Kicking the habit is the number one way for anyone to prevent lung cancer. But, there are no guarantees. Just ask Cecilia Izzo, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and now has difficulty talking and walking.

“I have a joke with friends,” she said. “I tell them I’d love to go for a walk with them but I can't walk and talk…It is tough because I have just the one lung.” 

She smoked a little as a teenager, but that was it.

“I smoked as teenager, I wanted to be cool, I was never a  heavy smoker, so I don't know why,” she said.

She was also raised in a family of smokers,

“I have give siblings that are alive and everyone of them smokes cigarettes, which is the irony of this,” she said. “I am the one that preached for years: exercise, eat right and don't smoke. And I have these five siblings who continue smoking and they’re fine, not to say they won't be, they may very well have lung cancer in a few years because it has been shown that can happen.”

Three years ago , while living in another state, Cecilia suffered excruciating pain in her right shoulder. It came as quickly as it went. It was a right upper lobe cancerous mass that went undiagnosed for seven months,

When surgeons finally found her mass and went to remove it, they took much more than anyone expected.

KING

Cecilia Izzo was raised in a family of smokers.

“So I woke up to find out it wasn't just the mass, it was the entire lung,” Cecilia said.

Months of chemotherapy came next, then, a move to Seattle. Cecilia now cherishes every moment with her family and she doesn’t let two teenage daughters or a missing lung slow her down.  

But, look at her x-rays and you can see the ghostly, empty gap in her chest and the irregular curve of her trachea.

“So  when I breathe, it doesn’t go straight up…you know when wind goes around the corner and you get that wheezing and that high pitched sound? That's what happening to me, because sometimes I hear this sound and I think it’s the trees and it’s me breathing.”

Although she sometimes struggles to speak, it doesn't stop her from speaking out about lung cancer. She's the one who started the one-of-a-kind support group  

“I always felt I needed a lung cancer specific group because whenever anyone would hear I had lung cancer, the first thing they'd say was: ‘Were you a smoker?,’” she said.  

“So what if somebody did smoke and they quit 20 years ago ? Should they still be punished. If somebody tells me they have cervical cancer, the first thing I say to them is not ‘What sort of sexually transmitted disease do you have?’ You just don't do that. Lung cancer seems to be fair game for people.’”

For an in depth look at lung cancer, causes, treatment breakthroughs, and our celebrity search for who wll talk about it, watch KING 5 Saturday at 9 p.m. for the latest Healthlink Special, Clearing the Air.