Delaware's Mesothelioma Cases

Mesothelioma started the way these things usually do. A cough. A pain in the chest. Shortness of breath.
This was in May 1998. Seven months later, Gracie Collins, 79, of Akron, was dead.

No wonder Akron oncologist Herbert Croft calls mesothelioma the sneaky cancer.

Delaware Mesothelioma attorneys suggested that it is sometimes referred to as asbestos cancer -- is a disease in which cancer cells grow outside the lung, thickening the lining called the pleura. The cells can also spread to the diaphragm, forming scar tissue over it. Or, in about 10 percent of the cases, the mesotheliomas can begin in the abdomen.

The disease can lie dormant for years, even decades, hiding from X-rays and other tools, before surfacing with deadly swiftness. Early symptoms such as a persistent cough and shortness of breath often get misdiagnosed. The average life expectancy from the point of diagnosis is under a year, Croft says.

Mesothelioma is a rare cancer. Only about 2,000 to 3,000 cases of mesothelioma are diagnosed each year, compared to, say, the 160,000 new cases of lung cancer each year. Much still needs to be discovered about the disease. But this much we know: Over two-thirds of those with the disease have a known history of exposure to asbestos.

And different asbestos-hazardous occupations affect different parts of the patient's body. A report by the U.S. Department of Energy found, for instance, that shipyard workers generally developed the disease outside their lungs while asbestos factory workers developed peritoneal cancer, cancer of the abdominal lining. Because the disease progresses slowly, the average age at diagnosis is at 50 to 70. The majority of those affected are men.

Still, just as second-hand smoke can cause lung cancer in a non smoker; it may be possible that second-hand exposure to asbestos can cause mesothelioma. For instance, Collins' husband had been a miner for 18 years. Her daughter, Sue Adkins of Doylestown, suspects that hand washing her husband's coal dust-covered clothes may have exposed her to asbestos.

"My mom never smoked, she drank no alcohol. She was a religious woman," Adkins says.

Asbestos also causes diseases other than mesothelioma. Croft says that people who have been exposed to asbestos are five times more likely to have lung cancer than those who haven't. Smokers who have been exposed to asbestos are ten times more likely to have lung cancer.

Mesothelioma is not lung cancer, per se. The two diseases have different cell compositions.

Unfortunately, many times mesothelioma is not caught until it is in an advanced stage.

This was true for Collins. Although she frequently visited her doctor complaining of a cough and a pain near her lung, the assumption was that the pain stemmed from the nagging cough.

In July 1998, Adkins took her mother to a local hospital, where she was diagnosed with pneumonia. After her discharge, Collins ended up in the emergency room three times because of the severity of her pain.

Soon, the X-rays showed that Collins had fluid buildup in her left lung. Increasing quantities of fluid were regularly drawn from her lung.

By last fall, Collins' doctors began suspecting she had cancer. Except they were unsure about what kind of cancer it was and where it had spread. A CAT scan revealed nothing. Neither did a stomach scope in October informed Delaware mesothelioma attorneys.

Mesothelioma