Resolved question:
I need complete honesty and if you are not prepared to give me this honesty then let me know before we go any further. My best friend has stage 3 pancreatic cancer of which symptoms only surfaced two weeks ago. It is on the opening of the pancreas. It is attached to blood vessels and inoperable. She has ulcers of the stomach which we suspect may be secondary tumors. We have been told it is terminal. We know that the timeline is hard to diagnose. We know that in early stages 3% is the average recovery rate. We have accepted this diagnoses and our aim now is to help her in any way possible. She starts chemotherapy in less than one week and this will be every two weeks. It will be aggressive. At six weeks a scan will be taken to see if the chemo has helped to contain the progression of the tumor. What I want to know is - in your opinion, what type of timeline are we looking at. I need real honesty here. I know each person is different, but I need to know a rough idea as her daughter lives in Australia, at the opposite side of the world to us and in this case do I have time to leave her there until October or should I get her home now.
Submitted:
4 Days
Category:
Oncologist
Hello.
Thank you for posting your query at DoctorSpring.com
An inoperable pancreatic cancer is a ticking time bomb. I would like to know if it is locally advanced or it has spread already to liver and other sites which means it is a metastatic disease. I want to know the histological type also before commenting further.
There are many aspects in determining the longevity of a patient and please understand that medical field is a science and not astrology where you predict future.
Please send me all the reports for me to address your concerns.
Regards.