. And I have found that as soon as you start looking for things to give thanks for, you’ll find them everywhere.

I was baptized in August of last year, and joining the faith has also helped me because I know that living with lung cancer is not my forever. I believe in a world outside of this one and that – when it’s my time – my belief in God will take me there.

Hope for the future 

I believe strongly in my care team and advancements in lung cancer treatment. These things have given me hope that I will be here as long as possible. Being diagnosed with cancer is a shock for anybody, especially when it’s lung cancer. Sometimes people will say to me, “You can do it! You can beat it!” but I know that lung cancer is different. We’re not quite where they are with breast cancer or prostate cancer. The mortality rate for lung cancer is frightening. But the progress being made in treating this disease gives me hope that we might get there, and we might even get there soon.

Another thing that has recently brought me hope has been connecting with others who have had similar experiences to mine. Just this past month, God guided me to meet another lung cancer survivor who has the same oncogene mutation and PDL1 presentation as me. She is almost 10 years cancer-free and received the same chemo and immunotherapy as I am on now. This has given me a vision for my future, and I’m so grateful for our connection.

The main thing I hope for, like everyone living with cancer, is more time. I want time to be with my daughter and our family, and to watch her grow up and get to know her. She’s only 3, and I want so much more time with her. But as much as I want to be here forever, I know that even forever ultimately wouldn’t feel like enough, so I try to have gratitude for the time that I do have, enjoy it as much as I can, and make sure that I’m living out my purpose. For me, that purpose is to show my daughter how to move with faith and grace through very painful circumstances. Even when I do have bad days, I think, “Why am I going to be in some kind of depressive funk when I’ve got this great kid to play with?”

Are you, like May, interested in connecting with someone else experiencing lung cancer? Our Phone Buddy program may be right for you. Learn more.