So it seems most appropriate to lead our Stories of Love with a most extraordinary man!
Meet Robert...
This past summer, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network shared his story and it is filled with life-giving Hope!
If your doctors are shaking their heads and giving you the most scary of life expectancies, then you need to read Robert's story. You need to know there is Hope for today...
"It all started with my gallbladder attacks in 1964. Over four years, I had six attacks and was hospitalized three times. Finally my doctor said, 'You've been fighting this long enough - let's take out your gallbladder.'
'Yes, let's do it,' I replied.
During the operation in May 1968, the surgeon found a tumor on my pancreas. A biopsy showed the tumor was malignant, and although doctors never said the word 'cancer,' they referred me to Mayo Clinic.
I remember after 10 days of tests, a team of 10 doctors - five of them surgeons - stood in a semicircle around my hospital bed and told me if I didn't have surgery, I could expect to live six to nine months. If I did have surgery, they said I might live five years.
My response? 'I came here for a reason. Let's get on with it.'
Within 30 minutes, I was being prepped for the Whipple procedure.
At that time, Whipple procedures were only performed at a handful of hospitals in the U.S., and Mayo Clinic was one. Just prior to the surgery, the doctors finally said the words to me, 'pancreatic cancer.'
On June 18, 1968, I was taken to surgery at 7 a.m. and was not out until 4 p.m. I remember having the worst pain I had ever experienced.
I learned that surgeons removed approximately one half of the pancreas and one half of the stomach and all of the duodenum, as well as a large growth on the outside of my stomach.
At that time, the normal stay in the hospital after a Whipple procedure was 24 days. I was out of the hospital in 12. Doctors said they had never had anyone recover that quickly.
When I went in for gallbladder surgery, I had weighed 225 pounds, and after the Whipple (my second surgery in three weeks), I weighed 155 pounds.
I was off work for four and a half months, and I was still in pain when I went back. But a person can only watch so much TV and read so many magazines!
I had begged the doctor to let me go back to work. (I spent 40 years working at Waukesha Engine Division in Wisconsin.)
I experienced just one side effect after the Whipple, and it lasted for 15 years: I would get severe abdominal pain that lasted about 10 minutes, and sweat would just pour off me. It happened several times a week and then finally tapered off. Doctors couldn't find a reason for it.
Today, the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 9 percent, so back in 1968, the five-year survival rate must have been very slim.
I was 37 years old at the time of all the surgeries and now I am 87. I have been a very fortunate person to have survived pancreatic cancer for 50 years."
Thank you Robert for your life-giving affirmation of Hope! You, sir, are truly an inspiration!
We have spoken much about the Whipple Procedure on our website, and those who are candidates for this surgery are given so much better odds at survival than those whose pancreatic cancers are inoperable, like mom's...
Many of the cancer survivors who have undergone the Whipple procedure have shared their stories on our website here. The surgery is incredibly involved and very difficult, but the hope it gives is beyond encouraging. Just ask William, or Art, or Richard...
If you are walking this cancer road, may you find Hope and continue to press on... you never journey alone.
Praying the Blessings of Healing, Remission and Joy over each,
In Grace, Always,
Jane
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