Lung cancer survivor warns of misconceptions about the disease which could prevent early diagnosis

A Cheshire man who underwent life-saving surgery for lung cancer is warning of the dangerous stereotypes that could be preventing people from getting an early diagnosis.

Dave Marcus from Knutsford admits that he never considered himself at risk of lung cancer, because he'd never smoked.

Now, as part of Lung Cancer Awareness Month, he's joining up with Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation on the 'Be Unforgettable' campaign, to challenge the misconceptions around the disease.

Dave said: "I had nothing more innocuous than a cough which wouldn't go away. At the same time, my partner was having chemotherapy for colon cancer and when I got the cough, of course I sidelined it because I thought 'this is only a cough, but she's having chemo'.

"I'm a lifelong non-smoker, I was fit and healthy, I was walking my dog 4 miles a day and running up 6 flights of stairs with him as our way to keep fit. Never at any point did I think that cancer applied to me. To have to go home and tell my partner, who had just finished chemotherapy, that I had cancer - was quite a moment."

Dave was diagnosed with lung cancer two years ago, during the pandemic. He'd been experiencing a persistent cough and rib pain: "The cough became so aggressive that at one point I felt a pop and I got a hernia. But after the initial aggressiveness of the cough died down, it was always there although not as bad. But my ribs also hurt, and having this misconception about lung cancer, it would never have popped into my head that it was something I should get reviewed."

Dave had life-saving surgery to remove half of one of his lungs, as well as chemotherapy treatment and is now reviewed by his consultant every six months. He told us the diagnosis came as a huge shock: "My immediate reaction to this clearly very highly trained respiratory consultant, was that he must be wrong. I thought that it couldn't be lung cancer because I've never smoked. I guess that was a moment of clarity for me because this is a disease that I've always thought would only affect smokers. I'd never considered that it would affect somebody like me. If I talk to anybody about this now, I'm very clear that if something doesn't feel right, you should get it checked.

"I'm proof that the sooner that you get a diagnosis, the more likely you are to get a positive outcome. I think there's a challenge with men in particular that we tend to sit back and wait for things to get better. We think it can't be that bad, we'll be okay. My partner finished her chemotherapy and she asked me to go and get my cough checked out. That's pretty much what saved my life."

Rachel Avery is the director of marketing and communications at Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation: "We launched the 'Be Unforgettable' campaign because we were growing increasingly frustrated by hearing stories like Dave's about people who weren't acting on symptoms. It's clear that there are still many misconceptions around lung cancer that are stopping people from getting an earlier and life-saving diagnosis.

"Lung cancer is still a disease that isn't openly talked about and there's a lot of stigma around it. We wanted to try and rewrite the narrative and the understanding around the disease.

"People tend to have a very vivid idea of who gets lung cancer. Dave contradicts that. He's a non-smoker, very fit, active and young. There's a stereotypical profile with lung cancer that it's an older person's disease, you need to have smoked for many years or worked in a certain occupation. Obviously those people are at a higher risk of lung cancer, but being at low risk, doesn't mean no risk. If you have lungs you can get lung cancer.

"It is the UK's biggest cancer killer so we understand why people would be fearful of it but we want people to forget these outdated misconceptions of what they think lung cancer is and the outcomes that are associated with it."

You can read a full list of lung cancer symptoms here.