she felt fine: a lung cancer screening
Free of symptoms and feeling healthy, Elizabeth Marrinan had no reason to thinkan annual lung cancer screening would reveal otherwise. Her experience is a reminder that lung cancer often develops without warning—and that for people at higher risk, routine screening can detect it early and offer the best chance for a positive outcome.
When A Routine Screening Isn’t
As a long-time smoker, Elizabeth’s primary care physician, Dr. Dora Piccirilli of White Plains Physicians Associates of Pleasantville, encouraged her to have an annual low-dose CT scan to screen for lung cancer. Years earlier, one of those screenings had identified a small lung nodule that specialists determined simply needed to be monitored over time.
For more than a decade, the annual scans became just another part of Elizabeth’s regular healthcare. That changed during a physical in the spring of 2025, when one of those screenings revealed the nodule had changed.
Dr. Piccirilli immediately referred Elizabeth to Dr. Cynthia Chin, a thoracic surgeon at White Plains Hospital, for further evaluation.
Choosing Not to Wait
When Elizabeth met with Dr. Chin, she learned the nodule was too small and too deep within the lung to biopsy safely.
Rather than continue watching it, Dr. Chin recommended removing it.
Like many people facing an unexpected medical decision, Elizabeth hesitated. She had plans for the summer, including time with family, and wondered whether surgery could wait until the fall.
Then Dr. Chin offered advice Elizabeth hasn’t forgotten.
“She said, ‘If you were my mother…,'” Elizabeth recalls. “That was all I had to hear.”
She decided not to wait and underwent minimally invasive thoracic surgery in late June 2025. Dr. Chin removed the suspicious portion of her lung along with surrounding tissue. Pathology evaluation of the nodule confirmed a lung cancer.
Fortunately, because it had been found so early, it had not spread beyond the area that was removed.
“I’m so happy that I didn’t wait,” Elizabeth says. “And I’m so grateful to Dr. Piccirilli. She persisted in making me get those scans, followed up on the results and got me immediately into the right hands when something didn’t look right.”
Elizabeth spent three days in the hospital after surgery. Within a month, she was back at her summer home in New Hampshire, resuming those summer plans.
One Simple Question
Looking back, Elizabeth hopes her experience encourages others to make lung cancer screening a priority.
Whenever she talks with friends who currently smoke or who smoked in the past, she asks one simple question:
Have you had your screening?
“I make sure they’re getting these scans because they’re so, so important,” she says. “I’m proof that the earlier you can catch something, the better.”
As Elizabeth prepares to celebrate her 70th birthday, her hope is that by sharing her story, someone else might schedule the screening that could save their life.
Learn more about lung cancer screening at White Plains Hospital.
Dr. Cynthia Chin serves as a Thoracic surgeon and Director of the Women’s Cancer Program Services at White Plains Hospital. To make an appointment with Dr. Chin, call 914.849.7655.
Dr. Dora Piccirilli is a board-certified Family Medicine practitioner at White Plains Hospital Physician Associates of Pleasantville. To make an appointment with Dr. Piccirilli, call 914.849.4100.