My Grandad’s Pancreatic Cancer Story – For Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month

Just under two years ago, my parents came into my room and woke me up. I’m not sure what time it was exactly but it must have been the early hours of the morning. I knew without being told that it was about my grandad. They told me he’d passed away.

It wasn’t a complete surprise; we all knew David wasn’t well. He’d had a stroke a few months ago and had ongoing health issues that the doctors were trying to figure out. Nothing had been mentioned about pancreatic cancer though. In fact, the doctors still didn’t know what was wrong with him so he had to have a post-mortem and that’s when he got his diagnosis.

I found out a lot about pancreatic cancer after that. I found out that having such a late diagnosis isn’t unusual because the symptoms often go undetected or, if they are picked up, they could be misdiagnosed for another, milder condition. And I found out that the only effective treatment is surgery which, unfortunately, can only be done if the cancer is caught really early. So, even if David had been diagnosed in life, there probably wasn’t much that could have been done.

In a way, I’m glad that David wasn’t ill for very long. Before the stroke, he was someone who had the balance right. He knew what was important and what wasn’t worth worrying about. He knew that even the simplest things could be interesting and enjoyable. But after the stroke, he lost himself. He was such a people person and then suddenly being around people was too much for him. I didn’t like seeing him like that.

But I wish we knew what it was that was making him ill. Even knowing now that there was likely nothing that could be done to cure the cancer or even prolong the time we had with him (life expectancy of someone with pancreatic cancer is 4-8 months on average), we could have made his last couple of months more comfortable. I’m sorry that we didn’t get to do that for him. And I’m sorry that, because of the post-mortem, his body couldn’t go to science like he had planned – he wanted to contribute to society even in death.

November 2016 is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and I’ve been sharing a few things on my personal social media accounts to try and tell people about this cancer. This blog post is my way of rounding off the month. Below is an infographic I made with some more facts about pancreatic cancer including some of the more prominent symptoms which you can educate yourself on. One fact that I didn’t include is that pancreatic cancer only receives 1% of funding from major cancer researching bodies. I’m hoping that this year’s awareness month will help change that figure and more effective treatments or diagnosis methods can be found.