A lung cancer survivor – who breathed second-hand smoke at home – urges smokers to quit to save their families and themselves
- Non-smoker Mei Lai (whose husband smokes) was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent an operation and gruelling chemotherapy
- Now she is training as a Hong Kong Cancer Fund volunteer, which helped her deal with the trauma of her diagnosis and treatment
For more than a decade, Mei Lai battled a chronic cough and sought treatment from Western and Chinese medicine experts. Yet the cough persisted – and eventually erupted into lung cancer.
An administrator at a private company in Hong Kong, Lai (who is not using her real name to protect her family’s privacy) had never smoked and considered herself in good health. Now in her 50s, she has been married for 28 years to a construction worker – who is a smoker. For years, she has asked him to quit. He has not. By telling her story, she hopes he and other smokers will reconsider their deadly habit.
In 2016, Lai coughed up blood at work, and visited a traditional Chinese medicine specialist. He was not alarmed by her condition, so she shrugged it off.
In 2017, a Western doctor ordered a CAT scan in light of her family history of lung cancer; her older sister and brother, non-smokers, had both had this disease in their 50s. But a 1cm long shadow on her lungs in the imaging did not prompt further investigation.
In 2018, still coughing, she sought another medical opinion. That led to a biopsy which revealed that Lai had stage-one lung cancer.
“I felt upset, but because I had some family history of cancer, I was kind of prepared for the news,” she said during a Zoom chat.
