Inspiring Journey: Living Strong with Stage 4 Lung Cancer
It was a hot, humid night in 2010 when Giancarlo Oviedo-Mori and his parents sat in a Bronx hospital and received the shock of their lives. They learned that he had advanced non-small cell lung cancer. He was only 18 years old and had big dreams. “Every South American kid wants to be a professional soccer player. I wanted to be the next Messi,” remembers Giancarlo, who immigrated to the United States with his family from Peru when he was 8 years old.
“I had never seen my parents cry like that before. It really broke me,” says Giancarlo, who has no family history of cancer and never smoked. “There was no logical reason why I got lung cancer, but I didn’t question it. I just trusted God and had this peace that everything was going to be OK.”
Fifteen years later, Giancarlo is now married and has a 2-year-old son as he continues to live with stage 4 metastatic lung cancer. Over the years, the cancer has remained persistent, but each time one treatment stopped working, there has been a new drug to try, thanks to clinical trials at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) where he is now being treated.
