November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month.

Of all cancers, lung cancer is the most deadly.

But advances in surgery and medical treatments are improving survival rates even.

And those diagnosed with advanced lung cancer like Scott kind of Lexington.

We spoke with him and Dr. Timothy Mullet of the UK Mark Cancer Center about living longer with the disease.

That story in today's medical news.

So cancer diagnosis is a is a hard thing for us to talk to patients about because there's a lot of uncertainty, especially early on.

I may see a patient when they're just being discovered to have something wrong in their lung.

And then we're looking at that and trying to sort out what stage this is and trying to determine what the best recommendation for treatment is going to be.

We're trying to get that message out that this is a message of hope, not a message of a terminal disease.

I was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2014.

Initially, I had the right upper part of my lung removed from.

I have cigaret smoking habit about a year and a half later, give or take.

It had spread to my bones.

Honestly, for myself, I didn't give it a lot of thought because I still had the feeling that I still had things I wanted to do and see.

I have had a total of 30 rounds of radiation altogether.

I've had 39 infusions of immunotherapy, which at which time I believe it was around mid 2019 I went into remission and then they said I was currently in need.

No evidence of disease.

To a lung cancer, like many cancers, has been influenced by understanding more of the genomic or the genetic basis for their disease.

And so that allows us to develop some targeted treatments.

If we understand some of the what are called biomarkers, some of the specific features of an individual's cancer, and that allows us to get much more precise with the kind of therapy that we can deliver.

Medical research and advances have come such a long way over the years, myself, contributing my life survival to medical research that has come so far.

I can describe my experiences as as exploring unchartered waters because that's kind of where I'm at.

I think the important thing is that for most people there are treatments that are available for lung cancer today that are going to extend their life and they are much less toxic than they were in the years past.

And so we're able to offer treatment to more people and we're able to offer curative treatment for some people or have an earlier stage of this disease.

And even in late stage, we're seeing patients that are living longer, much longer than what we have seen in the past.

You know, it gives you more time and, you know, to kind of live life and share your experiences and and offer hope to the communities.

Because at first I didn't I couldn't find anything on support on lung cancer.

And that's also where stage is partially came from.

Stages, lung cancer support community.

We have about 162 members.

We do have a virtual platform that meets monthly.

I really see this as a time that is very different than what I saw 15 years ago, which was we were very fortunate to find somebody with an early stage disease and we didn't really have a lot of options for patients with late stage disease.

Now we're finding more patients with early stage disease because of screening, and we're more effectively treating those patients with late stage disease because of advances in our medicine.

And so it's a time of hope.

It's a time to understand that.

And going forward, we're going to see a very different disease.

If someone gets a diagnosis, too.

You know, there is hope out there.

In July, Governor Andy Beshear signed a bill establishing the lung cancer Screening Advisory Committee.

Dr. Malet and Scott Kindred both serve on that committee, which is focused on significantly increasing the number of lung cancer screenings in Kentucky.

You can learn more about lung health in Kentucky by checking out Katie's three part series called Fighting to Breathe.

You can view that online on demand at dot org.

Slash health.