Isabella de la Houssaye is our guest on Discover Lafayette with host, Jan Swift. Isabella is a native of Crowley and has worked and traveled all over the world, first as an international finance lawyer at White & Case LLP, then as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers, and currently as the co-owner of Material Culture, in Philadelphia, a retail establishment and auction house.

Isabella is also an endurance athlete, mountain climber, and a certified yoga instructor. She has run marathons in every state in the U. S (and then some), competed in 10 Ironmans, and 20 ultramarathons.

A non-smoker, Isabella was diagnosed in February 2018 with Stage IV non-small cell lung cancer. Lung cancer disease kills more women and men in the U. S. and worldwide than any other cancer. People mistakenly believe that only smokers get lung cancer, when in fact 65% of people who get new lung cancer diagnoses never smoked or are former smokers. Scientists believe the rise in cases even as the rate of smoking decreases is linked to environmental factors such as pollution driven by fossil fuels and exposure to radon.

We spoke by telephone on Good Friday, April 10, 2020, as she was in her hometown, Crowley, Louisiana, stopping for a brief visit with family before continuing the last 1000 miles of her 3000-mile cross-country bike ride across the U. S. She is on a mission to raise awareness of the symptoms of lung cancer to facilitate early diagnoses as well as educate on the importance of researching effective treatments. She began her trek on March 10, 2020, in San Diego, CA, and finished April 20, 2020, on the Atlantic coast in Jacksonville, FL. While she had originally had plans to bike as part of a larger group and hold cancer awareness events across the U. S., including the Miles Perret Center in Lafayette, the Covid-19 pandemic changed all that. She plans to come back when it's safe to be in a crowd and hold public events.

Isabella de la Houssaye and her husband, David Crane, biked across the U. S. to raise awareness of lung cancer, its symptoms, and the importance of research for treatments. To learn more about Isabella, lung cancer, and enjoy her beautiful blog on mindfulness, please visit https://bikebreathebelieve.org/

Lung cancer is typically diagnosed at late Stage III or IV and there are few symptoms until the cancer has advanced and spread throughout the body. For people with Stage IV lung cancer, the five-year survival rate is less than 10%.

When de la Houssaye was first diagnosed in early 2018, the cancer was in her lungs, adrenal glands, bones, spine, and six tumors were in her brain. She had been experiencing severe Level 10 pain in her sacrum in her back area, and doctors initially thought it must be a pulled muscle because she was so active. No doctor thought that she might have lung cancer, and she had continuing racing and winning her age group in marathons and the Ironman competition. But by the time of her diagnosis, her sacrum was 100% eaten up by tumors and she was bedridden, dying.

Ironically, an MRI taken to diagnose what was thought to be a sports injury revealed tumors in her spine and a CT scan confirmed Stage IV cancer, yet her insurance company didn't want to approve a PET scan because she was dying. She fought to get this biomarker test and the results allowed her physicians to target the best treatment based upon her specific genetic mutation. Within 24 hours of ingesting Avastin, she felt an immediate difference in her body as it responded positively; she was also able to avoid tough, old-school chemotherapy which would have been much more brutal. The tumors in her spine shrank over the next few months. She was one of the lucky ones for whom the targeted treatment worked.

“Never give up.