Sydney's hope

Sydney lives in Maryland with her husband and dog. She enjoys staying active, and works as an internal medicine physician in the oncology ward of her hospital.

Sydney was diagnosed with Stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer when she was 33 years old. Bronchoscopy and biopsies revealed a genetic mutation.

In Sydney’s words

There’s a need for lung cancer screening.

You have screening for breast cancer, you have screening for colon cancer, for prostate cancer. For lung cancer, you end up having a lot of patients that are misdiagnosed. There's specific criteria that someone like I (young, in their early 30s) would never hit. 

If you have lungs, you are at risk for lung cancer.

There’s a lot to be done when it comes to stigma. A lot needs to be done to inform people that just because someone is a smoker doesn’t mean that they are the only ones at risk to get lung cancer. 

Persevere is my word through this entire journey.

When I was diagnosed, I would have loved to know that I would achieve all the goals that I set out to do.

Try to keep as true to yourself as possible.

If going in your garden makes you feel happy, go in your garden. If visiting family and friends makes you feel happy, then go and visit family and friends.

I’ve now diagnosed many lung cancers.

I’m an internal medicine physician that works in a hospital. For some patients I know are struggling, I do tell them about my diagnosis. People feel like they’re alone, and that’s one of the things that we would want people to know . . . that they’re not alone.