UPDATE: My mom passed peacefully on June 22nd, 2025.
My mom was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer around Christmas of last year. To say it was an earth-shattering revelation would be an understatement.
It completely up ended the lives of everyone within my family. We immediately met with experts from the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University and started an aggressive chemotherapy regiment, but we are fighting an uphill battle. This disease is insidious. It’s evil. To put it simply, everything about pancreatic cancer, from its late diagnosis to mortality rate, sucks.
It F’n sucks.
Please review a few key pieces of data that I pulled from research over the past several months to learn why:
-Pancreatic cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related death, forecasted to overtake colorectal cancer by 2030 to become the second-leading cause of cancer-related death
-Unlike breast or colorectal cancers, pancreatic cancer has no standard screening test, contributing to 80% of cases being diagnosed at advanced stages (Stage III or Stage IV: early symptoms are loosely correlated or completely absent). My mom didn’t know she contracted pancreatic cancer until she started exhibiting the classic yellow-skin symptoms commonly associated with jaundice
-Pancreatic cancer has a mortality rate nearly equal to its rate of incidence, with a 94%–98% mortality-to-incidence ratio
-The 5-year relative survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 13% for all stages combined, the lowest among major cancers
-Pancreatic cancer accounts for 3% of cancer incidence but 8% of cancer deaths, yet receives only 2–3% of the National Cancer Institute’s research budget. For comparison, breast cancer (13% of deaths) gets 12% of funding
Let me pause here to interject some circular logic:
Why is pancreatic cancer research underfunded?
Because it has a high death rate.
Why does it have a high death rate?
Because there’s insufficient research progress.
Why is there insufficient research progress?
Because pancreatic cancer research is underfunded.
Now that might be an extremely simplified argument jaded by sarcasm, but you can understand where the problem lies.
Recently I signed up to run the 50th Marine Corps Marathon. It’s my way of joining my Mom in memory in some physical suffering and torment: hours upon hours of cardiovascular and mental conditioning resulting in 4 hours of pure pain come the fall. The only difference is that while I am choosing to undertake in this pain, she did not.
To be completely honest, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to run the marathon come October. I slipped a few discs on Christmas of last year after I found out about my mom’s diagnosis. My hips, knees, and ankles are falling apart. I haven’t slept well in months. I'm pretty much in constant pain: I need 350mg of caffeine and 800mg of ibuprofen to even consider starting a cardio session. But I promise you, even if I must walk—crawl—these 26.2 miles, that’s exactly what I'm going to do. FOR HER.
THIS IS MY ASK: please contribute what you can. Skip the Starbucks, movie, or dinner-date this month and give to my fundraiser instead.
If you literally cannot afford to give anything, please share this post. Share my story. Connect me with others affected by this disease. Put me in touch with your coach, boss, teacher, priest---share this with your company philanthropy chair or community relations vice president. For God sakes, this has to be one of best choices out there for an annual charitable donation.
Please consider giving something. Anything. One dollar, one cent—I don’t care. Something is better than nothing. I am not touching any money that is raised, everything goes directly to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.
Thank you for reading if you’ve gotten this far. Now please give what you can or at least hit the “share” button and have a good rest of your day---call your mom today and tell her that you love her!
Printable donation form - print and mail.
