Annual Low Dose CT Scan May Have Saved My Husband

My husband, Rick Faust, was a Vietnam veteran, a retired prison assistant deputy warden, a boat mechanic, an avid sportsman, and a dedicated family man.   His only recognized health problem over the past five years was a tick bite, which hospitalized him for four days over Thanksgiving 2021.  At that time, I told the doctors he had lost twenty pounds from his lean 175 lb. 6.1 foot frame, so they took a CT and assigned him a cancer doctor. Nothing was evident on the CT, but for the next two years he saw the cancer doctor faithfully. Another CT scan was never ordered.  He maintained his weight at 154 lbs. and was told he couldn't have cancer, because he wouldn't be able to maintain his weight if he did.  On his April 2023 visit, his cancer doctor told him again that without other symptoms, except a high D Dimer test that stayed stubbornly high since the tick bite, it couldn't be cancer.  

Toward the end of his summer golf season in 2023, he started to complain of a sore shoulder.  He completed the season successfully, finishing well in two weekend tournaments in September.  I was increasingly worried about him because he lost another twenty pounds last summer, but his general doctor told us confidently that as soon as he had his neck operated on, his appetite would return and he would put his weight back on.  He was 135 pounds, but again, no CT was ordered.

On October 4, 2023, the neurosurgeon who was about to operate on his neck insisted on taking an MRI of his shoulder because he felt the shoulder pain was too severe to be coming from his neck issues.  He was the first and only doctor in two years to look at the whole man and see that something else must be going on.  The MRI revealed a major mass in his shoulder, which was identified as metastasized cancer.  Two CTs later, he was diagnosed with Stage IV adenocarcinoma with masses also in his chest, adrenal glands, and femur and we were sent back to the cancer doctor.  His prognosis was 11 months to 5 years, with treatment.  He lived 132 days.

If the Preventative CT Screening test had been administered to him annually since his first hospitalization in 2021, they surely would have given him the low dose CT test annually and identified the masses before they were the size of tangerines.  He lost his entire shoulder by November and his femur bone by February.  He was in incredible pain that radiation could not control and was heavily drugged through most of his remaining time on earth.

If we had known that Preventative CTs were a possibility, we would have found a doctor willing to sign an order or we would have paid for the CT ourselves.  I spent three years trying to get him to eat more food in the hope that he would put some weight back on his too-thin frame.  I cried and thanked the neurosurgeon who finally ran enough tests to tell us what was going on, but it was too late for my husband.  Had we known sooner, he might have had a fighting chance.  Without those tests, I could not get anyone to see the skeleton he was becoming and try to discover why.  Yes, he was a former smoker.  Yes, he was in Vietnam hauling Agent Orange in his tractor trailer for two years.  Yes, he would have met the qualifications for a low dose CT.  Not one doctor would order the test.  

This is why I want to help promote Go2.org.  This is what is needed, especially in rural America where the doctors aren't willing to order "unnecessary tests".  This is exactly what we needed to have three years ago when our nightmare started.  Then maybe it would have ended differently.

Thank you for your support - Deb Faust

GO2 for Lung Cancer is a place where everyone impacted by lung cancer finds personalized care, powerful connections and purposeful collaboration—uniting around shared goals to empower people, increase survival, drive innovative research and transform the future of lung cancer.

The funds we collect will advance their mission to increase survivorship by improving the lives of those vulnerable, at risk, and diagnosed with lung cancer.