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Vigilance, Early Detection Help Aaron Keenan Beat Lung Cancer

Published Sept. 29, 2023

Father smiling with his wife and their two sons.

The Reason 2023

From the age of 10, Aaron Keenan knew he wanted to be a fighter pilot. He achieved that dream when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, flying F-18 jets and, later, F-15 jets for the Hawaiʻi Air National Guard.

Aaron was committed to an active, healthy lifestyle, and never smoked a cigarette in his life. It's why he never anticipated facing what he did in October 2018.

Aaron began experiencing chest pains and decided to get it checked out. A CT scan revealed that he had a 2-centimenter mass in his right lung.

He was referred to Dr. Samuel Evans, a pulmonologist at Straub Benioff Medical Center, for follow-up.

After multiple inconclusive CT and PET scans, Dr. Evans put Aaron on a six-month routine monitoring regimen. Over the next two years, scans showed 1-milimeter growths but never produced conclusive results.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Aaron was wary of going to the hospital and decided to forego his next scan. Determined to stay ahead of things, Dr. Evans reached out to urge Aaron to continue with the monitoring regimen.

Aaron agreed, and that next CT scan revealed that the mass had alarmingly grown 33% in size within nine months. A CT biopsy finally provided a diagnosis – stage 1A3 lung cancer.

Thanks to early detection and the vigilance of his cancer care team, Aaron didn't have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation and had the option to remove the cancer entirely by surgery.

Today, Aaron is back to surfing, flying and enjoying life with his wife and two sons.


Watch the video below for Aaron's full story and to hear from Aaron, his family and Dr. Evans about this inspiring story of hope.

View transcript
[music]
Ever since the time that I was 10 I just knew what I was going to do on flying Fighters. I flew about 10 years active duty with the Marines flying F-18s. Eventually, I met my wife, Jessica, and we had our first son, Bodhi, and 20 months later we had our second son, Tobias. What's harder flying fighter jets or raising two boys? By far, it's raising two boys.
He's really good with kids. He makes obstacle courses, he plays games with them, and he's wonderful with them. They can't wait for Dad to come home it would be impossible without him. I couldn't fathom being without him.
Well, I was going back for another work block flying with the airline and I was in Guam kind of felt a little bit of pain in the chest area so I didn't know if it was being a pilot concerned about trapped air, but I went into the ER in Guam they did a CT. The doctor came out and she's like, "No trapped air issues or those types of things, but we did find a two-centimeter mass in your upper right lung."
You know, you don't know and your mind naturally goes to the worst-case scenario of cancer. Knowing that the potential of your children's father's health is in Jeopardy is really scary.
Flying back just thinking about the only son we had at the time was Bodhi, he was two years old and we had another one on the way.
Aaron met with me and we ordered a repeat CT and that showed what's called the ground glass nodule. You always worry about malignancy, but Aaron was only 48 years old and a never smoker so it would be pretty unusual to have lung cancer in that setting.
It's not showing up necessarily as lung cancer, so we're continuing the monitoring program six to nine months with the CT scans. 
We had a negative pet scan, we had a negative bronchoscopy, yet with each six-month CT on follow-up the thing continued to not only be present but grow a little bit even if that growth was minimal, it still concerned us. 
As we started getting closer towards the next CT scan it was basically right in the heat of the pandemic.
It's the peak of COVID and nobody wants to come into the healthcare setting. We just had a heart-to-heart discussion that you're due for this follow-up scan and it's important that we stay on top of this and we need to get the scan.
With him being so thorough and recommending, I'm like "okay, we need to get this looked at." Unfortunately, this time the results came back, and it had a growth of about 30 percent. We followed that up with a CT guided biopsy and that is where the diagnosis of lung cancer came.
Knowing the potential of what can happen is really scary, and the idea of him not being around to be a dad and to see his kids was hard.
Once it settled in, with the reality of what and where we were at, my first thoughts are basically I'm going to have to try fighting this as best I can.
Aaron is an excellent surgical candidate he was very healthy and active. The surgery was successful without complication.12 additional lymph nodes were taken, and all were negative for spread of the tumor and he was pretty much back to his usual activities within two to three months.
He was spared what many other cancer patients have to go through, and we owe that to Dr. Evans being on top of it and being proactive and monitoring this regularly and making sure he had got his scans.
I'm proud of this case and that we didn't just assume this was all benign. You have to stay on top of it and stay vigilant until you know what it is.
It is so important to get this early detection. This is how people can survive and have a quality of life and be with their families.

A fighter pilot with the Hawaiʻi Air National Guard, Aaron Keenan was committed to an active, healthy lifestyle, and never smoked a cigarette in his life. When a CT scan at Straub Benioff Medical Center revealed Aaron had stage 1A3 lung cancer, he and his young family were caught completely by surprise. Watch the video to learn more about Aaron’s inspiring story and find out how he’s doing today.

Early detection of lung cancer can help increase survival rates. Talk with your primary care physician for more information about lung cancer and available screening options.

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