Pancreatic Cancer

I’m so very fortunate to not have much experience of Cancer thus far in life. However last week, my dad was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. He had been suffering for a number of weeks and in hospital for 5 weeks before his diagnosis. He is a big lion of a man and was otherwise relatively healthy and this came a real blow to me and my family. He was diagnosed with Chrons in February and his weight started to plummet after a bout of terrible sickness. They discovered that he had a duodenum ulcer and fitted him an NG tube after 12 days in hospital without food or water. He dropped 4 stone. During the hospital stay, it was discovered that my dad had anomolys on his pancreas and a specialist biopsy was performed. They broke the news to us a week later. Just before we found out, an X-ray was performed to check the tube was in place and they found he had shadowing of the lung which has turned out to be cancer too. 

We are waiting for a whole body scan to see if it’s spread and dad is attending a multi disciplinary meeting tomorrow to determine surgery options. 

Today we discovered an infection in his picc line and we are worried they won’t do surgery. Has anyone any experience of this? I should add the two cancers are believed to be different and a prognosis on time left or stage of cancer has not been discussed with us, despite being told on Monday there was nothing more to be done for him. 

 

Thank you x 

  • Welcome to Cancer Chat Charlielk although I'm sorry to read that about your dad's diagnosis and for the reason you are posting.

    I noticed you mentioned that your dad attended a multi disciplinary meeting the other day. I hope the surgery options that are available to him are favourable and that the surgery can still go ahead despite the infection you discovered in his picc line.

    Hopefully other members who have been in a similar position to your dad will stop by to share their advice and experiences with you soon but in the meantime I thought I'd share a link to the pancreatic cancer section on our website in case you'd like to find out more about it.

    Kind regards, 

    Steph, Cancer Chat Moderator