Andrew McPherson survived Stage 2A lung cancer | broncoscopy | adenosquamos carcinoma
- Bruce Morton
- Oct 26, 2023
- 18 min read
DESCRIPTION
On this episode of the @CancerInterviews podcast, host Bruce Morton will hear from Andrew McPherson about how he survived Stage 2A adenosquamos carcinoma, a form of lung cancer. After undergoing a left upper sleeve lobectomy via thorochotomy, in February 2017, Andrew was diagnosed at age 28. After painful surgery in the thoracic cavity and intense physical therapy, Andrew slowly worked his way toward survivorship. He has returned to his job, become an energetic advocate for those diagnosed with lung cancer, and he has returned to a place he loves to be: the golf course.
In the fall of 2015, Andrew McPherson of Woodbury, Minnesota began to cough frequently and he noticed there was blood in his phlegm. At the time he was attending a health care conference, and a friend who happened to be a former ICU nurse said he should get to the emergency room right away.
Over the course of the next 14 months, Andrew would continue to periodically cough up blood, and then every two or three months, he would get pneumonia. He finally decided to see a pulmonologist at the University of Minnesota to get a broncoscopy in November 2016. That led to a biopsy, and in January 2017, Andrew underwent a left upper sleeve lobectomy via thorochotomy. Doctors cut from the middle of his back to his rib cage. Then they spread his ribs and were able to remove the upper left portion of his left lung. Next, they reconnected his airway to the lower portion of his left lung. That’s when he got his cancer diagnosis and realized he had been walking around with lung cancer between September 2015 and February 2017.
For the first two or three days after surgery, Andrew said he was in a great deal of pain. He did praise his care team at the University of Minnesota for coming up with a medication cocktail and IV drips that made those difficult days less difficult. He also engaged in physical therapy, but said post-op, he was in the hospital for 12 days. Andrew said thanks to his clean margins, he did not have to experience chemotherapy or radiation.
When Andrew McPherson returned home, he was hooked up to a JP Drain. It went in his side and included a tube that ran to the base of his neck, intended to drain fluid from his thoracic cavity. He had to wear it for a little over two weeks and when doing so, said he felt awful. But he returned to the hospital, had the drain removed and said he started feeling normal again. He had planned a three-month leave from his job, but returned after just one month.
These days, Andrew gets winded a bit more quickly than pre-diagnosis, but he can go for a jog, and he can walk the 18 holes necessary to play a round of golf.
Additional Resources:
Support Groups:
A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation: https://www.abreathofhope.org
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Morton: With any form of cancer, early detection is so important. It was through early detection that our guest on this episode was able to get in front of lung cancer, not an easy thing to do. As a result, Andrew MacPherson of Woodbury, Minnesota is with us today as a survivor. Now it’s time to hear his story, so, here he is, and Andrew, welcome to the Cancer Interviews podcast.
Andrew McPherson: Thank you, Bruce, for having me, I appreciate it.
BM: You have a life that has nothing to do with cancer and we would like to hear about it as a means of getting to know you better. So, Andrew, tell us about where you are from, what you do for work and what you do for fun.
AM: I am from Woodbury, Minnesota as you mentioned. I grew up on the east side of the Twin Cities and have lived here my whole life. I am married with two beautiful children. I have a seven-year-old daughter and three-month-old son. I work for a lung cancer diagnostics company based out of Boulder, Colorado, and do a lot of travel work around the western half of the United States. When I am not working, which doesn’t seem to be much time anymore, I do a lot of volunteer and advocacy work within the lung cancer space. I sit on the boards of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota and the A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation. I like to spend time with my family, and I do like to play a lot of golf.
BM: Andrew, for us who have survived cancer there was a point in time when our physical health went from normal to abnormal and that touched off a chain of events that led to a cancer diagnosis. In your case, what happened?
