In honor of #LungCancerAwareness month, we’re shining a spotlight on Julie, a Knoxville resident, podiatrist, avid runner, and lung cancer survivor. Julie’s cancer journey began with a CT scan in October 2021, and it was soon confirmed that the spot found on her lung was cancerous. She and her family traveled to Hawaii for New Year’s Eve, and she feared that it might be her last.
In the new year, Julie received heartening news that that the cancer was stage I and had not spread to her lymph nodes. This qualified her for video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) – a minimally invasive surgery that uses small incisions and instruments to perform operations inside the chest.
“My friends said ‘Go to Johns Hopkins, go to Vanderbilt,’ and I thought, ‘We live here. I can’t just go flying all over the country,” Julie said. She checked out Dr. Sean Jordan at UT Medical Center and found that everyone she talked to said he was fantastic. “He was confident and allowed me to come back and ask more questions,” she said. “I placed my faith in him.”
In February 2022, Dr. Jordan removed the entire lower lobe of her right lung. Since VATS leads to much less pain and a faster recovery than open lung surgery, Julie quickly set her sights on running again. While still in the hospital, she went on a walk around her floor with a walker. The next day, after a physical therapist told her that 14 laps around the floor equals a mile, she completed 14 laps.
Impressively, 53 days after the surgery, she ran the Oak Barrel half-marathon in Lynchburg, TN – with a finishing time only about 10 minutes slower than the race she completed 11 weeks earlier. In October 2022, Julie completed the London Marathon, a dream since she started running nearly 20 years ago. In honor of the occasion, she got temporary tattoos on both of her forearms, dedicating every mile to someone in her life – including her husband, friends, Dr. Jordan, and others that she knows who are experiencing health issues. “It pushed me through,” she said. “I would look down at my arms, and I knew I could do this.”
Julie says that she is thankful that she has a journey left to live. “I’m grateful to be living in this time, when a procedure like this is available to me. I’m grateful that I had part of a lung removed in two days, took two weeks off, and then went back to work,” she said. “I’m grateful for the doctors, nurses, and CRNAs. Thank goodness UT Medical Center is 20 minutes from my home. I received phenomenal care.”