Alex Trebek reveals pancreatic cancer diagnosis (1 Viewer)

[Doug B]

Stage 4 pancreatic cancer :(  

Didn't want to put this in the RIP thread. If I understand correctly, pancreatic cancer is one of the ones most difficult to treat.

 

[Doug B]

@FBG Moderator, would you be able to merge this with the Jeopardy! thread? I didn't realize this was being discussed in there.

 

[eoMMan]

This is what's scary about pancreatic cancer:

Early pancreatic cancers often do not cause any signs or symptoms. By the time they do cause symptoms, they have often already spread outside the pancreas.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/detection-diagnosis-staging/signs-and-symptoms.html

 

[Kraft...]

My mom is a pancreatic cancer survivor and one of my uncles passed from it this past year. Early detection and where in the pancreas it's located are HUGE factors. The pancreas is connected to so many other organs if the cancer is in the head it spreads quicker and is much tougher to treat. This was the case with my uncle, they just caught it to late to really do much, it had spread so much already. My Mom's tumor was in the tail which isn't close to everything else so they were able to just cut it off. She also got lucky when they detected it. Went to the ER with back pain and the doctor decided to do a scan just in case and they found it, that one decision to do that scan likely saved her life. She was very lucky, it's scary stuff. 

 

[Lehigh98]

My mom is a pancreatic cancer survivor and one of my uncles passed from it this past year. Early detection and where in the pancreas it's located are HUGE factors. The pancreas is connected to so many other organs if the cancer is in the head it spreads quicker and is much tougher to treat. This was the case with my uncle, they just caught it to late to really do much, it had spread so much already. My Mom's tumor was in the tail which isn't close to everything else so they were able to just cut it off. She also got lucky when they detected it. Went to the ER with back pain and the doctor decided to do a scan just in case and they found it, that one decision to do that scan likely saved her life. She was very lucky, it's scary stuff. 

With a couple cases in your family, will you do extra screening?  Seems like something you can catch early but most people just don't look for it until its too late.

 

[Kraft...]

With a couple cases in your family, will you do extra screening?  Seems like something you can catch early but most people just don't look for it until its too late.

My Uncle wasn't a blood relative, married to my moms sister. But yes we are scheduling some genetic testing. There has been a lot of cancer on my moms side, different types, and fortunately most have survived though it. My mom was the first with pancreatic. My wife's mother is also a breast cancer survivor so our kids have cancer on both sides. That being the case we want to collect as much data as we can.