Blog

Stephen Snowdy: Cancer is shy, and screaming is just not cancer’s style

Stephen Snowdy/LinkedIn

Apr 27, 2025, 20:24

Stephen Snowdy: Cancer is shy, and screaming is just not cancer’s style

Stephen Snowdy, Chief Executive Officer at LadRx Corporation, shared on LinkedIn:

“20 years ago, after returning home from a long flight, I had a sharp pain in my chest that radiated down my left arm. A trip to the ER revealed a normal EKG, but a mediastinal softball-sized mass. That mass turned out to be non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which was surprisingly well compartmentalized, and cured with R-CHOP and radiation.

A couple of years ago, we lost a close friend to a recurrent cervical cancer, for which the only early clue was lower back pain. For my wife, who was diagnosed with lymphoma at 9 years old, it was just a swollen face. And, yesterday, I learned of a non-smoking acquaintance who has been diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer whose clue was chronic back pain. And who doesn’t have chronic back pain?

First point:

One would think that as horrible a disease as cancer is, it would scream at us in its early stages, but cancer is shy, and screaming is just not cancer’s style.

It often just whispers, if it says anything at all. Stay vigilant and listen to your and your loved ones’ bodies; the messages sent by cancer are most often subtle, and we must often fight within the medical system to get the diagnostics we need.

And, yes, distinguishing types of pain over a certain age can be difficult when pretty much everything hurts, every day.

Second point: We still desperately need better diagnostics, screening, drugs, and treatments. If you work in oncology, please keep up the fight, as almost all of us will need one of those things to save us or a loved one at some point in our lives.”

Read this informative insight about Small Cell Lung Cancer on OncoDaily:

Small Cell Lung Cancer: Symptoms, Causes, Types, Diagnosis and Treatment