As a non-smoker, she was completely shocked.
At the walk-in clinic, Nerstad was told she might have a collapsed lung and needed to go to an emergency room right away. In the ER, doctors determined she had fluid on her left side, but “we had to figure out why,” Nerstad says. After a number of tests over four days in the hospital, she was discharged. “They told me they thought I hadHearing the word “cancer” was understandably upsetting. “We left with more questions than answers,” Nerstad says.
He wanted to run genetic testing, something he felt could be a “game changer,” Nerstad remembers. It would take 10 to 14 days to get the results back, he warned her—which could possibly be all she had left to live, she recalled her surgeon telling her. But it could shift her treatment plan and prognosis entirely.
She started a personalized treatment plan taking alectinib, a twice-daily oral targeted therapy that prevents the cancer from spreading. That was two years ago. “It’s keeping me alive,” says Nerstad, now 41, with awe in her voice. “My two weeks to nine months have turned into over two years, and I’m doing great.”The side effects include foot and muscle pain that usually goes away "pretty quickly once I get up and moving," fatigue, and sun sensitivity. But they're minimal.
Her daughters have taken up the charge alongside her. Every year, they’d make a bucket list of activities to do over the summer. A lemonade stand got on the list after Nerstad was diagnosed, and one of her daughters, just 7 at the time, suggested the proceeds go to a worthy cause. “I’m thinking she’s going to say an animal shelter, but instead she was like, ‘What about lung cancer?’”
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