Michael Fader

There’s Always Hope – Michael Fader’s Story

My husband, Michael, knew more than most about keeping hope alive. He was born in a northern-Ontario village, surviving many things during his growing years such as poverty, lack of medical care, and malnutrition. We know that cancer—especially lung cancer—disproportionately affects lower socio-economic and rural populations such as the one in which Michael was raised. His personal cancer risk was also likely increased by genetics, tobacco exposure, silica and exhaust fume contact at work. Adding to his cancer-ific profile was his history of Adverse Childhood Experiences (or ACEs as they are known), including physical and sexual abuse, foster care, a notorious residential reform school, and living homeless by himself under a bridge through a frigid northern winter at age 13, just to name a few.

Somehow, Michael had kept hope and spirit alive through his entire, heartbreaking childhood, so when he was diagnosed with his first cancer (in the throat) in late 2018, he approached it with his usual determination and well-honed survival skills.

“I have endured many worse things than cancer,” he often said despite some significant bumps in that first cancer road including a life-threatening carotid artery hemorrhage and traumatic radiation therapy. Treatment under the tight-fitting mask bolted to a radiation table re-activated his horrific childhood abuse memories every single one of the seemingly interminable 35 days of treatment. He survived that first, “very curable” cancer, but there were many days when I was pretty sure my heart would not.

Did you know that once you've had one cancer, you're at higher risk for another?

June of 2020 was peak pandemic and as a huge introvert, Michael was enjoying puttering on the tractor on our large country property, baking, building, fixing, and creating. As a former professional skydiver in the military and hobby scuba diving instructor, Michael had no fear of physical challenge and was constantly making my stomach lurch as I looked up to find him on our roof, up a tree in our forest, or jumping off a boat while it was still moving. This was nothing new during our 25 years of marriage, but adding “cancer survivor” to his list of life accomplishments had only confirmed his long-held approach to living life as close to the cliff edge as he could possibly get!

That month, he started experiencing a sharp pain in his left side. An X-ray in the Emergency Department for a possible broken rib instead discovered a tumour in Michael’s lung. Further testing revealed that my daredevil had a completely new, unrelated cancer (not a spread of the first.)

It was lung cancer.

The sinking/terrified/nauseous feeling I got when I heard the words, “lung cancer” was very different than what I had felt in Michael’s previous cancer. Lung cancer was strongly associated with death in my mind. This might be because 70% of lung cancer patients are not diagnosed until the advanced stage, when it is usually incurable. Right now, the tragic reality is that most people who have had lung cancer are dead. My Grandpa was one such statistic in the 1990s. Over 30 years later, my darling husband is now another. That saddens, enrages, and motivates me.

At stage II, Michael should have been one of the luckier ones. His cancer had been caught early (albeit by accident) and doctors told us there was hope for a cure. Unfortunately, Michael’s diagnosis was a rare(r) type of lung cancer known as large-cell carcinoma. Due to the scarcity of this type of patient, we were told there was no targeted research or treatment and that clinicians would “throw everything at it” and hope something worked.

During his 28 months with lung cancer, Michael underwent thoracotomy surgery (left lung lobectomy), chemotherapy (Carboplatin, Paclitaxel), radiation (13 rounds), immunotherapy (Keytruda/Pembrolizumab), a clinical trial (Lenvatinib), radiation again (5 rounds), chemotherapy again (Docetaxel), and major spinal surgery.

Despite the long list of treatments he endured and difficulty of his sub-type of lung cancer, Michael was always willing to try the next thing, saying regularly, “I just need to try to live long enough so that there are new treatments available.”

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. He spent the last five months of his life in the hospital, paralyzed from the rib cage down from the tumour compressing his spinal cord.

“There’s always hope”, Michael said in late October of 2022 as we held hands across the hospital bed. It wasn’t the first time he had encouraged me to keep hope alive, but it was the final time he said it. He died the very next morning.

I hope you find Michael’s lung cancer story inspiring, even though he did not survive. He was an incredible person who overcame life circumstances that many of us would have found impossible to endure and unfairly, his story doesn’t have a happy ending. I’m overjoyed that there are more people living longer and well with lung cancer now than ever before, but I think it’s also important to remember that Michael still represents a more typical lung cancer path. Tragically, over 25% of cancer patient deaths each year are from lung cancer—far and away more than any other cancer—and more than breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer combined. Yet, there is still not enough awareness, research, and public support to fund the preventions, early detection, treatments and HOPE that Michael believed in and needed to stay alive.

Both as a child and an adult, Michael survived by always finding hope and it never died even though he, devastatingly, did. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life and through my advocacy work, I am doing everything in my power to keep the hope alive that he held onto until his very last breath.

Christine Fader is a caregiver advocate, writer, and speaker in Ontario, Canada.More about her focus on lung cancer and trauma-informed cancer care at: christinefader.com