A lot of the posts I have made prior to this one have been typical health and wellness topics: food recipes, travel, and how that relates positively to my mental health. But if I didn’t eventually get around to why I wanted to make a blog in the first place, it would always be in the back of my mind.
Having been through something as devastating as the path that pancreatic cancer evokes on those diagnosed and their loved ones, I personally know how many websites out there already perfectly define the symptoms to watch out for. I am not claiming to be inventing any new information. I am writing my father’s experience with early symptoms and signs of pancreatic cancer in hopes that the more articles and blog posts written, the more awareness there will be. My hope is that this blog post is found my someone scrolling through Pinterest or hopping around on Google and it makes them aware of possible symptoms. Maybe not today, but one day when their loved one says they loss their appetite or notice their skin is slightly yellow, an alarm will go off in their head and they will think back to this blog.
According to pancreatic.org, the average death rate for pancreatic cancer after 1 year is 20%. After 5 years it is just 9%. My dad was diagnosed in October 2018 and passed in May 2020. I am so proud of my dad for being part of the 20%. He had every complication for every procedure you could have and still managed to outlive 80% of his peers. He will always be the strongest person I have ever known.
I could brag about him for days (and I probably will through my blogging journey), but let’s get down to the early signs to look out for that hopefully could aide in catching this disease before it is too late.
When doing research for this blog to make sure my experiences with my dad lined up with what the medical community shared, I got frustrated in all of the information being harder to find than other cancers. All the free pictures I could use, all of the numerous cancer social media sites to follow were centered on breast cancer or other more common cancers. I understand the reasoning, but I can’t help but wonder if while not as common, if the deadliest cancer needs to have more awareness and representation in social media.
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1) Weight Loss
The first sign I can remember, looking back, was extreme weight loss. Like many of us do in January of a new year, my dad focused on losing weight and eating right. My dad was a pretty big guy and with some push from me, he started to make changes to live a healthier lifestyle. I remember sitting at my parents kitchen table that January cooking and measuring out meals to keep track of his calories and macros. After a few months, he started to notice some changes. By October when he was diagnosed, he had lost a good amount of weight. Obviously we will never know when the cancer formed, but I sometimes wonder if I hadn’t been so inclined to push a new healthy lifestyle, if it would have been more alarming earlier on when he was losing weight. If he hadn’t been trying and it was just falling off, would it have signaled to us sooner that something could be wrong?
2) Nausea
I first remember hearing about my father feeling sick in September 2018. About a month before he was diagnosed. I had tagged along with one of my friends on a work trip to Germany. We had separate flights coming home, so after traveling alone for over a day, my parents picked me up from the airport. On the way home we stopped for sushi and I can remember them talking about how my dad had been feeling sick. It was the first day he had felt better and was able to eat a real meal. At the time I thought he was have GI issues or he was getting over a stomach bug. I have the conversation burned into my brain…which is odd considering I thought nothing of it at the time.
3) Abdominal and Back Pain
After that sushi date, the symptoms didn’t stop. At the end of September 2018, beginning of October 2018, a severe pain in his abdomen and back started to worsen. So much so, that at times he could barely function. I think most of us experience abdominal pain in our lifetime, and assume (because usually it is) just a ulcer, a gallstone, etc. Annoying conditions that flare up, but nothing to be too concerned about.
October 2018 was the month I was turning the big 3-0. Going to California for crushing season and seeing all the beautiful wineries was something I talked about doing for my thirtieth birthday for quite some time. I have a group of friends/family that love wine equally as much, so we booked a trip earlier that year. I was so excited. I am so happy to this day that my dad got to be there. He was miserable a lot of the time though. We would be making dinner, listening to music, and drinking wine in our AirBnb and my dad would be laying in the bedroom trying manage his pain.
When I look back on that trip, I think of the wonderful memories, but I also think of how much he was suffering and in pain and we weren’t even aware. Yes, he would need to lay down. Yes, he wouldn’t be able to drink much wine. But he never missed an activity. We went to every winery with us and made sure that I had the best birthday possible. I will always value that trip. We were ignorant to what was to come, but we got to experience something together without the looming pancreatic cancer in the air.
Every family get together or little vacation we were able to take after his diagnosis was clouded with…what if this the last time we experience this. What if we go to this event and I start to feel sick? California was our last bit of normalcy.
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4) Jaundice
Jaundice isn’t necessarily an “early” symptom for pancreatic cancer, but it is a serious one. Jaundice is when you have an excess amount of bilirubin in your bile duct near your liver. Most people are familiar with this term because of newborn babies. It is very common for newborns to experience jaundice.
My dad was finally diagnosed when he was taken to the emergency room to do the severe pain he had been experiencing. They had found a mass in his pancreas, but at that point doctors were unaware if it was cancer or not. Once in the hospital, I can remember him raising his arm and his hospital gown moved. I could see his skin was VERY yellow. His eyes did not seem very yellow (as sometimes happens with jaundice), but his skin was glowing.
Because he had been told there was something in his pancreas, it was only natural that I had Googled possibilities and knew jaundice was a symptom of pancreatic cancer. It was only a few hours after that initial emergency room visit that a biopsy was performed and it was confirmed that he did have Stage III Pancreatic Cancer.
Obviously there is nothing that can prepare you will that diagnosis- whether it is you or someone close to you. I just hope that I can be a support to those who have been through the same thing or are going through it now.
I am sure in a future blog I will be telling our experiences with treatment and the actual cancer process, but for this blog, I just wanted to tell what symptoms we saw and hopefully be a light to others who may be going through something similar.
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