​For Michael Blackstone, a cancer diagnosis started with a seemingly benign pain in his right shoulder. The Detroit Pistons’ executive vice president of basketball operations since 2024, Blackstone was an assistant general manager with the New Orleans Pelicans when the pain began during the 2023 offseason. The team medical staff worked on it for several weeks, believing it to be an out-of-place rib. It got worse after Las Vegas Summer League, though, prompting Blackstone to meet with his primary care physician in Florida. She ordered an x-ray, which led to a CT scan, which led to a PET scan and, finally, a biopsy that confirmed the reason behind his discomfort.THE NEXT STEP? Why Cade Cunningham hiked mountains to take Pistons to the summitBlackstone, who is 54 and a lifelong nonsmoker, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. It had already metastasized to his spine, hence the pain. Since July 2023, he has been in treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. But as shocking as the news was, it came with a silver lining: A daily pill is keeping him alive. His particular lung cancer mutation, EGFR, has a targeted prescription medicine – osimertinib, with the brand name of Tagrisso – that blocks a protein that causes cancer cells to grow and multiply. The median patient taking osimertinib has a progression-free survival – a measure of the length of time without the cancer spreading – of 18.9 months, according to WebMD. Blackstone underwent one round of radiation on his lung not long after starting his medication. Unfortunately, doctors found cancerous activity in his spine earlier this year. In August, he was treated with what he calls an “Incredible Hulk”-level of radiation to try to eliminate that activity. Because it takes time for radiation to build, he expects the peak impact of the resulting fatigue to hit this week. The ultimate goal is for his cancer to eventually become a chronic disease that can be managed, rather than a death sentence. The five-year survival rate for his type of lung cancer is 12%, according to the American Cancer Society. “We know eventually the drug will fail,” Blackstone told the Free Press on Friday, Sept. 18. “Eventually the cancer will break through; we just don’t know how long it will be.“You try not to pay attention to all of the bad parts of the data, but it is what it is. So I’ve had to make peace with what I have and fight, and fight with everything I have in me. And that’s what we’re doing.” Blackstone recently made the decision to go public with his disease as a warning to other people to take their health seriously. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Nonsmokers account for only 10-20% of cases, and though most cases occur to people over the age of 65, diagnoses in younger people have been on the rise. Because lungs lack pain-sensing nerve endings, he likely would’ve gone undiagnosed had it not metastasized to his spine, which