So, my brother is 35 years old. He just started his family with his wife that he’s been with since he was 15 years old. In March 2019 when he was 34 years old, he started having upper stomach pain and sometimes lower back pain. He CAN NOT stand any type of stomach pain ( just like me) so he went straight to the doctors. We have a family history of gallstones, I had gal stones, our mother had gallstones , and our grandmother had gallstones etc.

So we thought for sure this was going to be gallstones. They did a ultrasound and after few days the ultrasound came back and told my brother to head straight to a hospital. The doctor didn’t say much, but he went to the hospital anyways. They did blood work there and few hours later we got the results back. The lab showed something was going on with his pancreas, we figured it might be a cyst or maybe his pancreas wasn’t working properly. The doctor told him that they couldn’t rule out pancreatic cancer but it’s very rare for someone under 50-60 years old to get this type of cancer. So we wasn’t too worried about it being cancer.

Few weeks goes by and we had a CT done. The ct scan showed a mass on his pancreas, the doctors still couldn’t confirm rather or not it could be a cyst or a tumor. If it is a tumor we were hoping it wouldn’t be cancerous. So, we scheduled a biopsy. After the biopsy results came in, it was official he had pancreatic cancer. This news was so hard to take for my family. As many of you know that has had family members with this type of cancer, there’s only 3% chance of survival and most patients doesn’t make it past 3 months.

So, his oncologist scheduled a PET scan to see what we are dealing with and if it’s spread any. We crossed our fingers and prayed that it wasn’t in stage 4. When pancreatic cnscer goes into stage 4 there’s almost no chance of beating it. Luckily we got the diagnosis of Stage 2. This was April 2019. He got his port installed and started chemo within a week after his PET scan.

Our main goal in treatment was to get the tumor to shrink enough for the Whipple surgery.

In June 2019 it was end of his chemo cycle, he got very sick from this strong chemo. His oncologist told him that elderly couldn’t handle this type of chemo it’s too rough on the body. He would throw up every 10 minutes and was too weak to eat or even walk to the bathroom. It was miserable seeing him being like this. It was officially scan time. We crossed our fingers and hoped the tumor shrunk. But when we got the results in it broke our hearts even more than stage 2 diagnosis. He was officially in stage 4. It had spread to his liver , his oncologist said he has 8 months left to live, If even that. I learned that you can grieve over somebody that’s still alive. It felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest. I cried every 5 minutes for weeks. With Stage 4 diagnosis, he wasn’t a candidate for surgery anymore.

But my brother is warrior and we didn’t have time to grieve in our sadness. So, we put our heads together and started calling hospitals all over the country to see if there’s any trail runs or hospitals that specialize in this type of cancer. We got a plan together and had consultation to hospitals Texas and John Hopkins. My brother flew out to Texas that week and spoke with doctors. We had to put chemo on hold during this time because both hospitals said once you start a new chemo cycle, you can’t stop it and start another treatment course. It left us in a sticky situation since pancreatic cancer spreads like wildfire. Few days later Texas Gave us a answer, they said they won’t take him until he has no hope left.

So, his oncologist got a weaker chemo plan together and he made the tough choice to go ahead on a new cycle of chemo instead of going for a consultation at John Hopkins. We could always get another consultation if this chemo didn’t work. After he started this chemo he felt much better, he didn’t get sick. He would get a little bit nauseous but nothing compared to his first chemo brand. We started seeing improvements in his tumor markers.( it tracks the cancer in your blood) It was 600 when it spread to his liver and it was going down pretty fast. We rescan in August 2019 after a cycle of the new chemo. And his liver spots was gone!

We continued the treatment and continued seeing improvements in his tumor marker. In December 2019 his tumor marker went to 37. A normal rage marker goes from 0-36 I believe. Since his markers was good she decided to do a PET scan few days before Christmas. We were all nervous because if it was bad news it would ruin our Christmas but we actually got a miracle. There was no hot spots on his PET scan which meant no active cancer was picked up. We celebrated, few days after Christmas he met with his surgeon to get a new plan together. He decided he was ready for the Whipple surgery, we were so happy to be a candidate again. He got a official date, it was suppose to be on Jan 27.

He got off chemo for few weeks to get his immune system ready for surgery, it was nerve racking since cancer can spread any time and they would have to close him back up if it spreads. January comes around and we get a call saying there’s been a surgery open on Jan 9. So, we get a ct done and the results wasn’t very good but wasn’t bad either. His tumor was too close to the main artery so surgery had been canceled. We were bummed but he said we will shoot for April and in the mean time he will go through radiation and a chemo pill. The chemo pill made him very sick, it was closely related to his first chemo brand that he tried in the beginning and his tumor markers went up. So they switch his chemo to half of dose of his previous chemo that worked for him.

On March the 4 we got some scans done and it showed a halo effect around his tumor, and his surgeon said when a tumor is dead a shell forms around it creating a halo effect on scans. So his surgery is back on for April 10 2020. There will be no more scans, so surgery will definitely happen this time. Its a one shot thing and we need a lot of prayers. I wanted to share his story for those who are battling cancer also. He’s been incredibly lucky to be a l alive this long and having such success with treatments. His oncologist never had a pancreatic patient to succeed like this before. She even told him sorry for not believing in him. Thank you for reading 😊