November Is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month
November 17, 2007 by Gloria Gamat
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Pancreatic cancer or cancer of the pancreas doesn’t normally show signs or symptoms until it is too late – making it the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S.
November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
Moffitt Cancer Center’s Gastrointestinal Oncology Program has an early detection and screening program for pancreatic cancer. This program is the only one of its kind in the Southeast, says Dr. Mokenge P. Malafa, head of the division of Gastrointestinal Oncology. Moffitt doctors and researchers are recruiting for this program and several other innovative clinical trials in pancreatic cancer.
Dr. Jason Klapman, an endoscopic oncologist at Moffitt, is the principal investigator of this screening trial targeting patients at high risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Once participants are identified, an endoscopic ultrasound is used to detect the early stages of cancer. Patients are studied for five years.
The patients eligible for this early detection trial have a very strong family history of pancreatic cancer or a genetic syndrome linked with pancreatic cancer .This patient population represents about 10 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer. Moffitt doctors hope this screening clinical trial will make a difference in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease.
Find more details from Moffitt Cancer Center.
[Hat tip to Patricia Kim of Moffitt Cancer Center]
hi! my mom went back to the hospital on 17 november 2007. she never got out… ALIVE.
she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer some time november 2006 and had whipples surgery january 2007, the day after i got married.
we approached her condition agressively, her going through chemotherapy and radiation at the same time. she responded well… adn so it seemed.
regular monthly check-ups, church, house… that was practically her routine. doctors said she’s showing good signs and seem to be responding to the treatments very well.
october 2007 she began to show signs of having her stomach getting big. and bigger as days pass by. and the feeling of her stomach being full all the time.
first week of november she was confined to have her stomach aspirated so that she’d feel more comfortable… atleast that was the we felt was the best option for her to take to make her feel comfortable… and so she stayed for a week, until such time she felt better. and did she feel better? yes she did, according to her… she was not bothered by the look of her big stomach anymore.
a couple of days after she was discharged from the hospital, her stomach began to grow again and so she decided to go back to the hospital, november 19 to be exact, she went back to the hospital hoping that she can have another aspiration… she never got out.