It might seem implausible that Dr. Ross Camidge, a renowned lung cancer physician, would himself be diagnosed with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, one of the cancers he’s dedicated his life to researching and treating. But sometimes the implausible happens.
The 59-year-old, UK-trained physician, who runs the lung cancer program at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, started to feel some stiffness in his shoulder and figured he’d pulled something at the gym. Later, he developed a wheezing sound while breathing. Maybe it was late-onset asthma, he figured. He decided to go to the doctor to get it checked out.
“I think even then there was a whispering voice that this was something different,” Camidge recalls. “But even if it was cancer, I didn’t know it was advanced cancer that had spread to the point where it was incurable.”
At the appointment, back in 2022, it was Camidge’s idea to get a chest X-ray just in case. The X-ray indicated not just lung cancer but cancer that had spread to the bones in Camidge’s back, the reason for the stiffness he was feeling. An MRI a few days later revealed the cancer had spread to his brain. Camidge immediately began treatment that included a pill, then radiation and an initial course of chemotherapy.
He continued his rigorous work schedule, seeing patients and traveling to medical conferences, but chose to keep his diagnosis under wraps, except to his wife, two young daughters and a select group of co-workers and friends. The lung doctor, known internationally for his expertise in the field, worried about his reputation, job security and the financial implications of not being able to work at some future point. He needed to make sure his house was in order, so to speak, or as he put it, “tidy things up.”
He said he also had to come to terms with his own emotions as a patient facing a life-changing disease and how to respond to others’ reactions to the news. He was particularly worried people would ask uncomfortable or inappropriate questions in front of his daughters, who were 10 and 12 at the time.
But a few months ago, Dr. Camidge decided it was time to, as he says, “come out of the cancer closet.” Earlier in the year, tests indicated his cancer was progressing, and he began a second course of chemotherapy in combination with a new drug — ironically developed by a researcher friend of his — that was supposed to be better at killing cancer cells. The problem was, the combination of chemotherapy and the new drug was severely toxic.
Camidge made the decision to go public as he lay in the basement of his house, shielding his family from his suffering, which included severe intestinal distress, a rash and sores on his scalp. He lost at least 10 percent of his body weight.
“I think when I was that unwell, I didn’t want to die and miss out on the opportunity of something good or useful from being public with my diagnosis,” Camidge said. “I have a unique position of being one of the better-known lung cancer doctors in the world and then having lung cancer myself.”
Camidge hopes talking about his cancer can help to de-stigmatize terminal illness and demonstrate that a person with cancer can still be a productive member of society.
Camidge said there have been extensive developments in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment over the last decade. DNA analysis of the cancer genes allows doctors to put them into subtypes that respond to various treatments like targeted therapy, though Camidge said his type of cancer is incurable and has a life expectancy of a few months to five years.
Camidge gets scans every few months to check the progression of his cancer, noting that the time leading up to the tests is particularly stressful.
“I get somewhat grumpy and particularly grumpy if anyone talks about the future,” Camidge said. ‘It’s like, ‘But I may not be alive,’ which is overly dramatic because whatever shows on the scans, you’re obviously still alive, but your brain can’t process the future.”
Courtesy University of Colorado AnschutzDr. Ross Camidge said one of the most difficult aspects of his 2022 diagnosis was figuring out when and how to tell his daughters.
Physicians who work with Camidge said he has always been a model for other doctors, someone who connects with patients beyond their medical care. These days, that connection is helping Camidge, too, who’s taking lessons from his patients on how to manage cancer.
“Some of them have been walking this pathway longer than I have, so you just listen to them as people in terms of how they’ve dealt with it, not just from the medical side,” he said. “It’s like, welcome to the club that no one wants to be a member of, but we love having you here.”
Camidge, who has published hundreds of academic articles over his career and been involved in multiple drug trials, including one of the cancer drugs he now takes, said the side effects from his recent chemotherapy has only increased his conviction that researchers need to be more thoughtful about how they characterize a treatment’s side effects. In May, Camidge published an article in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, arguing that if a treatment is so horrible that a patient can’t handle it, then it is not an advancement of care.
“The goal of modern cancer care is perfect control of cancer and perfect quality of life,” said Camidge. “We fall down on both of those things, but they should still be aspirational goals.”
Camidge said he’s recovered from the recent course of chemotherapy, feels good generally and has gained the weight he lost, but he deals with fatigue and has to nap twice a day.
Dr. Camidge knows that his time is limited and that death will eventually come for him. He said in the early days after his diagnosis, an image would pop into his head.
“I imagine passing on and being greeted by every one of the patients I’ve looked after in the past,” he said. “Like them welcoming me in some sort of 1980s movie with a slow clap.”
Camidge said he’s started to think of death as the start of another big adventure.
“And if there’s nothing there, then I won’t know,” he said. ‘And if there is, ‘Wow.’”
