HOUSTON – It’s a disease that has staggering statistics. The current five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is only 11%.
November is pancreatic cancer awareness month. It’s an opportunity to educate the community about this deadly disease.
My mother Lisa was the most welcoming, selfless, and kind person I ever knew. I didn’t find out until after my wedding in March of 2019 that she was experiencing pain and dealing with symptoms that aligned with pancreatic cancer. She shared with me that she actually started to develop stomach and back pain in 2018 but didn’t think anything of it.
“It’s often pulled down by the patient as indigestion and they think it’s heartburn. There is stomach pain located in the mid part of your belly area,” explains Dr. Priya Ramshesh. “Another symptom would be weight loss and lack of appetite.”
Dr. Ramshesh is an oncologist at Houston Methodist Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center at The Woodlands. She says the symptoms are often overlooked because some think the pain is from something they ate or is even a muscular issue.
“That is the biggest challenge with pancreatic cancer is that we seldom catch it at an early stage,” explained Dr. Ramshesh. “It’s often diagnosed in people over 50 and if they have diabetes that is also a red flag.”
For my mom, she was misdiagnosed twice and quickly learned she would have an uphill battle for the rest of her life.
“It’s roughly 65,000 patients a year and 50,000 die of the disease. It’s very aggressive, very lethal cancer still,” explains Dr. Ramsay Camp, chief of surgical oncology at Baylor College of Medicine.
Dr. Camp says although the diagnoses for this disease are grim, there is some promising news. He says there is a clinical trial currently underway that could help those with early-stage pancreatic cancer.
“We’re hopeful that by combining chemotherapy with immunotherapy and treating at an early stage where surgery may be possible, we can get ahead of the disease,” says Dr. Camp.
My mom went through surgery, chemo, and radiation for over a year. She fought hard but succumbed to the disease just a few days before my 32nd birthday.
To learn more about Baylor College of Medicine recruiting volunteers for its pancreatic cancer clinical trial, click here.