AM: I can almost remember the exact date. It was probably in September of 2015. I specifically remember that I was at a health care conference here in Minnesota. We had just finished setting up our booth for the morning. I went to the restroom, and I started to develop a little cough, the cough produced some phlegm and when I went to spit it up, there a lot of blood in it. I remember thinking that was really strange, but at the time I was only 27 years old, so as a naïve and maybe a little ignorant 27-year-old, I didn’t think much of it, but I did happen mention this to somebody I was with at the conference that that had happened and she being a former ICU nurse said I needed to go to the emergency room right away. That was really what kicked off the chain of events that led to my diagnosis.
BM: And, if you would, tell us about the chain of events that led from that point to your diagnosis.
AM: I went to the University of Minnesota and its ER that day. They ran some blood tests and x-rays, and at the end of the day, they said I should follow up with my primary care physician. Over the years now and having gone through this and working with the lung cancer community, I see this so often now is that generally I think that the dynamic when somebody is referred to their primary care physician is one of thinking their situation just isn’t all that serious. I go to my primary care physician to get a flu shot, I go when I think I need a strep test. Those things to me I think are not that serious. I think that can be an interesting dynamic with patients that when something is found and they are referred to primary care or a family physician, they don’t think it is as serious as it might be. I think if somebody at that point would have referred me to a specialist, I might have been much more apt to go in and follow up. Long story short, once they did this, I did not follow up. I think I was actually taking my dad on a golf trip and so I didn’t end up following up, everything kind of cleared itself up and we didn’t have any problems, but over the course of the next 14 months, I would continue to periodically to cough up blood for usually a couple hours at a time and then once every two or three months, I was getting pneumonia. A lot. I would go in, either to urgent care or where ever, periodically, and they would just say I should follow up with my primary care physician, I didn’t deem it anything more serious than what it was. I just had pneumonia and didn’t do anything about it. Then in November of 2016, my daughter was born, and as luck would have it, the morning after she was born, a friend came to visit me who was a resident at the hospital at the University of Minnesota. I think about it often how lucky the timing of all this was, but that morning I happened to have a cough, which included some blood. My friend who was in the room saw it and wanted to know what that was all about. I explained to him what had been going on and he couldn’t believe I had done anything about it because it was really serious. I remember to this day he said it was pretty moronic that I hadn’t done anything about it, but the fact that I now have a child one room over, it’s bigger than you now, and that I had to take action. He really encouraged me to actually go in and see my primary care physician. When I did, she obviously saw what was going on and referred me to a pulmonologist at the University of Minnesota. At the time I was working in an adjacent medical device field, so I knew the entire team in the pulomonology group. I had actually had lunch with them the same day that I had my first consultation. They recommended that I come in and get a broncoscopy. When I went to schedule that, the scheduler said they could get me in in three weeks. My response was that that wasn’t soon enough, so I went back to the physicians with whom I had had lunch that day, and luckily one of them had time the following morning. This was like mid-to-late November 2016. I had to have a few different procedures because there was a lot of vascularity going on through my lung nodule, which is why it was bleeding a lot. It was difficult for them to get a vision of what they were biopsying. Then eventually, when they were able to determine at least that this was something that should be removed, I went and met with a thoracic surgeon and the thoracic surgeon said regardless of whether or not this is cancer, it has to come out. Here is how we plan on doing it. In January of 2017, I had a left upper sleeve lobectomy via thorochotomy. So, they cut from my rib cage to the middle of my back. Then they went in and spread my ribs and they were able to take the upper left portion of my left lung out and then they reconnected my airway to the lower portion of my left lung. It was only then that they were able to get a full pathology as to what was going on with my lung nodule. That’s when we found out it was a Stage 2A adenosquamos carcinoma. That would have been in February of 2017. So, from September of 2015 to February of 2017, I had cancer just laying dormant in my lung and really didn’t do anything about it.
BM: Were you then surprised to get your diagnosis? I ask because you sound like through your work at the time, you knew more about lung cancer than the average lay person. So, would you have been surprised to be diagnosed at age 27?
