NEED TO KNOW
- Dean Comstock was 27 years old when he received the frightening diagnosis of terminal lung cancer
- A singer and runner, he had never smoked
- Doctors told him he could live up to three years through chemotherapy, but instead, he chose to undergo a rare double lung transplant
In October 2023, Dean Comstock developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. Doctors thought it might be pneumonia or acid reflux. But in August 2024, the runner, musician and singer was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He had never smoked.
At the time, he was 27 and married to his high school sweetheart. They had just bought a house in Syracuse, New York, and were thinking about starting a family.
Comstock was told he might live one to three years, having chemotherapy every three weeks. He asked if a lung transplant was an option, but was told it was too risky. “Unfortunately, the alternative was certain death,” Comstock, now 28, recalls.
Lung cancer is one of the leading causes of death in men and women, both smokers and non-smokers, Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and Director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute in Chicago, Ill., says. “People need to know that lung cancer can kill you even if you don’t smoke.”
Bharat is a pioneer in lung transplants as part of a clinical trial known as DREAM. He performs transplants on patients with terminal lung cancer confined to their lungs. To his knowledge, Northwestern is the only place in the country that does this.
Bharat connected with Comstock and, in May, performed a double lung transplant to remove his cancer.
“It was the only option,” Bharat says. “Treatment had failed. He had received all sorts of chemo and immunotargeted therapy, and the cancer was rapidly progressing in both his lungs.”
Comstack is currently recovering in Chicago. He shares his story with PEOPLE’s Wendy Grossman Kantor.
I woke up one day and felt like I had a cold. I noticed a weird, dry cough but brushed it off. After a few days, I went to the doctor, and they thought it might be pneumonia, so they gave me steroids. After a couple weeks, it didn’t get any better, so I was referred to a pulmonologist. They also thought it was pneumonia.
I wasn’t getting better, and I was slowing down. I had three jobs: I was a full-time production manager for a manufacturing company, a real estate agent, and my wife McKayla and I perform music at weddings and events. We met in high school — she was sitting at a piano and I asked her to play a piece of music I had composed.
In May 2024, I had to quit my production management job because I no longer had the energy. In August, I got a lung biopsy. Six days later, they called me and my family into the oncologist’s office and said, “Dean, you have lung cancer.”
I never smoked. I have never even held a cigarette or a joint.
I said, “How bad is it?” And they said, “Stage four,” and immediately I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is the end of the world for me. This is it.” That was devastating.
Honestly, my first thoughts were not really about me dying, but it was more about leaving McKayla behind. I thought, “Someone has to be there with her, and that’s supposed to be me.” I’m like, “I can’t abandon her.”
Knowing my mom had undergone a double lung transplant in January 2021 for pulmonary fibrosis, my parents asked if it was an option.
The doctor said, “That’s not really done for cancer patients.”
So, I started a treatment plan of chemotherapy near our home in Syracuse, New York. Doctors said I would be doing what they call “maintenance chemotherapy” for the rest of my life, every three weeks.
I thought, “This is awful,” but then I thought, “Okay, if I have to go to an infusion center every few weeks for the rest of my life for a couple of hours, that’s not too much of an inconvenience, as long as I get to live a happy life and I can deal with that.”
But eventually I realized that “the rest of my life” really only meant a few years. They said, “Our goal is to keep you feeling healthy for as long as possible.” I said, “How long is that?” And they said, “One to three years.”
And then I would be dead.
Meanwhile, my parents didn’t accept that a lung transplant wasn’t an option. They’re like, “There’s got to be a way.” My mom called the transplant team where she got her lungs and said, “My son has stage four lung cancer. Can you help him?” They said, “No, but Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago can.”
In November 2024, I called Northwestern’s transplant team myself and left a voicemail. I told them I had stage four lung cancer and I really needed a transplant. They called back immediately. A few days later, the chief of thoracic surgery, Dr. Ankit Bharat, called and listened to my story. He said, “This is your only option. I want to help you. I think we can.”
I got a PET scan and a brain MRI around Christmastime and sent them in the mail to Northwestern and filled out more paperwork.
I arrived in Chicago on Saturday, March 1. On Monday, I started three weeks of testing to see if I was eligible for transplant.
By the time insurance approved the transplant, I couldn’t walk 10 feet without being completely exhausted and out of breath. I needed three liters of oxygen continuously, every day, all day, and all night — just to sit on the couch. On May 8, I woke up and I needed 10 liters. I more than tripled my oxygen requirement, and by then I could no longer bathe or do anything, really. I couldn’t even talk.
On May 14, my coordinator at Northwestern told me to come in for a walk test to measure my oxygen saturation levels. I failed it immediately. I was rushed to the ER and admitted to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, and put on high-flow oxygen.
The next day the lung transplant team called and said, “Dean, we have lungs for you. Your surgery’s tomorrow at 7:00. Do you accept?”
I started laughing and I said, “Of course — I will take these lungs.”
The next morning, they wheeled me into this insane room; it was huge with all these machines and metallic tools that I assumed they were going to use to cut me up. They said, “Okay, Dean, here we go.” I didn’t even cry or feel scared. I was just ready for it because I knew it was my best chance to live.
When I woke from the surgery, I wrote, “I love you,” to my wife on a piece of a paper towel and drew a little heart.
On May 17, they took out my intubation tube, and I was able to speak for the first time. I said, “Hi, everyone. I’m cancer-free now.”
I spent two weeks in the hospital and two weeks in a rehab facility. I was discharged on June 13. My wife and I celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary later that month.
I’m still getting stronger. My legs are a little wobbly, but I average about a mile a day walking. I still have outpatient rehab three times a week, where I get stronger.
These days, I have so much more energy. Before the surgery, I would sleep most of the day. I would wake up at 9 and need to take a nap by 10. I’d go to bed early, too. But now I can have a full day, and I’m starting to resume normal life.
Before I got sick, I was always hustling, saying yes to everything, not really thinking about my own wants and desires. But now I’m going to have fun, because you never know when it’s going to be your last day.
I still have to get cancer screening every three months for the next five years. I just had my first one last week, and there’s no evidence of anything cancerous in my body. I feel so lucky to be alive.
You know in the Indiana Jones movies where he’s in the tunnel and the wall is coming down and he’s trying to get through? I just barely got to the exit.
That’s how I feel, like I just made it. Hardly anyone does.
My wife and I will go out for a walk, and she will start crying. When I ask her why, she says, “I’m just so happy. I’m just so happy you’re here.”
A GoFundMe was established to help the couple.