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Pancreatic Journey

In April of 2022 we were home in Henderson, KY visiting family. I woke up with unbearable back pain while sleeping at my parents house. After traveling back home to Jacksonville my back and stomach pain started to become more consistent but not unbearable. There were times where it seemed to flare up and then the pain mildly went away. Memorial Day weekend while visiting friends in Tampa my pain became consistent each day. My wife insisted we get to a doctor. She made a few phone calls to see if we could get set up with a primary care doctor in Jacksonville. But the waiting list was 4-5 weeks out and we knew I could not wait that long. 

The middle of June I had another episode of unbearable pain. Pain I have NEVER experienced. My bride took me to the ER. This was our first of many visits to the ER. Upon arrival they ran blood work and everything looked great. They pretty much sent me home with pain medicine and said it maybe my gallbladder but my appendix looked good. A couple days later the severe unbearable pain is back. So we go back to the same ER. They pretty much dismissed us and told us the same thing as our visit a couple days prior. They could not find anything wrong and recommended I see a GI specialist for an upper scope. We set up that apt and the scope came back clear. After follow up with GI he recommended CT scans again to try to start ruling out things. I had CT scans and everything came back clear. We are basically 2 months in with no answers and the excruciating pain continues. So back to the ER we go. They do CT scans again and still nothing. So a friend had a friend and recommended we go to another location for a CT scan and ask for contrast. We didn’t expect anything to come from the appointment. Courtney went to the office that day and I took an Uber to my appointment. This CT scan did show a mass on my pancreas. The mass could not be confirmed as cancerous until a biopsy was taken. 

Next steps… biopsy scheduled, 5 weeks later! Thankfully we had another friend who made a recommendation and we somewhat cheated the system. We knew we had to get in sooner than 5 weeks for this biopsy! For the pain, our sanity, etc. long story short i was able to get a biopsy in early July. The biopsy will take 5-6 days to confirm cancer but we were told the mass is cancer. We still had a glimpse of hope for the lab to confirm that it may not be cancer. I remember the bench we were sitting at Mayo Clinic in between appointments. We received the news the lab did confirm the mass is pancreatic cancer. 

11/21/23- Chemo has run its course and we are now searching for a KRAS clinical trial to get in asap. 

More of my journey to come!!! Much love. Bart