Health Forums Online.

In general, the lingering side effects and delayed effects you may have experienced during treatment should fade away in the months following treatment. Certain side effects may take much longer to regress, though. Difficulty breathing, pain, or weakness may linger for weeks, months, or years. Fatigue often continues for years after treatment. Blood counts can remain low, or low-normal, for months or years after treatment. See Chapter 13, Adverse Effects of Treatment.
If you had chemotherapy and lost some or all of your hair, you might notice as it regrows that its a different color, a different texture, thicker, thinner, curlier, or straighter than it was before treatment. These changes are temporary If you received radiotherapy to the brain, patches of hair lost might not regrow.

Kathleen Houlihan describes the return of her hair:

I have had two haircuts recently, one in December and one last week. By mid-December; I had a very thin covering of hair all over my head, but it was messy-all different lengths-some had never Fallen out but most had and came back in at different times. 50 I had a "cut," which took no time at all, but made it look neat and almost intentional. By now, I definitely have hair; even enough to comb and to run my fingers through.

I had another "cut" last week and had it "pixied up," and I have now quit wearing scarves. It's still extremely short, but it doesn't look bad. In Fact, I've been getting compliments on it. They've all been From people who know what's going on, but they're still compliments! It remains to be seen whether it will turn curly, as is so often the case, or not. There does seem to be a hint of wave in it even now!

Some time later, Kathleen is pleased about the curls in her hair when it was first growing in:
A brief update on my hair. It came in curly! Lots of beautiful curls. It's short, so I just wash it, comb it back, put a little gel on it, and it looks great. However; I had it cut last week, and most of the curls are gone. It's reverting back to being straight. All good things must come to an end, I guess. My husband Holt says maybe I should go back for another round of chemotherapy, but I'm not that desperate for curls!

Venous catheter removal
Many people can't wait to have their central venous catheter removed; others prefer to keep it for a while as a talisman against relapse.
Kathleen Houlihan tells of her experience:
It's gone! I went back to the Cancer Treatment Centers of America For my six-month check-up, six months since the end of chemo, and not only were all the scans clear; but the tumor is gone. It has shrunk down to a scar. In the October and February CT scans, it was stable at 2.5 centimeters, but this time the radiologist says it's not measurable. Neither my husband Holt nor I were expecting this. We both thought I would always have a mass of some size there, and we were just hoping it would be dead scar tissue. But now it's just a scar. It couldn't be better. OF course, it still could come back, but at this point, I'm going to believe I'm cured. The radiologist said it must have been the pilgrimage I made! When pressed about why it continued to shrink after it apparently had leveled off at 2.5 centimeters, he said the radiation can have an effect for quite some time. But I think it was either the pilgrimage or the $200 of MGN3, a super antioxidant, that I took in February. Those were the only two additions to my program since the February CT scan.

And my port is gone, too. I asked the doctor when he thought I could have it removed. Since the tumor is gone and I'm doing so well, he said I could have it out now. So at about noon the next day (Friday), I had the port removed, in the OR, under local anesthesia. The procedure took sixteen minutes and wasn't bad at all. Holt was shocked when I walked out of the OR to find him in the surgery waiting room.

If your stage and type of lung cancer entail an increased risk of recurrence of disease, it might be wise to consider keeping your catheter, especially if additional surgeries with general anesthesia are required to remove it and reinstall it. Weigh the wisdom of keeping it to avoid extra surgery, should it need to be reimplanted, against the inconvenience of keeping it clean, and the increased risk of infection it may entail.