damn it (now what?)

I'm not a Patrick Swayze fan.  Not that I didn't enjoy him in movies from time to time, but I never understood the rabid love so many members of my sex have for Dirty Dancing ... and that "love scene" in Ghost practically ruined Unchained Melody for me.  But god damn it, I take this news personally.  Shit, shit, shit ... one more person diagnosed with pancreatic cancer ... one more person blindsided by a disease that doesn't get much research money because nobody survives long enough to take on the role of spokesperson/advocate for it. 

This disease took my mother, it took my cousin Michael ... it took famous and talented people like Pavarotti and Michael Landon, Joan Crawford and Rex Harrison and Donna Reed and Juliet Prowse.  It's also kicking the ass of the fabulous Randy Pausch (the guy who you may have heard of when he became a media sensation last year for his "last lecture" at carnegie mellon university) and now it's got Patrick Swayze too. 

While we're all aware that we don't get out of this life alive, if you get the pancreatic cancer diagnosis, you pretty much know what train is taking you out.  (you also know it's going to be relatively fast ride, and it won't be pretty.)  And even though it's up there with breast and lung cancer in terms of how many people it kills, pancreatic cancer gets way less research funding.  I read an article just the other day where a doctor said his colleagues wondered why he went into pancreatic cancer research: People didn't think there was any hope, he said. That's because there aren't any early detection tests, and by the time symptoms show up and the disease is diagnosed, it's usually too late to do anything about it.  Some people, like Randy Pausch (and my mom) are able to have surgery that may help the odds, but even with the surgery, only a very few survive to 5 years after the diagnosis.  The majority of people don't find out they have it until well past the point when surgery is an option, and they wind up dead within 6 - 9 months.  My mom lasted 10.  Much of it sucked.

Who'd want to put their energy and money into something that has been considered a losing battle for years? But how will that change if nobody puts research dollars into it?

My apologies for the bummer-ish nature of this post ('specially after nearly 2 weeks of quiet), but I've been thinking about this stuff a lot lately, since my mother will be gone 4 years at the end of this month.  And somehow, hearing this news today about an actor (who i'm not even a big fan of), I'm suddenly incensed.  In the four years since my mom died there's very little that's new in the world of pancreatic cancer research and the diagnosis is still - for all intents and purposes - a death sentence ... makes a girl wanna go raise some money.

Watch this space ...

Comments

[kate]

have you heard of dr. nicholas gonzalez? NIH funded him for (a huge amount - i think one million) to study his cancer regimen, the largest grant ever awarded to study an alternative treatment. after a couple of years, he cancelled the study because of how they set it up - standard research design with control group, blind selection into either the chemo/radiation route or gonazalez' treatment - but his program is so rigorous - via diet and over a hundred pills a day (enzymes and other things), and chemo and radiation so passive - that folks who wanted the traditional treatment balked at how much effort they were asked to put in, and folks who wanted alternative treatment balked at getting radiation zapped and ill from the chemo.

he had chosen pancreatic cancer for the very reasons you mention in your post - that it's supposedly incurable. but his numbers are wild, off the chart. in his regimen, there *is* a survival rate for cancer, even pancreatic, and it's high. his website is http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/ and there are several interviews and things there.

i found him when i was doing my research project with the ny dept of health on complimentary alternative medicine and chronic disease. blew my mind. and if i ever get cancer, i know who i'm going to.

he won't take folks who've already had chemo or radiation treatment, though as he says that they literally alter the body in a way that is permanent. i've seen that over and over in my own holistic practice, folks who still can't think straight, chronic fatigue, bones badly damaged - aching, porous. and now the studies of how secondary cancers are now starting to roll in from chemo/rad from years back, not to mention lymphedema and all sorts of other issues.

sorry for the rant. i read the swayze article too and have been thinking of it all morning . . . as well as following pausch's treatments and updates . . .