Most of you likely know how all this started. However, given that this is the first dispatch (post) it’s probably worth setting some context for how I got here.
On February 10th I came home from work with a dull pain in my upper left side. I didn’t think much about it and wrote it off as a gas pain or stress or something of the sort and went about my routine. The next day it was still there. The pain did not stop me from doing anything it was just a subtle discomfort. I picked up some other over-the-counter remedies I thought might help and took them. A couple of days later the pain was unchanged.
I was scheduled to run the Sylamore Creek 25K trail race on Feb 15th so on Friday the 14th I went to the minor med to have it checked out. The nurse said it wasn’t gas and suggested I go the emergency room to get a CT Scan immediately. I asked if it could wait until I was back in town from the race. The nurse said, "I’d go right now."
After 10 min in the waiting room of the ER I was taken back to see a very young doctor and his med student assistant. They did an ultrasound that didn’t show anything, ordered some blood work and put me in line for a CT Scan. The CT scan showed some “mild irritation” on my pancreas and the blood work showed very high levels of lipase. Armed with this, the doctor determined I had a mild case of pancreatitis and should be fine in a couple of weeks. He discharged me and said lay off fatty foods and don’t drink for a few days to a week and I should be ok. He suggested I follow up with my general practitioner in a few weeks.
I wrote this off to middle-age, a flare-up, and promised to eat healthier, etc. but didn’t give it much thought. I even ran the trail race and set my personal record for the course. I saw Bob Weir play at the Ryman too. Around March 11th, just as COVID was setting in, I followed up with my general practitioner. She did a full lab work up and asked me to come back in a couple of weeks. Her theory was that this was some sort of food sensitivity, and she set up a series of tests and studies to isolate it.
We spent 6 weeks trying to get to the bottom of this until the pain started to get a little worse and on May 1, I was recommended to see a GI specialist. The GI doctor immediately ordered an MRI for May 8th. That’s the first time we knew something was wrong. The MRI uncovered a small 3cm mass on the tail of my pancreas and a couple of small lesions on my liver. An endoscopic ultrasound and biopsy on May 19th confirmed pancreatic cancer that appeared to have spread to my liver, suggesting it was stage IV.
There is no good diagnosis with pancreatic cancer. It doesn’t tend to cause problems or symptoms until it is pretty far along. Same with my case. So that is how the news hit - a clearly distraught surgeon in a sterile outpatient recovery room telling me I had 6 - 12 months to live even if I got treatment.
I’m an otherwise healthy 42-year-old husband and father with 3-year-old and 10-month-old girls, and more open projects than I can shake a stick at. What do I do with this news? I did what I knew to do. I called my family and friends and we built a team of counselors to help us understand and navigate the unfamiliar territory of oncology, modern cancer treatment, and the American health care system.
This blog is primarily intended to provide updates on my fight for anyone that is interested. I also hope it might provide some thoughts from my adventure with modern healthcare, and possibly some insights into making sense of all this. That’s it for the first dispatch….