It started as a bedtime cough.
But, as time went on, Jaymie Knox's pesky cough just wouldn't go away. She thought, perhaps she had bronchitis. One doctor told her it was probably asthma. Or maybe allergies. He gave her an inhaler, but it didn't help much.
That's because Knox didn't have asthma or allergies or bronchitis. Eventually she learned the truth: She had stage 4 lung cancer, a diagnosis that stunned the then-32-year-old newlywed, who kickboxed regularly and had never smoked a cigarette.
"I remember I was sitting in the room, and he walked in and, like, all the blood had drained from his face. He just looked so pale," Knox says of the doctor who delivered her X-ray results. "He was like, 'Yeah, we got your X-ray results back. And your entire left lung is either covered in fluid or a mass. ... We need to admit you to the hospital right now.' "
Despite being one of the most common cancers in the United States, lung cancer remains shrouded in stigma and misinformation. Many believe that, if you don't smoke cigarettes, you're not at risk for it. In reality, about 10-20% of lung cancer patients in the U.S. have either never smoked or smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And non-smokers are making up a greater share of lung cancer cases as smoking rates decline.
