Photo: Courtesy Ashley Murosky

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Ashley Murosky was just starting her sophomore year in college when she found out she hadlung cancer.

Within days, Murosky met with a lung specialist and further testing would reveal that she had stage II non-small cell lung cancer.

“We were all in shock. My parents, my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband, Jared [Murosky]. Like, ‘How? Why? What’s going on?’ I had experienced no symptoms,” she says. “I was active, healthy, your normal college sophomore. It was a lot to handle at first.”

Courtesy Ashley Murosky

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“At the time, I didn’t think I would need further treatment,” says Murosky, now 25. “I moved down south with my boyfriend for the summer and then we went back to college. Everything was back to normal. I was still recovering in ways because so much of my lung had been taken out, so my lung capacity was different. I couldn’t be the same active person that I was prior to surgery, but we had dealt with it.”

However, three years later during her yearly scan, Murkosy found out the cancer had returned and wasstage 4. She had pea-sized tumors in her lungs and it had spread to her vertebrae and her brain.

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“I remember my two doctors [at Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute], who I had become so close to, walking in with tears in their eyes and just telling me that it was back,” she says.

Murosky, who was living in Arizona at the time, and had also been in Pennsylvania to celebrate her bridal showers, quickly relocated back to her home state to undergo treatment.

“This time felt much more difficult,” says Murosky, who experienced side effects from medications, like seizures, leaving her unable to drive. “I lost my sense of freedom, my sense of independence. But, I just knew that things would work out, that they had previously, I just kept telling myself that.”

Now, instead of doing tradition IV chemotherapy, Murosky takes an oral version, that “directly targets the mutating cells and tries to keep them essentially asleep or dormant,” she says. “I will be on some sort of version of this for the rest of my life.”

In addition to the support of of her family, and her “rock” Jared, Murosky finds comfort in the work she does with theAmerican Lung Associations’ LUNG FORCE initiative.

As a LUNG FORCE hero, Murosky has met other lung cancer patients like herself.

“When I was in college and first diagnosed, some of my best college friends didn’t know how to handle it. We kind of fell out a little bit,” she says. Now, “I’ve met so many friends, yes, we’re going through the same thing but we’re people first and we can talk about this, but also be happy together.”

She adds: “Spreading awareness and being a voice for others who haven’t been as lucky as I’ve been in this battle. That’s really helped. It’s given me a purpose.”

If you are a lung cancer survivor, patient or caregiver and would like more info on becoming a LUNG FORCE hero, please visit its websitehere.

source: people.com