Lung Cancer Beaten, She’s Already Back on the Golf Course

It was just a little cough, something that might be just allergies, and certainly not something Bernadette Lemke thought required a separate medical appointment.

But when the time came around for her regular wellness exam, she mentioned the cough to her primary care clinician, Philip Benyo, PA-C, with LVPG Geriatric and Internal Medicine–Brookhill Plaza in Sugarloaf.

The 73-year-old Lemke had quit smoking 30 years ago, but given that history, Benyo ordered a chest X-ray. And it’s a good thing he did.

“Philip called me even before I got home from the X-ray,” Lemke recalls. There was something suspicious on her X-ray, and he ordered further tests. It was soon clear that Lemke had lung cancer, a type known as a primary mucinous adenocarcinoma.

“I was very upset, so I contacted Philip, and he agreed to see me right away that day,” Lemke says. “He told me the good news was that it was caught early, but I would need to see a surgeon. It had to come out.”

In November 2023, she underwent robot-assisted surgery at Lehigh Valley Hospital–Cedar Crest to have part of her right lung removed. The surgery was performed by Richard Chang, MD, a lung cancer surgeon and chief of Thoracic Surgery with Lehigh Valley Institute for Surgical Excellence.

Fortunately, her cancer had not spread. She did not need chemotherapy or radiation, and a follow-up scan shows she is cancer-free.

“This is a great example of the value of an annual wellness visit with your primary care clinician,” Benyo says. “Bernadette had a problem that she probably would not have made an appointment for, a cough that could be attributable to seasonal allergies. But because she came in for an exam, we were able to address the issue.”

Lemke is doing remarkably well, Benyo says. “I just came off the golf course,” she reported on a recent 93-degree day. “I shot a 51 on nine holes, which is not bad. And if you look at me, you would never know I had part of my lung removed.”

Her oncologist agrees. “Bernadette’s prognosis is excellent,” says medical oncologist Harvey Hotchner, MD, with LVH Hematology Oncology–Hazleton. The fact that her cancer was discovered early works in her favor, he says. “The earlier we find it, the better your outcome can be.”

Looking back, Lemke says she could not be happier with the care she received at Lehigh Valley Health Network in her adoptive home in the Hazleton area. That’s despite the fact her first instinct was to go somewhere else for her care.

“I’m from Jersey, and so the first thing you think of when you hear ‘cancer’ is, ‘I have to go to Memorial Sloan Kettering.’” But she says the deep commitment to caring and to answering all of her questions, and the confidence she came to have in her oncologist, her surgeon and all of her caregivers, convinced her to have her surgery and treatment at Lehigh Valley Topper Cancer Institute.

“Every doctor I encountered cared about me deeply as a patient,” she says. “The nurses in the hospital were great. They were very proactive and with me for the whole time.”

Lemke reserves her highest praise for Benyo, her primary care clinician. “The attention he pays to me as a patient is beyond anything I ever experienced in my whole life,” she says. “He is very proactive, and he is always there for me.”