In the space of a year, Chris Gordon was slammed by two shocking pieces of news.
The first came when the 52-year-old Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, resident was in the ER. The pains that brought him to Novant Health Forsyth Medical Center turned out to be a simple case of acid reflux. But while he was there, a scan showed something far more sinister: Inside Gordon lurked an utterly silent Stage 4 cancer.
Gordon soon learned there were tumors in his lungs, lymph nodes and brain. In that moment, he gave himself up for lost.
And that’s when Gordon got his second shock. Because while he figured a Stage 4 cancer was an automatic death sentence, his oncologist, Dr. Garrett Sherwood, had other ideas. With advanced treatment options, there’s now real hope for healing, he told Gordon.
Turns out, Sherwood was right.
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A scan that changed everything
Smoking was considered cool when Gordon started at age 15. Though he quit sporadically, for most of his life, he averaged a pack a day and, he said, never experienced a single side effect. No wheezing, no coughing, no blood.
His habit was still going strong in 2024 when sharp pains in his chest sent Gordon to the ER. You just have a bad case of reflux, the care team told him. But then they added: We saw something else on your scan.
“The scan showed small tumors in the upper right lung,” Gordon said. A follow-up exam and biopsy revealed the tumors were malignant — and that they had spread. “I was shocked,” he said. “I jogged, I ran, I hiked. I had no big shortness of breath.”
He quit smoking the day he got his diagnosis, cold turkey. But he was stricken by dread. Gordon had watched his parents die from lung cancer — his mother within 10 months of diagnosis and his father within 13. “I thought, ‘I’m going to be dead within nine months,’” he said.
The extreme anxiety from the news, coupled with the cancer finally making its presence known, changed Gordon’s body. The avid hiker rapidly lost 60 pounds and found himself unable to walk.
“I was in a wheelchair. I think some of it was stress,” he said. “I could not get off the couch unless someone helped me. I went and met Dr. Sherwood. He told me and my wife that he hadn’t given up on me — that we were going to try to beat it.
Ask about screening
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., accounting for about 1 in 5 of all cancer deaths. Each year, more people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast and prostate cancers combined.
The good news: Screening is available. And the sooner your care team catches it, the better your prognosis. Learn about screening and whether you or a family member might qualify: Lung cancer screening saves lives. Do you need it?
“I said, ‘But it’s Stage 4.’ He said they’d come a long way in cancer treatments and that it is treatable.” See related story: Why Stage 4 cancer is not a death sentence.
Sherwood started Gordon on chemotherapy, and Gordon said he had few side effects. Treatment also included an immunotherapy drug, Keytruda. Immunotherapy, said Sherwood, is what is changing some Stage 4 cancers into chronic, but manageable, conditions — and even causing others to go into remission.
“If our immune systems were perfect, nobody would get cancer,” Sherwood said. “But cancer cells are very smart. They are actively disguising themselves and hiding from the immune system.” Immunotherapy drugs “reverse specific tricks the cancer uses to hide from the immune system. The drug enables your immune system to kill the cancer.”
Here’s what Sherwood wants everybody to know: “Because of advancement in treatment like immunotherapy, even people with advanced cancers are treatable.”
Finding strength in the climb
Today, Gordon is done with chemo, hiking 45 miles a week and feeling good. His tumors have shrunk and are stable. In fact, Sherwood said, Gordon isn’t alone.
“What I tell people is in a lung cancer practice like mine more than half the patients have Stage 4 cancer when we meet them,” Sherwood said. “But I have a large and growing group of patients in my practice like Gordon who are doing well — either in remission or nearly in remission.”
For Gordon, life after successful cancer treatment means hiking up his beloved Pilot Mountain, often multiple times a week. He and his wife Artesia — they’ve known each other since middle school and got married in 2025 — often walk together. When he’s alone, he takes his music with him — songs like Sia’s “Unstoppable,” or Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song.”
Gordon’s also sharing his story with as many people as he can, through a Novant Health Cancer Institute support group, his social media circles and in-person. He wants people to know that just like he did, they can have lung cancer without showing symptoms.
“I want to become more involved in helping people get out there and get checked for cancer,” he said. “It’s not just smoking that causes lung cancer. Nonsmokers need to worry about it too.”
Sherwood echoed the thought.
“People need to advocate for themselves. If they feel in their gut something is not normal for them, they need to push,” he said. “Go to your doctor and say what you’re concerned about, (like) ‘I’ve had this cough for months.’”
Determined to keep going
Gordon still recalls the moment he moved from despair to determination. He was at home not long after his diagnosis, thinking about his situation. And about losing his parents. Suddenly he told himself his future could be different. “I wasn’t going to go out like that,” he said.
Today, that determination continues. “I’m basically going to keep pushing, keep hiking, and keep trying to get the word out about cancer awareness,” Gordon said. “I’m going to live for today — and take time to enjoy everything.”
