Jessie Creel’s cough started in May last year.
At the time, a primary care physician diagnosed the mother of three with pneumonia. But the antibiotics didn’t work and her cough persisted. During a camping trip in the summer, she coughed up blood. She kept losing weight. She wasn’t able to sleep.
Six months later, Creel, then 42, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. She was active, a runner and a swimmer, didn’t drink, and had never even held a cigarette.
More diagnoses like hers are prompting cancer and public health experts to call for changes to lung cancer screening guidelines.
Under current recommendations, people are eligible for screening if they are 50 to 80 years old and have a history of heavy smoking, either actively or in the past 15 years. But those guidelines exclude a

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