“I lived through it, but to look back with this new lens, the stories are just horrifying,” she admits. “My smoking history is, I’m ashamed to say, probably lasted 30 years, although I quit for both pregnancies. It’s great when you have something bigger than yourself that somehow allows you to fight it.” Along the way, she tried everything to quit, from wearing a nicotine patch to hypnosis.
Diagnosed with lung cancer: ‘It was absolutely devastating’
Her lung cancer diagnosis in 2015 was “an incidental finding”; she was lucky it was discovered.
Because she is a high-powered executive who works 60 hours a week, she thought that feeling like she wasn’t quite herself might mean a heart problem runs in the family. Her doctor referred her for tests, including blood tests, an ultrasound and a chest X-ray. Everything was fine, except her doctor noticed something on the chest x-ray that needed further investigation, so Jan went to a respirologist.
It was lung cancer.
“It was absolutely devastating. We bring with us all our history and all our beliefs. So when I was diagnosed with cancer, of course I immediately assumed I was going to die.”
She decided to take steps to put her final days in order, updating her will and buying small diamond earrings for her two daughters, then 30 and 25, “because that’s what I always thought I would give them,” she says. When her mother died, Jan realized that there were still many things she wanted to ask her, so she asked her daughters if they had any questions for her. The youngest wanted letters from her mother on special days such as her wedding and the birth of her first child.
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