At 69, Melinda McKnight is as busy as ever. In the past year, she has organized several fundraising events around her hometown of Rison, Arkansas, and purchased Christmas presents for more than 100 local children as part of a charity she co-founded. She often looks after two of her six grandchildren. None of this would be possible if the stage 1 cancer in her right lung hadn’t been caught three years ago. “I was blessed in so many ways,” McKnight says. In 2015, she heard that her employer would cover the cost of lung cancer screening. Her physician scheduled a low-dose computed tomography (CT) scan, which revealed a small lung nodule. Initially, the lump didn’t meet the criteria for cancer. But McKnight returned for annual scans, and in 2023, a scan revealed that the nodule had begun to grow. Within months, she had surgery to remove the early-stage tumour. Today, she has no evidence of disease. Nature Outlook: Lung cancer McKnight’s story could have been very different.…