Persistence and CT scan saved her life
By Jack Williams
Copley News Service

Once the smoking ceased, there was no stopping the sugar addiction.
Rebecca Parker was hooked again, her plans for lifestyle rehab stuck in the bottom of a half-gallon carton of ice cream.

Eighteen pounds later, she entered what you might call self-imposed detox.
Consisting of exercise in therapeutic portions, it progressed to five miles of jogging five days a week, pulse-pounding penance for a two-pack-a-day past and the transgressions of a sweet tooth.

But as the weight melted off her compact, 4-foot-11 frame, questions about her long-term health hung around like smoke in a Las Vegas lounge.

Was she home free, luckier than a brother who had died of cancer at 49 and a mother at 79? Or would she, too, pay the price for a two-decade habit?
Five years ago, Parker noticed an item in The San Diego Union-Tribune that fueled her fears. CT scans, it said, are far more sensitive than conventional chest X-rays in detecting tumors in the lung when they are small enough to be cured.
“I’d never even had a chest X-ray,” she said. “I was a healthy ex-smoker without any symptoms.”

The next time she went in for a checkup, she asked about a CT scan. Initially advised against the procedure by her primary physician, she persisted until - based on her family history - her health-care provider relented.
The next thing she knew, she was being told she had a 4 percent chance of survival. There was a tumor in the upper left lobe of the lung that had begun to metastasize to the lymph nodes. She kept active, reinforced her immune system with supplements, hoped for the best, and embraced the treatment strategy: repeated rounds of radiation and chemotherapy.

She even cut her hair, expecting to lose every last follicle from the chemo. “I lost none of it,” she said.

Two days before surgery to remove the cancerous lobe, Parker summoned the resolve to walk a hilly course. A few days after the surgery, defying physicians’ expectations, she had recovered enough to return to her San Diego home.
“I’m a miracle walking around,” she said. “I want to get the message out how important CT scans are. Even though I hadn’t smoked in 15 years, you don’t know what’s going to show up.”

With diminished lung capacity, Parker, 60, can’t keep up that pre-surgery endurance regimen. But she’s found a combination of intervals on the treadmill and weight training that works, fueled by a low-carbohydrate diet that permits such treats as sugar-free ice cream and cookies.

At least twice a week, Parker works out with personal trainer Kristen Anderson, a fellow transplanted Texan. Seeking the quickest fix, she adheres to Adam Zickerman’s Power of 10 weight-training regimen: slow, concentrated repetitions of 10 seconds each on the lifting and lowering phase. Also known as super-slow training, the method is designed to fully engage and exhaust each muscle fiber. “My muscles are so depleted after a session that I can hardly write my name,” she said.

That, along with sprint work on the treadmill (10 intervals of 15 seconds each as fast as 5.5 mph) keep her body fat below 20 percent and her metabolism in high gear.

In retrospect, Parker can thank a ruptured appendix for putting her on the right track 19 years ago. While recovering from surgery in the hospital, she decided the time was right to quit smoking.

It was a life-affirming decision after a timely appendectomy. “If I had waited another hour before I asked my husband to take me to the hospital for the appendix pains, I might have been dead,” she said.

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