Sidebar: A friend faced similar concerns

One local woman feels a certain affinity with Pope Leo XIV.

Karen Hardwick of Charlotte had the same surgery on May 6. Karen is a dear friend from Lutheridge. We were campers together and have since reconnected as adult volunteers each summer.

Before her 60th birthday this year, Karen had to undergo a required physical with her primary care physician to go on Medicare. A fall which ultimately ended her career as a flight attendant with American Airlines occurred in 2019.

Karen’s cholesterol was a bit high — 222 — but she didn’t think much of it, she said.

“My doctor actually called me,” Karen said. “My heart was fine, but the CT scan revealed a spot on my lung.”

Karen needed a PET scan and waited. And waited.

Finally, her physician put on the order, “She may lung cancer. She needs a scan STAT.”

The scan revealed a 13.1 mm nodule. At that point, she was referred to a pulmonologist. Anything over 8 mm warrants a biopsy, so Karen advocated for a bronchoscopy at Presbyterian Main. She hadn’t eaten for two days beforehand, and threw up all the way to the hospital. She takes a GL-P, which caused the nausea.

She decided to pull herself together because, she said, “I wasn’t going again.”

The pulmonologist took three samples, one of which revealed cancer.

Karen then saw an oncologist and a thoracic surgeon. Karen described her procedure as “cut and done.”

Because her tumor would not have responded to chemo or radiation, surgery was the only option, she said, “the gold standard.”

However, she said, “Surgery was really, really hard. I had nerve ablations in the ribs to help with pain management. I know pain through my knee surgeries, but this was way, way different.”

She had pain when she sneezed or coughed. She had four incisions on her right trunk, then one underneath the rib cage. Surgeons navigated through the incisions with the robotic arms using the VATS (Video Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery) procedure, then shrink-wrapped the lower right lobe and removed it, Karen explained.

Her pathology report brought good news.

“I feel lucky because I was stage 1A2,” she said. “But I pushed my pulmonologist to do the biopsy. I’m a non-smoker and I’m not overweight. I only had high cholesterol.”

A report Thursday from her oncologist brought more good news. Karen will have follow-up scans each year. The carcinoid tumor has a 2 percent chance of recurrence at 10 years.

“I feel very blessed,” she said. “It’s been a humbling journey.”

She added, “I hope the pope’s journey will show others that even the highest of people still need help.”