I was smoking and reading the Bible when I decided to give up cigarettes I felt blessed when I got lung cancer

A Virginia woman was experiencing no troubling symptoms when she went for a cancer screening afte 35 years of smoking — but when she was told she had lung cancer, she says she felt “blessed” and “grateful.”Barbara Rodriguez, 53, was smoking a cigarette while reading the Bible in December 2022 when she decided to give up the habit.Seven months later, in July 2023, she was told she had stage two lung cancer and needed an operation and chemotherapy — yet even as the medication made her throw up, she said, she’d thank God for her diagnosis.“One day, I am smoking a cigarette and reading a Bible,” said Barbara, an administrative assistant from Fairfax.“I said, ‘Hey God, have me stop smoking,’ and I gave it up after 35 years.“I didn’t have any cancer symptoms and I felt completely fine but I went for a cancer screening,” she added, having booked an appointment at the Schar Institute in Annandale, Virginia, on July 14, 2023.Barbara underwent her screening and had an MRI scan, PET scan and CT scan.“A few days later, I got a call to say they had found a spot on my lung and it was stage two cancer,” she said.

“When they told me I was like ‘OK, what is next?'”She was told she would need a lobectomy, a procedure to remove part of the lung, which she underwent in September 2023.But after the surgery, doctors said her cancer was actually stage 3a and had spread to her lymph nodes.“They found out that the cancer was from a mutation and not from the smoking,” she said.“When they told me I felt OK, but I have always had a positive outlook of life.

I thought that if that was what we were dealing with, I wanted to get on with it.“I told my family and they were numb.I realized that I was the backbone of the family keeping everyone together so I needed to get it together.”As a precaution, Barbara had four rounds of chemotherapy.“Chemo was the worst thing I have experienced.

I would throw up — it was horrible.However, every time I ...