text: why do certain people detect they have cancer at an early stage and others when its far too late to do anythin is it because they accidentaly detect it at an examination for something else? or what? my husband passed away from lung cancer and when it was discovered it was already too late it had spread.  he never had any symptoms of being sick.  he just out of the blue developed a really nasty cough and could not catch his breath and collapsed.  i started to educate myself and many cancers can be in our bodies for many years before they are discovered or raise there ugly heads to let us know they are there.  there is really no way to detected this cancer, in order to do so you would need a cat scan and many insurance companies are not going to pay for you to have this done because someone thinks you may have cancer.  we now have blood test that detected cancers and with women we have mammograms and pap smears etc...sometimes you find it by accident during a routine exam and that accident may have just saved your life.  cancer is a sad thing and it's so hard to watch people go through this, but i'm always so happy to hear when someone beats the odds and lives.  hopefully someday with modern medicine we can find it before it ever thinks about damaging us.