When a cancer like pancreatic or ovarian is found very early, usually because docs are looking for something else, the prognosis is much better than when symptoms lead to diagnosis. I think the RBG’s pancreatic cancer was of this situation.
I found this in a New York Times article
“That Justice Ginsberg is alive 10 years after being treated for pancreatic cancer — which is often rapidly fatal — indicates that she probably had a relatively slow-growing form of the disease. Therefore, Dr. Flores said, he expected that the tumors in her lungs would also tend to be slow-growing, what he calls “turtles.”
I remember reading that the time that she had a unique type of pancreatic cancer. When that was actually treatable. The type my sister had has a very high fatality rate, no matter when it is caught. Sadly it is resistant to chemotherapy and radiation and grows very quickly, and they haven’t figured out a way to slow it down yet.