Did you know more people die of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined? That includes men and women.

You're probably thinking there's some culpability there, because most of these people are smokers. And while a large percentage of people with lung cancer do, or did, smoke -- there is a growing population of people, more than 1 in 10, who have never smoked a cigarette. Yet they are being diagnosed with this deadly disease.

This story is about a young New Carlisle husband and father of two who is in the fight of his life, and he never picked up in a cigarette.

He is sharing his story so others will understand that you do not have to be a smoker to get lung cancer.

Spending time around the kitchen having ice cream with his two kids, Ethan and Sophia, 30-year-old Brandon Hora and his wife Tiffiany may look like any other young couple on a summer day.

But they're not.

Two years ago, at just 28 years old, Brandon and his doctors thought, after having a chest x-ray, that he had walking pneumonia. "I had a very dry cough, normal activities playing with the kids, walking up and down the street, I felt winded."

Treated with antibiotics, Brandon's symptoms didn't worsen, but they didn't go away so he knew something wasn't right.

That's why the then-28-year-old was in shock two years ago when a follow-up cat scan showed he had stage four lung cancer, with a 1 percent survival rate.

"I never smoked, I was healthy," he says.

Brandon is a real estate appraiser so he never worked in a job that might have predisposed him to lung cancer, and the news he got was unbelievable.

"In the beginning we got a sense of typically you've got three to six months to live," he says.

He and Tiffiany point to the growing evidence supporting the importance of cat scans, over x-rays, to find lung cancer early on.

Whether finding it one month earlier would have made a difference is hard to say, but Brandon says their lives forever changed on July 27, 2009.

Brandon says he questioned his condition. "How did I go from having a walking pneumonia to having lung cancer?"

Doctors thought the prognosis was so grim they told Brandon and Tiffiany not to go home and do their own research. But with two small children, this couple, who were friends since grade school, put all their efforts into living.

Tiffiany told us, "The cancer cells were traveling throughout his body," and Brandon added he was not a candidate for surgery, "because it's wrapped around my pulmonary artery, it was just too dangerous to try and go in and take that out."

The Horas sent his scans to premiere cancer centers like M.D. Anderson, Moffitt Cancer Center and Massachusetts General and Brandon says they were getting the same story. "Nobody would touch it because of the location."

But Tiffiany says giving up was never a choice.

"We would look at him and he looked seemingly healthy from the outside and to be told that he might have three to six months left, it didn't fit, it didn't register, it was unacceptable."

Ignoring the doctor's advice to avoid doing their own research, Brandon says Tiffiany got to work.

"She spent hours online, talking with other people who have what I have --gene mutations-- they led us to who we needed to talk to."

The research took them to Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville where they met the doctor who found the gene mutation that led to Brandon's lung cancer.

Brandon says there was no stopping them. "We were willing to go wherever we needed to go to make it right."

Tiffiany added, "We needed to think longer term, only 28 years old and three to six months, we have too much to fight for. We have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old and we are so completely blessed with that, we fight every day for them."

Still undergoing traditional chemotherapy, and taking a drug called Tarceva that he is responding well to, Brandon and Tiffiany have their sights set on the next targeted drug which may mean weekly trips to and from Nashville.

It's been nearly two years since his diagnosis and Brandon says they are trying to live life as normally as possible. "It's almost like we live in three to four month increments."

Tiffiany adds, "We have a scan every three months and we think, okay, we have this window to live and not worry and we have learned to put worry in a box and force normalcy."

Which includes playing outdoors with their children and dogs, something they never take for granted. But Tiffiany admits while they try to keep life balanced they are always aware of the situation they are facing.

"We went to Disney World this last spring and that was a big leap for us because we were so scared to do anything for the first time as a family because we were also hanging on the balance of -- is this also the last time," she explains.

So Brandon continues to work, and spend as much time as he can with Tiffiany and the kids and dogs. Unlike most young couples who think about what vacation they may take next year, the Horas are thinking about living, saying they allow themselves only a few hours once in a while for a pity party.

Brandon still alive two years later remains hopeful, "I've seen the medicines work, I've seen the medicines fail and we just have to keep pushing forward as hard as we can, keep doing our research and keeping fighting."

His wife adds, "As long as we're able to bridge from one treatment to another, that's one year to another."

One more year of life.

The Horas are blessed to have wonderful friends who started a facebook page, selling Team Hora wrist bracelets to help them with the medical bills not covered by insurance.

And that led to so many followers that they are holding a giant "Chip in for Team Hora" golf scramble Saturday, July 9 at Beechwood Golf Course in LaPorte. There are already 25 foursomes signed up for a day of golf, lunch, prizes and raffles. Registration is at 7:30 a.m. CST and you can just show up that morning if you want to play.

Tiffiany says they will use the proceeds for Brandon's treatment, but if they hit the targeted therapy that finally puts Brandon in remission, they will gladly donate whatever is left to someone else fighting the disease.

For more information you can go to the Team Hora facebook page by clicking here.