LUNGevity Foundation recently announced that Nichelle Stigger, lung cancer survivor-advocate, has joined LUNGevity’s Board of Directors. Nichelle’s personal understanding of the challenges that lung cancer patients face will be invaluable on our Board of Directors, and her passion as an advocate for women of color will be instrumental to the Foundation in its work of changing outcomes for people with lung cancer.
We are so excited that Nichelle will be lending her voice to our organization. Learn more about our newest board member in the recent interview we conducted with her!
We look forward to working with Nichelle to achieve LUNGevity’s mission.
Tell me your lung cancer story.
I was 34-years-old in August 2016 when an X-ray in the ER showed a mass on my lung. I went to see a pulmonologist, who told it was unlikely to be anything serious as I was young and healthy. Despite this, I underwent a PET scan to determine if the mass the cancer; it came back negative. We decided to wait six months and scan again before we acted. Six months later, the scan showed the mass had grown 3 centimeters.
It was a troubling time to receive that kind of news. I was in the midst of motherhood; my young son has a severe bleeding disorder, and I was giving him medicine by infusion. I was also about to finish my master’s in education and become a teacher, a passion of mine. I needed to ensure I would be around to do these things.
I consulted with a surgeon in March 2017. He told me the only way to confirm if it was cancer or not was to perform surgery. I decided to move forward with the surgery to remove the mass; if it turned out to be cancer, he would also remove my lobe. I wanted to do whatever I needed to make sure they removed the entire mass, even if that meant losing my lobe.
After he saw the mass, my surgeon said he had never seen anything like it in his 30 years of surgery. He took as much of the mass as he could, but didn’t take the lobe. They didn’t have the technology to biopsy the mass in-house and had to send it to the Cleveland Clinic for analysis. Two weeks later, I found out I have a rare type of lung cancer found in 1% of patients called Mucinous Adenocarcinoma.
I had two lung surgeries and both my lower lobe and lymph nodes remove. On April 24, 2020, I will be cancer-free for three years. Right now, there is no targeted treatment for my cancer, meaning if the disease were to come back, I don’t have a lot of treatment options. I need to be proactive and in front of the crisis before it hits. I continue to stay active and engaged in lung cancer.
If you could give any advice or words of wisdom to a newly diagnosed patient, what would it be?
Trust your gut and ask as many questions as you can. Get connected to an organization, particularly one specific to your disease; talk to the real people who are actually experiencing the disease as this is who you’ll get the answers you’ll need.
For example, after my first surgery, I noticed I had a cough, and I thought it was because of my surgery. When I went to one of my meet-ups with other lung cancer patients, and I heard others coughing like me, I felt validated, like, ah, so this is normal. This feeling is important, and it’s why I recommend you find a space that you can feel validated in your experience.
What are your personal goals as part of the LUNGevity Board of Directors?
When I was diagnosed with lung cancer, my husband encouraged me to attend a cancer support group to connect with other cancer patients. There, I met another African American woman who had breast cancer for the third time. She was completely on her own fighting this disease and had little money to support herself. She had to take two buses and then walk to chemo, which sometimes made her late. The nurses and doctors would chew her out for it before even beginning the chemo. Meanwhile, I had a completely opposite experience. I had a loving and strong community, who sent me food and helped to take care of my family. I had a supportive church group. I had other mom friends who helped to pick up the slack. We should all have that kind of support. How do you survive stage IV cancer without it?
My goal is to speak as an African American woman experiencing cancer. I want to be the voice for others who can’t be at that table.
What impact do you hope to have on lung cancer?
My goal is for equitable treatment of people of color in lung cancer, and in cancer in general. Lung cancer patients are already an underserved population within the cancer community; lung cancer has more stigma and less funding than other cancers, making it the right community to push this goal forward.
I also hope to diminish the stigma of lung cancer. Right now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a lot of talk about lungs; I don’t think people understood how vital lungs are to your life. This virus, however, is really emphasizing this importance. I hope we can build on this to help people realize we are all human and nobody deserves lung cancer.
What gives you hope in lung cancer?
When I was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2016, there weren’t nearly as many treatment options that there are now. The advancements we’ve seen have been so impressive. It gives me hope that, five years from now, I will be alive and thriving.
The amount of community support also gives me so much hope. Lung cancer advocacy is still young, yet has a strong, supportive community already. We are so lucky to have this and to have organizations like LUNGevity who can help build this community.
Nichelle’s lung cancer journey began in 2016 when she was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer, Mucinous Adenocarcinoma, found in only 1% of cancer patients. After two surgeries, including the removal of her left lobe and lymph nodes, she has been cancer-free since 2017. She is an educator in Illinois and, in addition to her passion for equality in cancer care, is an advocate for equality in education.