Intense, solemn Ray Romines spoke with an audible heaviness in his voice, managing a stoic smile.

His intermittently wet eyes betrayed the fears of a life interrupted. Cancer is a scary ordeal, he said, sitting at the kitchen table in his New Haven home. "You don't know what to do or where to go."

When he was diagnosed with advanced-stage lung cancer a year and a half ago, Romines, now 63, was given five years to live - if everything went right. That's longer than his neighbor lasted, he said, gesturing toward a nearby house on Sunnymede Drive. Like most people with lung cancer, his neighbor died within a year of diagnosis.

Faced with his own mortality, Romines has been somewhat paralyzed by indecision. He's not sure how he should fill his days.

Shortly before he found out he had cancer, Romines completed his associate degree in construction technology at Ivy Tech Community College. He planned to join his son's heating and air-conditioning business after he retired from making pistons for cars and light trucks at KUS in Fort Wayne. He'd wanted to wait a few years until his Social Security benefits kicked in to make the switch.

Instead, after he found out about the cancer, he quit working altogether. (His wife, Kathy, works third shift at Wal-Mart.) And he essentially put major life decisions on hold. "I'm just going to wait and see how things go this winter," he said on a crisp November day.

Others living in Romines' ZIP code face their own battles with the disease that kills more people in the U.S. than any other cancer.

Adjusting for age, lung cancer has afflicted more people per capita in ZIP code 46803 - on Fort Wayne's east side - than in any other city ZIP code, according to figures the Indiana State Department of Health gathered for The Journal Gazette. The state said 46803, a working-class tract that extends into New Haven's west side, had 115 reported cases from 1995 to 2005.

A ZIP-code-by-ZIP-code breakdown revealed that the poorest, least-educated ZIP codes in Fort Wayne had the highest lung cancer rates. Given that higher poverty levels and less education usually coincide with higher smoking rates, health officials believe smoking is the most likely culprit. But others contend less prominent causes might be to blame.

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