Beating pancreatic cancer: one woman’s story of how she survived a stage four diagnosis
- A Post contributor who was told she had as little as six months to live explains how her tumour is now stable and she is off painkillers
- A radical diet change, releasing suppressed emotions and embracing social support are among her survival tips
A cancer diagnosis can be a crushing blow; a late-stage one even more so. But knowing who to turn to and having trusted friends to guide you along the journey can have a crucial impact on your ability and motivation to beat the odds.
Here, a Post contributor who wishes to remain anonymous shares how she survived a late-stage pancreatic cancer diagnosis.
My husband’s face turned an acute shade of pain – an image I still try hard to forget. The associate professor in general surgery had walked in, done a perfunctory analysis of my CAT scan and pronounced I had stage four pancreatic cancer. He was brusque, giving me six months to live, perhaps a year with chemo.
Job done, he walked out and left us to a subordinate who administered a mini science lesson on the human pancreas and assigned me to the oncology department. We had waited for about 90 minutes for this scheduled appointment in mid-May last year. I had been writhing in physical pain, and my husband had been beside himself, not knowing how to help.
This was the closest major hospital to our home in central Singapore. In August 2017, a specialist whom I had consulted there about an inexplicable surge in my blood sugar had turned down my request for a CA 19-9 cancer tumour marker blood test. Any result would be inconclusive and not useful, he said. This was despite the fact that my mum had died of pancreatic cancer.
Now here I was, 10 months later, weighing 24kg (53 pounds) less, with an inoperable tumour. My confidence in the doctors there evaporated, so we switched hospitals. I trusted that God would see us through and had good plans for us.