Pancreatic Cancer in the Spotlight
Wednesday March 12, 2008
Pancreatic Cancer is enjoying the spotlight since the announcement that Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with it. I recently got hooked on the details of another case of pancreatic cancer, that of Randy Pausch. Pausch is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006 when his children were just 4, 2, and 3 months old. He began battling the disease right away and has chronicled his journey in his own blog. I say that I'm hooked on the details because I get to follow his battle while getting a glimpse of his strength and character. Randy's courage and grace is truly an inspiration.
Randy soared to stardom when his lecture about achieving your childhood dreams, "The Last Lecture", became highly publicized. He wrote the lecture for his own children but it now has a world wide audience, even being translated into chinese. The lecture is wonderful and moving and I encourage anyone who is interested to watch it and share.
Comments
May I ask, what is a “curative treatment” when there is no cure for Pancreatic cancer? Why would anyone continue an “aggressive treatment” when it depletes the body and creates the perfect environment for the cancer to thrive? The doctors are not looking for a cure or treatment. Instead they are mistreating 40,000+ patients a year, giving them false hope, charging a fortune for the treatments that don’t work and turning their few good days left on this earth into bad ones. In my opinion, the only thing a doctor should do for a Pancreatic cancer patient is leave them alone.
The American Cancer Society, John Hopkins, MD Anderson (to name a few) HAVE FAILED. All of these people are dying every year from this awful cancer and what do they have to offer -NOTHING.. It is horrible. Does anybody understand how many people are dying from this every year and nobody is doing anything about it? What if it was your loved one who was diagnosed, had 3 months to live and nobody could help? Your family would be devastated as you watch the life being squeezed out of your loved one.
Those who can make a difference obviously don’t know how it must feel to suffer so much without any help. It is all politics. One day someone in the spot light will be diagnosed and then suddenly these “cancer experts” will allocate a portion of their budget to research Pancreatic cancer. I know currently there is not a great deal of funds allocated to the research of Pancreatic cancer because I was told so by the doctors at MD Anderson when my father was diagnosed in September 2007. Just to give you all a bit of useless information, if you research something for 7 straight months day in and day out and all the pages you look at (cancer hospitals included) are not updated after 7 months it is not hard to figure out THEY ARE NOT DEDICATING THE TIME OR THE RESOURCES TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
I am going to put this message out there and I hope I can figure out a way for “little me” to make a big difference. It is absolutely un-American to let 40,000+ people die a year and do nothing about it. It makes me sick to my stomach.
I know the doctors do not have any options and are using the only treatments available for their patients. However, the ethical thing for them to do is be honest about what the treatment offers – Nothing. Then they should spend some time encouraging their colleagues to research and make a difference.
The cancer community in the United States has failed every Pancreatic cancer patient. It is a shame and I have lost faith in our system.
Randy Pausch isn’t having aggressive curative treatment. All he is doing, which he is fully aware of, is buying time with palliative chemotherapy and now liver cancer treatment. That’s all you can do, unfortunately, with metastized pc.
The only hope for pancreatic cancer patients is Whipple surgery and even then it too often fails, as it did with Randy.
I agree, in part, with the previous comment. If my family had known what the real chances were for chemo to do any good (surgery wasn’t an option) I’m not it would have made sense for our loved one.
Randy Pausch is one of my heroes for what he has done to bring pancreatic cancer into the limelight – he has given patients, caregivers, and others who care a ray of hope. Not hope for a cure, there isn’t one now, but hope that maybe there will be a focus on research that will eventually find a cure and save lives.
Thanks for sharing the link to Randy’s blog. His “Last Lecture” is truly inspirational!