I thought I pulled a muscle but I actually had stage 4 lung cancer aged 37 ... trends now
A Texas woman was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer at just 37 years old, despite never smoking.
Tiffany Job, a nurse and mother of eight-year-old twin boys, assumed that the pain in her right rib that began in March 2020 was a pulled muscle resulting from a workout.
However, scans would later reveal tumors in her lungs that had spread to her neck, and bones.
'I think I was just in denial, like "This is not happening."' said Tiffany. 'It was shock. A lot of shock.'
Her case comes amid a mysterious rise of cancer cases in people under 40, including colon and appendix cancer.
Lung cancer - the deadliest form of the disease - is also rising, particularly in women, thought to be linked to the fact women are slower to give up cigarettes.
Tiffany Job, 40, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer after mistaking her symptoms for a pulled muscle
Ms Job's cancer had spread to her pelvis, right femur, and cervical spine
Tiffany's 'pulled muscle' quickly became the least of her problems when a collection of other symptoms cropped up.
On a hiking trip in July 2020, she could barely walk a few feet without her heart rate shooting up and becoming short of breath.
Then, a month later, Tiffany developed a cough that wouldn't subside. Doctors performed blood tests and prescribed a course of antibiotics and steroids.
However, nothing helped.
In September, Tiffany went to her primary care doctor, who ordered a pulmonary function test (PFT). This test measures lung volume and capacity, as well as how air moves through them. 'I failed that miserably,' she told The Patient Story.
Her husband, Nick, said: 'I think they said she had the lung capacity of an 80-year-old.'
'That raised some pretty significant concerns. That was, I think, the first real alarm bell for the primary care doctor.'
'Nobody ever speculated that lung cancer could have even been an option.'
Over the next few weeks, doctors speculated that it could be anything from sarcoidosis - an inflammatory condition caused by an immune overreaction - to Covid to tuberculosis.
Finally, after spending days in isolation, scans revealed that Tiffany had stage four non-small cell lung cancer, which had spread to her pelvis, right femur, and neck.
Ms Job said she was 'in denial' after hearing about the lung cancer diagnosis, especially because she had never smoked
Ms Job posted on Instagram in November that her primary tumor is growing, and her current treatment is ineffective (pictured here with her husband, Nick, and their twin sons)
Lung cancer is the deadliest form of cancer in the
