Posted on 11/08/2010 9:20:11 AM PST by Nachum
Ali Stunt stunned doctors when she beat the odds and survived pancreatic cancer. She talks to Elizabeth Grice about the need for early diagnosis.
As soon as she regained consciousness, Ali Stunt checked the clock in the recovery room. It was 1.30pm. The time told her all she needed to know: instead of having been wheeled back to the hospital ward as inoperable, she’d had five hours of surgery to remove a cancerous growth in her pancreas. Bleary as she was, she understood the significance of waking up in the afternoon.
“It meant they had managed to operate and that gave me a chance,” she says. “Most people with this disease are diagnosed so late that surgery is not possible. Even so, I had no idea how serious it was until my consultant oncologist, meaning to be reassuring, said: 'I do know a patient who has lived for six years…’”
Ali Stunt is 45, the glamorous mother of two teenage boys who has interrupted her PhD on meteorites to campaign to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. “Statistically, I should be dead,” she says. “I only narrowly qualified for surgery. If I had waited a month for a scan on the NHS, I would probably not be here today. After my operation, I learnt that only three per cent of those diagnosed survive for five years, but what really woke me up to the need for action was that this figure has not changed in 40 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“PhD on meteorites.....”
enough said.
The nasty truth about nationalized health care is that they would rather wait until there is no sense in treating you because it is cheaper for the state for you to die than to treat you.
A neighbor lady is recovering from pancreatic cancer. They didn’t expect her to live. A good friend recently died of pancreatic cancer and lung cancer, when they thought he was responding favorably to treatment. Very nasty disease. Pray we can stop Zerocare.
So is my sister. And she never smoked or drank. Go figure. Luckily she had a rare type that is operable. Close call.
Someone told me that even if the cancer is the size of a pencil lead tip, you’d better get things in order, and fast.
This is some seriously nasty stuff.
I lost my best friend to this awful disease.
It's just one of those things.
Of our self, we can do nothing, it is God to which nothing is impossible.
We must sincerely turn to God in obedience to His Word and seek mercy and forgiveness for our careless, selfish, self centered, ways, believing He will hear us and answer our prayers.
He tells us how to live and when we ignore it, God is not blessings our errant ways. Sodom and Gomorrah, 400 years in Egypt, 40 years in the wilderness,the Fall of Jerusalem, ... and much more ... all show us what not to do.
Why is it man never learns? Few do.
Father, bless us in our day, in Jesus name, amen.
Watched my maternal grandfather die of pancreatic cancer. It is a very nasty form of cancer; it ravages the victim’s body. The biggest reason it’s got such a high mortality rate, is that symptoms of this cancer don’t often appear until it has already progressed into stage 3 or 4. By that time, it usually has metastasized to other organs. Those that manage to survive this cancer, the ‘lucky ones’, often found out about the cancer as a by-product of some other medical scan or procedure and found the growth while in stage 1 or 2.
/sarq off
An old friend of ours had pancreatic cancer and was operated on last spring. So far, so good. We were not very hopeful when we first heard about it, but it looks as if they may have caught it in time.
Back twenty years ago I crewed for him and his wife in our local sailboat races while I was undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkins, and they were very helpful and supportive.
My wife’s sister died of pancreatic cancer. 5 weeks from diagnosis to the end. She was only in her late 40’s. Its a fast moving killer.
She is probably getting a PhD in astrophysics or astronomy and her thesis, not degree, has something to do with meteorites. This has more to do with the incompetence of the article’s author.
Can this kind of cancer just be there without symptoms and then suddenly show up all over the place? My grandson got married on Aug. 21 to a very strong, healthy athletic girl. Less than a week later she had to return home from their honeymoon with terrible pain in her lower abdomen and back. After they finally got finished testing her and coming up with a diagnosis by the beginning of Oct., she had cancer like a wildfire in her brain, lungs, heart, ovaries, lymph system and they didn’t know where it had started. They didn’t mention pancreas but could that have been the source? I know you probably don’t know but I am just thinking with my fingertips. We have one of the best cancer hospitals in Canada but it seems to me they took an awful long time to come to a diagnosis—a whole month. She had her 2nd chemo 3 weeks ago and they took until last Thursday to give her another CAT scan. Does this seem really long to you? We’re all having a really hard time even believing any of this is happening.
I’m not a doctor, so I can’t comment on all cancers, I’m only relating my experiences with my grandfather’s cancer and what we (my family) learned about it during his diagnosis and treatment.
My grandfather’s first symptoms were extreme ‘cramp-like’ pains in his abdomen. He went in for diagnosis, and within about three days learned it was cancer, but it took another week or two before they could say exactly the type and extent of the growth. However, once they did, they told him that the pancreatic cancer had already progressed to stage 4, which is basically final stage (ie terminal). He was given four months maximum, even with chemo.
The doctors told us that pancreatic cancer has such a high mortality rate (something like 95% mortality) because ‘symptoms’ don’t appear until the cancer is already very advanced, usually too advanced to cure. My grandfather was a very strong man, very athletic for his age, and was one of those guys who was never sick. Then this hit him and he literally withered away over four months. It was very hard on all of us.
Thanks for your reply. I’m sorry that you lost him so quickly. We and many are are praying for our dear beautiful girl but her prognosis is not in any way hopeful and I’m going to be very surprised if she makes it till Christmas.
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