Thursday 1 August was International Lung Cancer Day.

As part of this day I was asked a couple of weeks ago to make a video for a marketing campaign that Lung Foundation Australia was doing. I was one of 12 people living with Lung Cancer and asking Australian Federal Politicians for these key things:

• Fund 25 lung cancer specialist nurses to work within multi-disciplinary teams (currently around 17 nationally shared with approx 12,741 new people each year);
• Fund greater lung cancer specific medical research;
• Fund better access to treatment and medications; and
• Fund a national lung cancer screening pilot program.

The launch went well. Some Federal Ministers coming down including the Health Minister (Hon Greg Hunt MP) and Shadow Health Minister (Hon Chris Bowen MP) to name a couple, for the launch. I had a chat to a few to tell them my story and point out the difference in my experience of the support from nurses when comparing my prostate cancer to lung cancer.

In short, a prostate nurse contacted me and gave me great support but when I was diagnosed with lung cancer I had to find the lung cancer nurse (not their fault) . The reason is there are so few lung cancer nurses despite it being the worst survival rates for any cancer (my personal survival stats are different as I have a ALK+ before people freak out, but for lots with lung cancer they have a survival rate of 17% past 5 years – not great when compared to prostate cancer of 92% yet less nurses per new cases).

Website Links

Lung Foundation website

The campaign page is here

The finished video

Footnote: This blog is written a week post the event as I arrived back from Canberra and was dealing with a nasty flu/cold that I picked up and needed to get on top before my surgery was due – so now I am writing this from my hospital bed a day after surgery. Next post about my surgery ;-).