Jim Page of Cherry Lane is battling lung cancer. He was diagnosed with the disease on May 4, 2006.

Local man details his battle with cancer

With little more than a sentence, Cherry Lane resident Jim Page's life was sent spiraling out of control.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Page, but you have non small cell lung cancer," said the doctor matter-of-factly over the telephone.

"Most likely it is advanced and in either stage three or four." The date was May 4, 2006; just about six days after Page had the first inkling that he might have a health problem.

"I had done a lot of yard mowing and leaf mulching the weekend before and I found it hard to get out of bed from that Sunday night until Thursday morning," Page recalled. "My voice has become very hoarse and I could only talk at a whisper. I thought I had come down with a bug that was working its way through the community."

Page went to his doctor in Elkin around noon that Thursday. "The doctor examined me, ordered blood work and referred me to Hugh Chatham (Memorial Hospital) to have a chest X-Ray taken."

After having the X-Ray taken, Page headed back to Alleghany with a prescription in hand, thinking he probably had a 'bug' as he had thought earlier. "Little did I know that a message would be waiting at home on my answering machine that would forever change my life," he said. The message was requesting that Page return to the doctor's office in Elkin. When Page called to see what was going on, he was told the doctor wanted to see him about the tests that had been done. Page called his wife Pat and asked her to drive him back to Elkin to the doctor's office for support.

"We arrived back at the doctor's office and were quickly ushered back to see the doctors," said Page. His white blood cell count was up, which triggered the doctor's request for another battery of tests. The X-Ray showed something suspicious in the left upper lobe of his lung. A CT (computerized tomography) scan, which shows the body in more detail, was planned for the following day.

After the scan, Page said he drove to a fast food restaurant with his wife, sister and niece, the latter two of whom had come up from Walkertown for support. "I don't remember much about the meal," Page said. "The coffee was OK and I remember it was a fairly nice end of April day."

Page then returned to the doctor around noon and was told that the suspicion from the X-Ray actually was a 'suspicious pulmonary neoplasm' in his left lung and that he had a lot of lymph node activity in the center of his chest. "I've always asked doctors to be up front with me and he told me this could be one of several medical conditions, however, to prepare myself for the worst case scenario: lung cancer," Page said.

He was sent to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center for a bronchoscopy to definitely identify the problem. While the procedure wasn't painful, it was very uncomfortable, said Page. "I had been coughing a lot prior to the procedure.

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