AM: I was 28 when I got diagnosed, then 29 when it was removed, so, actually I was 29 for both. It was a huge surprise to me. I have generally not been a huge over-thinker, so there never was a time until I was told this could potentially be lung cancer that I thought lung cancer was something possible for me. I never smoked, I lived a pretty healthy lifestyle and again, I was really, really young, so, it just never really occurred that could really be something that could happen to me at such a young age. The other half of the coin is that he mentioned I had been close with a lot of these physicians, I had been in their world, so to speak. I think that afforded me maybe some advantages over the average lung cancer patient in that I knew all the doctors, I felt comfortable with them doing my procedures, I could understand the language that they spoke when used some of the scientific and anatomical verbiage. A lot of it I felt comfortable with. Because lung cancer often goes undetected until late, there is always such a great amount of time that can occur in each patient’s journey from when they first cough blood or first have a sore neck or some of the symptoms that come along with having something going on in your lungs to when it is actually removed, and they’re treated. One of the things we work on in this world is trying to cut down that time. The longer that time goes, the longer each patient has to not only has some of those intrusive thoughts, but to also be bombarded by friends, family, relatives, everyone and their brother calling out what’s going on. I had people look up my surgeon when I told them who was doing it, and they said they didn’t see a whole lot of reviews for her, and maybe I should find another surgeon. For me, I never thought about a lot of those things because I felt so comfortable with the whole experience; but when people bring some of that stuff to your attention, it makes you wonder if you are doing the right thing. I stay up at night wondering if I was taking all this seriously enough. Anyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer, regardless of stage, probably at some point thinks, “Am I gonna die?” That is a real conversation that we all have with ourselves. For me, my daughter is a month old. Am I gonna see her grow up? How serious is this? While I fully respect that I was maybe experiencing this journey a little bit different than others, it was all new to me and there were a lot of points where I just kept wondering how did this happen to me?
BM: We’re confident you’ll be able to learn some tips and tools to help you through your personal cancer journey, but first we’d like to invite you to please give us a ‘like,’ leave a comment or review below and share this story with your friends. Kindly click on the Subscribe button and click on the ‘bell’ icon so you will be notified the next time we post an interview. And if you or a loved one are facing a cancer diagnosis, please click on the link in the Description and Show Notes below to check out our free guide, “The Top Ten Things I Wish I Knew When I First Got Cancer.”
Now, Andrew, let’s talk about when you first got cancer. You are dealing with the treatment and the regimen. Of that, when you look back, what was the toughest part?
AM: Any time you do a surgery in the thoracic cavity, there are a lot of nerves and so it is very painful. I specifically remember a few weeks prior to my surgery in January of 2017, I was meeting with a thoracic surgeon for work, and I had mentioned that I was going to be out of work for a little while because I am going through this, and I had to have surgery on my lung. I won’t use the exact words he said, but it was basically like, “Good luck.” He said he wasn’t going to sugarcoat it, but the procedure was going to be very painful. And it was. For the first two or three days after surgery, I was in a severe amount of pain. The nurses and staff that I had at University of Minnesota were fantastic and eventually we were able to come up with a cocktail of appropriate medications and IV drips and things to make me feel better for longer, but the first few days were really agonizing. So, one of the tips and tricks that a friend of mine that had also gone through lung cancer before me was take the medication instead of trying to tough it out because you are able to do so much more when you feel better. I was walking around my floor and they had me doing physical therapy every day and I was able to do that and improve so much faster when I felt better and I wasn’t feeling all that pain. It set up to get out of the hospital and be a little bit more self-sufficient when I was out, but I was in the hospital for almost 12 days.
BM: You had mentioned chemo. Was that part of your regimen?
AM: I was lucky enough not to have to go through chemo. My surgeon did a great job and she felt that like she got everything. The margins on the surgery were great, so we did not feel the need to do any type of chemotherapy or additional radiation, which was wonderful, so I was pretty lucky in that regard.
BM: Now, let’s talk a more pleasant aspect to all this. Can you recall a point in which you felt things trending toward survivorship?
