Lana’s fight on for lung and old
LANA MacKenna had been excitedly planning her wedding and a long life with her partner in 2019 when her world came suddenly crashing down.
The then 30-year-old had spent months taking pain medication and begging doctor after doctor for answers before she finally got her diagnosis – and it was blunt.
Stage 4 lung cancer. “The nurse was visibly distraught,” she said. “I guess I stayed in this state of shock for about a year and a half.”
The disease had spread to her brain and spine, causing her seizures, memory loss and head fog. She was given a twoyear outlook and immediately thrown into a whirlwind of treatments, packing up her life in Melbourne between Covid-19 lockdowns to move to the Gold Coast to be closer to family and friends.
“During the six months (before the diagnosis my partner) was saying there was no way (I had cancer), I was too young.”
In May 2021 it was found the disease had begun rapidly growing in her brain, sparking a new round of emergency treatment just a day after a whirlwind wedding to partner Mitch.
“I was starting to have seizures because of all the cancer spots on my brain,” she said.
“And my oncologist knew we were engaged and told us we needed to bring it forward.”
Near the start of 2022 she was told the cancer had not progressed. It is the best news she can hope for.
Ms MacKenna has joined forces with Lung Foundation Australia (LFA) to urge the federal government to invest more for lung disease research.
Lung cancer received less than a quarter of the federal government funding given to breast and colon cancer research in 2011-16, according to Cancer Australia.
It also receives only two per cent of research investment.
LFA said it was “profoundly disappointed” after the 2022-23 budget failed to provide a lung cancer screening program it says would save more than 12,000 lives across 10 years.
The program received $6m for research in the previous budget.
Ms MacKenna said stigma around lung cancer and other lung diseases had led to both a lack of funding and specialised lung disease nurses. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what lung disease really is,” she said. “Covid is a lung disease. Pneumonia is, lung cancer is. Especially when we have unknown numbers being diagnosed with long Covid, we need (funding for) nurses and lung screening programs.”
LFA is also calling for a further $200m over the next decade to be invested in lung disease research.