I have a friend, she's 70 and she has stage four lung cancer, she is only 90lbs, and I'm wondering even though?

70 year sold and 90 pounds could be relatively healthy and strong, or frail and in poor health (on top of the cancer).

Stage IV lung cancer is bad news. It has an overall life expectancy of 8 months and a 5 year survival rate of less than 10%. Of course, these are trailing statistics, so it takes a while for any new treatments to filter in.

If she is otherwise in good health, I expect that the doctors are trying to beat the odds and see if they can get her at least a few more years. If she is frail, I would be lobbying for palliative care, but she may not want to hear that option. My dad fought his cancer to the end, even though the chemo treatments were probably harder on his body that the cancer was toward the end. I kept trying to see if he would back off, build up some reserve strength so he could tolerate the treatments better, but I think he was afraid that signal to my mom he was giving up on treatment.

Keep in mind, we all die. Life is the real death sentence, it is just we don't know how long. It is sad to lose anyone that you are close to, but 70 is not a bad run, especially if she had a good life up to this point. Hopefully, she improves, but the odds are not on her side.

Stage 4 lung cancer is not curable it doesn't matter what your age is.

If she's getting chemotherapy, it's purely palliative at the this stage.

CommonSense is a common idiot