AM: Yeah. It was in early 2017 when this all went down. I was in the hospital for almost 12 days and then was able to go home. When I was home, I was bedridden for a while. They sent me home with a JP Drain. It was a drain that went in my side, and they ran a tube to the base of where my neck is, and that was used to drain some of the fluid from my thoracic cavity. As long as that drain was in, I think I had it for another two to two-and-a-half weeks into the middle of February 2017. As long as that drain was in, I felt pretty crappy. I was pretty much laid up in bed. I remember we had bought a Sleep Number bed that I could raise and lower because that was how I would get out of bed, but until early February, I did not get out of bed very often and I specifically remember the day I finally begged and may have even cheated a little bit. You had to have a certain number of days when the fluid was below a level in order to be able to get that drain out. I think one day when people weren’t looking, I dumped a little bit out to get to that three-day-in-a-row threshold. I remember going back to the University of Minnesota, they removed it, and it was almost immediately that I felt like I could start living again. I think within that week, early February, I actually booked a trip for myself, and I traveled from Minnesota to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to see a basketball game. It was about at that time that I started to feel closer to myself and I really started getting into stuff that required a bit more physicality, not lifting weights, but I was trying to stretch and getting a lot of movement. I think I had originally planned a three-month medical leave from work, and I was able to go back to work just over a month early. I was excited to get back to work, so I was really at about that point when my last drain came out that I started to feel back to normal and within a month I was able to go back to work, and really since that point have lived as normal of a life as I think you could after having gone through something like this. I have half of my left lung. If I am walking through the airport trying to talk on the phone while I am walking, my breathing became a bit heavier. I don’t like walking up stairs, but I still do all of things that I was able to do before. I try to run three or four days a week, so I live a pretty normal life now.
BM: Andrew, I think in large part you have answered the following question in an indirect sort of way, but I want to ask for a direct response. You had mentioned that your procedure included your left lung being attached to your airway. If pre-diagnosis, your airway could be thought of as 100 percent, how would categorize it now?
AM: At this point, because your lung is a muscle, I have been able to almost get back to the same capacity. Maybe I am back to somewhere between 90 and 95 percent right now. I get winded sooner than other people. If we were out for a jog, I would get more winded. My heart rate would increase a little bit faster than most, but it does really affect my endurance or anything like that; so I can do the same things. I just have to work a smidge amount harder in order to do that now.
BM: And you can do all the walking that is involved in playing 18 holes, yes?
AM: Yes, I can. I took a trip with some of my good friends a few weeks ago, and we walked 18 holes a day for four days.
BM: Next, I want to talk about an organization that you referenced at the very beginning of our interview because I would like for people, especially those who have been diagnosed with lung cancer to hear a bit more about it, and that is the A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation, which is located in the Twin Cities region. If you would, tell viewers and listeners about A Breath of Hope, what it does and how it can help others.
AM: A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation was founded by several survivors and caregivers for those who had lung cancer. It is now one of the larger lung cancer-only foundations that we have in the United States. We have an executive board comprised of folks in the science community, other advocates and former caregivers, survivors and we really have based the work on three pillars. One is patient programming and support. We do a lot of work with the Twin Cities community. It is part of our work to make Minnesota one of the best places in which to get lung cancer. We want people in our community to be taken care when they are diagnosed with lung cancer, so our patient programming is something we focus on. Our advocacy is something that is one of our three pillars. To be quite honest, and I am sure you have had other guests that have talked about this, but lung cancer certainly has a stigma around it when it comes to those who are diagnosed, which a lot of people think that you did it to yourself. If you look at statistics now, it is about to the point in which one out of every five patients who are diagnosed with lung cancer have never smoked. There is a large population of people who are being diagnosed with lung cancer who didn’t do it to themselves. Lung cancer is the number one killer out of every cancer in the world and particularly in the United States. More often than not the disease is detected too late. The overall survival rate of lung cancer right now across all stages is about 23 percent, which is completely unacceptable when you think of the overall survival rates of other cancers. I think breast cancer is somewhere in the high 80s to low 90s survival rate across all stages; so, to me that’s a public health issue. If you have something that is as deadly as it is, we don’t often detect it until it is most deadly and most people think that you end up doing it to yourself, so a lot of people don’t support causes that involve lung cancer that’s created the perfect storm that we are experiencing today, so, we go out into our communities and advocate for better screening guidelines. We advocate in the Native American community and African American community, where lung cancer is just a little bit more prevalent. Generally, they don’t have access to the same type of treatments. Then the last pillar is our research. We are able to give out pretty sizeable research grants every single year to generally young researchers in lung cancer who are doing really groundbreaking and amazing things. We have several oncologists that are on our executive board. One of them tells a story fairly often of 15 years ago when he was treating lung cancer and that was his specialty, he called it the most hopeless job you could have because there was nothing we could do other than give surgery or chemotherapy to a patient. Fifteen years later, as I mentioned, are we where we would like to be? No, but the advancement that we have made not only in treating lung cancer but diagnosing it sooner, we have made leaps and bounds. So, I am really excited being in this community to see where we wind up ten years from now. I do see at some point in our lifetime really being able to turn the tide on lung cancer, and a lot of that will come through treatment, but a lot will come through, as you mentioned, early detection.
