When Jennifer Olson started having trouble breathing during a weekly volleyball game with friends, lung cancer never crossed her mind. At 44, the former high school and college athlete was still active and leading a healthy lifestyle.
“I thought maybe it was allergies at first,” said Olson, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri. “But I just couldn’t catch my breath.” It was a Sunday, so Olson made an appointment with her doctor for the next day. “When my general practitioner listened to my lungs, she said it didn’t sound like asthma or an infection,” Olson continued. “But she put me on antibiotics just in case and told me to come back in a week if I wasn’t feeling better. She said the next step would be a chest X-ray.”
Olson followed her doctor’s advice and started taking the antibiotics. When her husband, Andy, returned from a work trip that Friday, he was alarmed by her condition…