HAMPTON ROADS, Va. — Cheryl White, of Gloucester, began smoking at 16 years old. Now, at 73 years old, White said the effects of smoking have caught up with her after all these years.
This coming February will be two years since White was diagnosed with lung cancer, found during a screening at Riverside Regional Medical Center, where White's daughter works as a lung cancer screening coordinator.
"She had encouraged her dad and I to get our our our scans for our lungs. Because we were both prior smokers. And so he went and he did well, and I went, and my first one turned out good," White said.
But a second test showed a small nodule, and that's when it all started.
White would undergo surgery and treatments, some of which had to be aborted to health complications.
"The last treatment I had was in March, I believe, and ended up with the radiation pneumonitis and got very sick with that and ended up having to go back to a pulmonologist, went on prednisone for over two months, because they just couldn't talk or I had a hard time breathing," White said. "But once I got through that, they just felt like the advanced treatment wasn't going to be good for me. So they had to stop."
Now, White goes for CT scans every three months. The most recent one came back negative.
"Both my husband and I just hug each other and say, 'well, we did it for another three months.' That's how we we live now. It's every three months, wondering," White said. "I'm not ready to leave my grandchildren and my children yet."
Dr. Bruce with the American Cancer Society and Eastern Virginia Medical School said these scans and screenings are crucial to preventing cancer.
"The only way to screen effectively for lung cancer is by low dose CT screening," he said. "Low dose CT scanning done on an annual basis for smokers with a 20 pack year history, which means one pack a day for 20 years, or the average of two packs a day for 10 years, and smokers age 52 to 80 has been found to show about a 25% decrease in lung cancer fatality."
It's why the American Cancer Society recently changed its recommendations about who should get screened.
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White said she's familiar with the negative impacts of smoking can have on a family. She recently lost her sister, who also smoked, to lung cancer.
"I couldn't go through what she went through," White said. "So I don't know what more to say other than every three months, I hold my breath and I pray, you know, that the scans turn out okay."
White said it all makes her rethink her decision to start smoking decades ago.
"None of this was known at that time, nobody knew that cancer was going to kill you or anything like that. And I smoked with my children car. I smoked, holding my children," White said. "So I have that fear, too, that you know, someday it may affect them and I would have done it to them."
Here's her message to smokers:
"Stop now while you've got a chance and keep getting checked," she said. "Don't do it. It's not worth it."
