Cancer Advocate Spotlight: Taylor Bell
Taylor Bell
Lung cancer survivor
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Taylor Bell was a healthy, athletic young woman enjoying the typical college life with her friends. Then two weeks after her 21st birthday Taylor received a shocking diagnosis: Lung cancer. The diagnosis came after two years of seemingly random health scares including numbness of the toes, pneumonia, and finally abdominal cramps that brought Taylor to the emergency room, which is when a CT scan revealed one lung had completely collapsed and the other contained a 3-to-4 cm tumor.
Immediately after the diagnosis Taylor and her parents began seeking information to make a treatment decision. It sounded like surgery would be the easiest way to address the tumor, but after one surgeon mentioned having to remove several ribs during the surgery, Taylor’s family sought a second opinion. She was told she’d have to wait three to four months to get less invasive surgery from a well-known doctor in the field, so a family friend stepped in and Taylor saw the surgeon the very next day.
The doctor told Taylor and her parents the good news: The cancer had not spread to her lymph nodes and was contained in one lung. He also said that the size of the carcinoid meant that it had been growing in Taylor’s lung for three to four years at a rate of 1 cm per year.
Taylor’s surgery was performed with only two small incisions, but recovery was tough. For five days, Taylor had a chest tube through her ribs to drain excess fluids. Her family and friends stood by her, often visiting her in the hospital.
Taylor’s initial recovery was done at home, but in January (six weeks post-op) she wanted to return to school to be a “normal college kid” and remain on her parents’ insurance, which required being a full-time student.
“Going back to school was tough,” said Taylor, now a 22-year-old participating in a summer internship at NCCS. “I didn’t look like the typical cancer patient; I still had my hair. People didn’t realize how much I had gone through. Sometimes I couldn’t even believe how much I had gone through.”
It was around spring break that year – when Taylor’s friends were making their vacation plans but Taylor wasn’t able to join them – that she hit a low point, emotionally.
“For the first time I felt really different from my friends, and I realized how hard it would be to resume my life. I soon decided not to have a pity party for myself. I decided being an advocate was a good way for me to deal with my own emotions and give something to others.”
Taylor got her first experience advocating in a public forum when she joined her surgeon at an annual meeting of 3,500 doctors. After her surgeon introduced the rare case of a healthy, non-smoking 21-year-old female diagnosed with lung cancer to the audience, Taylor took to the stage and talked about her experience.
“I encouraged doctors to communicate with their patients and to take other doctor’s recommendations seriously. If I had known that a radiologist recommended further follow-up when I’d gone to the student health center with pneumonia a year earlier, my cancer could have been detected and treated earlier. But no one told me, and I want doctors to know that every chart, every visit, and every patient is important. Even if it doesn’t seem likely that someone like me could have lung cancer, it happened.”
Taylor enjoyed speaking out so much, she joined the North Carolina Lung Cancer Partnership and was the keynote speaker at several events. She says people are always shocked to see her walk out on stage; they never expect her face to be the face of lung cancer.
Taylor intends her current path to lead her into a career of public service as a lobbyist for better cancer care. Of her future plans she says, “I want to be able to educate others to help dispel the myth about who gets lung cancer. I want to help people get better cancer care. I want to make a difference.”
