A teacher who attributed her chest soreness and coughing to stress and a recent move has her students to thank for potentially saving her life after they urged her to visit a doctor. 

Aurora Lucas, 32, from Chicago, said she first started experiencing chest pain while she was moving houses in August 2021.

Lucas initially dismissed the symptoms to avoid incurring a $250 doctor’s appointment fee. However, when her condition didn’t improve, she consulted a doctor in September. The doctor told her she ‘looked good’ and advised her to go home and ‘drink hot water and honey.’

Despite this, she continued to experience chest pain and fatigue, which she attributed to the stress of moving and managing a busy teaching schedule.

But while teaching, Lucas said she ‘couldn’t finish her sentences without coughing’.

Her students and colleagues encouraged her to return to the doctors, and as her symptoms worsened, Lucas visited the emergency department multiple times between September and November 2021.

Eventually, Lucas’s condition deteriorated to the point where she couldn’t walk due to excessive coughing. After months of back and forth, she was referred for a PET scan for detailed medical imaging at the end of November.

One month later, Lucas was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer after scans revealed she had three lime-sized tumors in her lungs.

Lucas said: ‘I hit a big milestone in August 2021. I bought my first home and instead of celebrating, I was feeling very fatigued.

‘That’s when the first chest pain showed up and I thought it was because the whole process was so stressful.

‘I even called my sister who’s a nurse and she thought maybe it was anxiety.’

Having just spent a lot of money on moving, Lucas was reluctant to spend more on medical expenses. She was also eager to return to teaching in person in 2021 after conducting classes virtually during the Covid pandemic.

However, Lucas said: ‘I could barely do my job. I was very fatigued and I was coughing a lot. I could barely even drive myself home.

‘I would almost fall asleep at the wheel – that’s how bad the fatigue was and my husband started picking me up.

‘We both thought it was me overworking and being overstressed.’

Lucas was urged to visit the doctor by both her students and fellow staff members, but claims she was told by doctors that she ‘looked good’.

Lucas said: ‘It was my students and colleagues that noticed that I could barely finish my sentences without coughing.

‘I was tired all the time, I had chest pain and I would wake up in the middle of the night with sharp back pain.

‘The cough would not go away even with cough drops and medication.

‘The doctor was like “You look so good, you should go home, boil some water and add some honey.”

‘I was too stunned to speak.’  

After months of back and forth, Lucas was eventually sent for a PET scan in November 2021.

Lucas said: ‘I was in and out of the emergency room with those symptoms between September and November.

‘I was coughing so much, there was a point where I could barely walk.’

In December 2021 Lucas received the diagnosis of stage 3A lung cancer. The five-year survival rate is approximately 36 percent. 

Overall, lung cancer affects about 226,000 Americans per year and about 124,000 are expected to die from the disease in 2025. 

Stage 3A lung cancer is a type of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that indicates a tumor has grown to larger than 5cm and spread to nearby lymph nodes in the chest. 

NSCLC specifically accounts for about 85 percent of lung cancer cases. 

The special educator teacher admits she was ‘relieved’ that she’d finally been given a diagnosis after months of back and forth.

Lucas said: ‘When the doctor walked in the room I said “it’s cancer isn’t it?” and he was like “yes it is.”

‘On the X-ray I had three tumors on my right lung, which were the sizes of limes and the cancer had engulfed the middle part, which were the lymph nodes.

‘I felt so relieved. I was so restless of not having any answers and so many doctors kept telling me it was nothing.’

Lucas underwent two rounds of chemotherapy which started in January 2022, followed by a month of radiotherapy treatment.

Since March 2022, she has been taking daily targeted therapy pills, and continues to have check-up scans every four months.

Lucas said: ‘I only had to do two rounds of chemo. I opted out of surgery and suggested we go straight to targeted therapy.

‘The targeted therapy pill, even with side effects, lets me live a pretty normal life. I have been taking that since 2022 and it’s still really working for me now.

‘They haven’t declared me cancer free yet. They want to scan me for two more years but I still have to go to scans every four months.

‘The tumors have shrunk [and] the doctors described it like ice melting under the sun.’