Comprehensive treatment at Ohio State has helped a firefighter survive and thrive five years after his lung cancer diagnosis. At 34 years old, Timothy Smith was working as a firefighter-paramedic while raising sons Gavin and Lucas with his wife, Brittany, in Columbus, Ohio. “My life was pretty normal,” Smith says. Click here for more stories from Ohio State cancer patients and survivors. Things started to change when he began experiencing unexplained symptoms. “I had started having a lot of fatigue, and I wasn't sure if was medical or if it was just me being tired from the job or having two young kids and and staying active,” he says. “I noticed at work that the fatigue was more than I could really deal with on a daily basis.” Smith began visiting doctors to figure out the source of his symptoms, but testing continuously came back with normal results. Eventually, worsening sings, including pain and swelling, resulted in the discovery of blood clots, which in turn, led to a diagnosis of lung cancer. “At first I thought, ‘There's no way, this is impossible,’” Smith says. “I was not a smoke, and that's the thing you think about when you hear lung cancer. I thought maybe the test was wrong and that maybe it was some other type of cancer.” Click here to learn more about lung cancer, including risks, symptoms and treatment options at The Ohio State University. After the initial shock of the diagnosis subsided, Smith began treatment at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, where he underwent molecular testing to diagnose his specific type of lung cancer. “It was a very rare type of lung cancer that only five percent of patients have, and primarily it is young, healthy nonsmokers,” he says. After testing, Smith partnered with his Ohio State team to tailor a treatment plan to his specific cancer, which ultimately resulted in the utilization of a highly-targeted therapy. “The type of treatment is called TKI,” Smith says. “It's an oral therapy that targets the cancer cells, as opposed to all cells.” While, lung cancer — the leading cause of cancer-related deaths — can be very difficult to treat, the TKI treatment has enabled Smith to not just survive, but live a relatively normal life more than five years since his diagnosis. “I'm doing pretty good. I go through scans every three months just to make sure everything is going the way that it's supposed to, and I take my oral targeted therapy twice a day,” he says. “I'm able to live with limited side effects and be a stay-at-home dad for my boys and my wife.” Click here to learn more about lung cancer screening at the OSUCCC – James.