It’s better than a mass e-mail

The NYT has a regular feature called “Voices” where they have audio clips of people telling their story of living with or surviving or losing someone to a certain disease. For some reason, the feature on pancreatic cancer from last fall has been coming up in the health section rotation.

Ah, pancreatic cancer. This is the cancer my mom died from 18 years ago.  I think I was about 12.

Although I think about my mom all the time, and I think a lot about the fact that it was cancer that killed her, I rarely consider just what kind of cancer. I have a friend whose mom was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. My best friend’s mom died of ovarian cancer (on Mother’s Day, that jerk). But rarely do I really stop and think – pancreatic cancer.

This feature allowed me to do that. A five-year survival rate of 5 percent. She barely had a fighting chance. And I am guessing research and treatment has advanced in the last two decades, but the pancreas is a tough one, all hidden away, and the symptoms are like so many other conditions. There’s no high-profile campaign against it with celebrity faces or pink ribbons.

Anyway, I don’t want to bore you with cancer stats, and I am not sure I am going to run out and volunteer with a pacreatic cancer organization (but if there is one, I might look into it… that, and early screening). But it did make me reconsider and reflect on a different aspect of my mom’s disease. It also dredged up a whirl of emotion listening to the survivor stories and wishing my mom could have been among the lucky ones.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 6:51 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.