McHenry man now sees glass ‘half full’ since innovative lung cancer surgery

Last December, Brian Daleske of McHenry had a cough he could not shake, leading him on a journey from darkness to gratitude and hope for the future.

The 59-year-old former four-pack-a-day cigarette smoker – who made a living working in heating, ventilation and air conditioning, inhaling dust and a host of chemicals – tested multiple times for COVID-19. He then got an X-ray thinking maybe he had pneumonia.

To his surprise, scans found he had a mass the size of an Oreo cookie on his right lung. After a biopsy, he was diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer.

“I’m either a half-full or half-empty guy. Before [cancer] my glass was half empty, chipped and somebody spit in the water, and there was a bug in it. Now I got that attitude that it is half full.”

—   Brian Daleske, McHenry resident, on surviving lung cancer

“I was in a funk,” he recalled. “All I heard was cancer and lung and surgery.”

Having come from a family where cancer is prevalent, Daleske said going into the biopsy, “I kind of knew it wasn’t going to be good.”

Shortly after the diagnosis, he began preparing for his death, making plans to ensure his daughter was cared for. He took steps to leave Illinois.

“I gathered up my retirement and savings and put it all in one account, contacted a Realtor in the state of Colorado, a die-with-dignity state,” he recalled, referring to states where lethal medication can be prescribed legally to terminally ill patients.

His thoughts were, “I am not going to wither away to nothing, I’m not going to wait. ... I am going to take charge of this,” he said. “I wanted to die gracefully. Suffocating slowly seemed like a really cruel way to go.”

But when he met with Dr. Ankit Bharat, a thoracic surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in McHenry, who told him about a new and promising surgery, his plans for dying changed into plans for living.

Bharat said the type of surgery he performed is less invasive than traditional lung surgery. It involves removing a smaller portion of the lung, and most patients are out of the hospital within a day.

The procedure, which does not require chemotherapy or radiation, became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic, when such surgeries still had to be done and hospital beds were scarce, said Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery at Canning Thoracic Institute at Northwestern Medicine.

Bharat said with how difficult COVID was it “accelerated innovation in different areas.”

“During COVID, all the hospitals were slammed and [beds were] full of COVID patients,” Bharat said. “At the time, patients who had lung cancer or other cancers, their treatment was halted. We could not take care of them. They took a backseat. Literally, the operating rooms had to be converted into ICUs. ... Until [COVID], outpatient lung cancer surgery was never a thing. COVID forced us to find a different way.”

Bharat, who encourages even nonsmokers to be screened regularly for lung cancer, has since performed this surgery, called Ambulatory Precision Lung Sparing (APLUS), about 500 times.

“If we did the conventional operation on [Daleske], he would have lost half the lung and 25% of his lung capacity,” Bharat said. “With this approach, he is going to lose less than 4% to 5% lung capacity.”

Daleske had surgery in February and was out of the hospital four days later. His hospital stay was a couple of days longer because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

He was back at work within two weeks at Able Distributors in McHenry, where he has been selling HVAC equipment and making training videos for five years.

Daleske said that before his diagnosis, he wasn’t aware November was Lung Cancer Awareness Month or that a regular screening was necessary, even when one has no symptoms or concern for cancer.

He had no idea he had lung cancer but for the cough leading him to be tested and catching it early, for which he is grateful.

He said if more people were screened in the early stages, more lives would be saved.

Daleske admits that when first diagnosed, and in the months after his surgery, he did not clean up his lifestyle.

“After surgery, I wasn’t sure if they got it all and I was eating everything in sight,” he said. “I thought, ‘If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die fat.’”

But that changed following his six-month checkup, when Bharat said Daleske was cancer free.

At that checkup in August, Daleske walked into the appointment still “waiting for the other shoe to drop, fully prepared to hear bad news,” but he was given the all clear.

“I left that appointment and I felt good. It was good,” Daleske recalled.

He now walks regularly, lifts weights, has cut back on eating junk food, takes vitamins and drinks more water. During his walks, feeling the cold air fill up his lungs “feels really good,” a sensation he had not thought about prior to the cancer, he said.

He said if he had a “magic wand” and could go back 30 years, he would never smoke cigarettes and would wear a mask while working.

Yet, however grateful he is to be alive – and he is – he admits he struggles at times with his thoughts. He wonders what would have happened had he lived in another state without access to good health care and questions why he survived cancer when so many die, so many “good” people die.

The Rev. Mark Buetow, pastor and principal at Zion Lutheran Church and School in McHenry, said this time of year, as well as all year-round, people should be thankful to God no matter their circumstances.

“Sometimes we forget that God can bring good out of anything,” Buetow said. “It’s important to be thankful when circumstances are not what we want them to be, but we don’t always know that.”

In a few years, Daleske may look back and “be thankful he had cancer because of whatever good the Lord might bring out of it,” Buetow said.

“You can never really see how God works something out when you are really in it,” Buetow said. “Sometimes you have to look back and see how he brought you through it, kind of like the footprints in the sand. It’s not untrue, the Lord carries us.”

He encourages being thankful without a false sense of guilt.

“He is right, he survived cancer and a lot of people don’t,” Buetow said. “A lot of people have worse things and a lot of people have better things. The things we have are our things. ... We should always be thankful for what gifts we have in our lives and use those as a reminder to love others and do good to others.”

Daleske said now that he is cancer free, his goal is to lose 50 pounds, then go on a three-week vacation and maybe start dating.

“I’m going to be 60 in February. I’m doing good,” he said. “I’m either a half-full or half-empty guy. Before [cancer] my glass was half empty, chipped and somebody spit in the water and there was a bug in it. Now I got that attitude that it is half full.”