BM: And that’s very exciting to think about where you are today, but where the entire battle against lung cancer could be ten years from now. I want to wrap up, Andrew, but there are people who can benefit from what A Breath of Hope does, even if they don’t live in and around the Twin Cities. There is lots of good information on the Breath of Hope website, which can be found at www.abreathofhope.org.
AM: The other great thing that A Breath of Hope has done along the lines of early detection is that we have created a website called www.youandlungcancer.com. We have seen global interest from this site. We have patients from 120 countries visit. What You and Lung Cancer does is, it explains in lay terms, what you are going through. You have a lung nodule. What does that mean? Your doctor wants to take a biopsy. What does that entail? You have been diagnosed with lung cancer. What does the surgery look like? What does chemotherapy look like? We walk patients through each of those scenarios in short, very easy to understand videos, and I have had people that I work with at my organization have sent me these videos for training purposes for sales consultants at our company. That’s one place where patients can go. That’s www.youandlungcancer.com. It is a great resource for anybody with lung cancer questions, whether you are a patient, family, caregiver, whatever.
BM: Excellent, Andrew. Thanks so much. We really appreciate your story and especially where lung cancer is concerned, a story of early detection is an uplifting story for anyone who has been diagnosed with this, and it lets them know that lung cancer can be beaten, and that one can survive. Andrew McPherson, thank you for being with us on the Cancer Interview podcast.
AM: Thanks very much for having me, Bruce. I appreciate it. Thanks for doing this for the community at large. It’s really helpful.
BM: Thank you so much, and we want to remind you that if you or a loved one are on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are people like Andrew, organizations like A Breath of Hope that are there to make your cancer journey a bit easier. So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.
Additional Resources:
Support Group:
A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation:
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Andrew McPherson, Lung Cancer Survivor – Woodbury, Minnesota, USA
When Andrew McPherson, in his late twenties, saw blood in his phlegm when he coughed, he thought it was no big deal; but a friend encouraged him to get his cough checked out by a doctor. A series of tests revealed a Stage 2A cancerous nodule in his left lung. Even though he was able to avoid chemotherapy, phases of his treatment regimen following a sleeve lobectomy were quite painful. Nonetheless, thanks to early detection, Andrew survived, has returned to his job, has returned to the golf course and is a vigorous advocate for others diagnosed with lung cancer.
Additional Resources:
A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation:
Time Stamps:
02:45 Andrew noticed blood in his phlegm when he coughed.
07:27 His primary care doctor referred him to a pulmonologist.
09:15 Describes the procedure aimed at removing the cancerous nodule in his left lung.
15:28 Andrew names the toughest part of his treatment regimen.
17:20 Says if during treatment, pain medications are prescribed, take your meds.
20:35 Andrew recalls when his cancer journey started changing for the better
23:00 Assess the state of his airway, which was reattached to his left lung after part of the lung was removed.
KEYWORDS (tags):
cancer
pulmonologist
bruce morton
broncoscopy
lung nodule thoracotomy
cancer interviews
andrew mcpherson
thoracic surgeon
jim foster
left upper lobe thoracotomy sleeve lobectomy
cancer survivor
adenosquamous carcinoma
lung cancer
thoracic cavity
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