Pancreatic Cancer

Well, my first real blog. Thought I'd start it with a real topic. Before I go too far, in case anyone is dealing with or knows someone dealing with Pancreatic Cancer, I highly recommend a non profit organization called PanCAN. They help people and their families who've been diagnosed with this cancer. They provide all sorts of great information and support. They also work to increase awareness, education, and raise funds to promote research. You can find them on the web at www.pancan.org Once I figure out how to do links on here, I'll provide it there. They're awesome though and information on pancreatic cancer is sketchy and hard to find but they've got it all for you. My brother died of Pancreatic Cancer in November 2003. He was 38 and had a then 2 year old daughter and his wife. He was diagnosed and died 11 weeks later. He's the only son and last of the line for the family name. They were just about to start trying for another child. My family and I miss him greatly. He was one of those larger than life people and people were just drawn to him. He started out with flu symptoms, then they thought he might have an ulcer. It was all kinda vague and not terribly distressing. This though is typical of pancreatic cancer. They were just about to start checking out the ulcer idea when he had pain in his leg that sent him to the ER. It turned out to be a blood clot. Since he was young and active they thought this ought to be looked at and called an oncologist (cancer doc). They found cancer in his liver that had caused the blood clot. They knew it had metastisized from another origin and then found it to be from the pancreas. Had the cancer in his liver not caused the blood clot, it would likely have been weeks before the cancer was found and he would have died much sooner from the time he was diagnosed. Treatment for this cancer once it's metastisized is pretty minimal. And it's not often found before then because the symptoms are vague and sometimes not there at all. The life expectancy is 3-5 months from diagnosis. It's hard to believe that this cancer has a 99% mortality rate, is the 4th leading cancer killer and yet is the least funded of all major cancers. It kills with a far greater accuracy than breast cancer or any other cancer but hardly gets any attention. Probably because so few live to tell their story.

One thing I would say to anyone with a loved one who is dying is to make yourself take some time and say goodbye to them. The hospice nurse made all of my family do this. It's very hard to say to someone you know they're dying and you are saying your goodbyes to them. But I'm so glad the hospice nurse made us do this. A couple of days before he died, we all took private time to say goodbye and say the things we needed to say to him. It was incredibly hard but I now know that I said the things to him I wanted to say. I don't have regrets that I wish I'd had the chance to tell him something.

I wanted to start off my blogging experience with my brother's story. I knew I would want to write about it so now it is done and I can take my blogging experience any direction I want to go.