ctine1

Welcome. Your journey so far sounds like a carbon copy of mine. I was diagnosed in August 2012 and was scheduled for the Whipple September 11. Due to a blood clot, this was postponed and chemo (Xeloda) and radiation was started. 28 days, Monday through Friday, no weekends. Completed this on November 15th and I am now awaiting the Whipple procedure on January 8th. We are lucky to be candidates for the Whipple and I thank God for that. From everything I have heard and read our type of cancer is usually discovered in the late stages. Please share what symptoms you had and what led to your DX. I am thinking about you.

Dear Ctine,
I too had radiation and chemotherapy and am now awaiting Whipple surgery.
Myself, I didn't mind the radiation at all and the chemotherapy affects me for only a few days following the office and portable infusions, yet it does get better as I move farther away from
the three day treatment sequences every other week.
Sending you wishes for an easy and successful go through your treatments. One day at a time until we gain enough distance and seniority to look back.

You are in great shape. I has a 2CM mass in the head of the pancreas but was on a 2 week vacation in our RV in Colorado. By the time we got home I was completely jaundiced. I had my Whipple on April 27, 2004 and was a (IIb). They had to scrape the tumor off of the big perineural nerve so i would have pain the rest of my life from an exposed nerve. I was on 1200MG of MS Contin for 8 yeas. ( I know, har to believe) but I had a 100MCH Fentanyl patch and 6 10/425 Lortab per day for "breakthrough pain". But here I am! Had two incisional hernia surgeries. (It's a long incision for The Whipple.)
I got a pain pump installed on 9/11 this year and it is wonderful. NO pain for first time in 8 & 1/2 years. Even with the meds I was always at a 3 on the Smiley Face chart.
I did 6 months of 5FU just in case. My margins were perfectly clean and they checked 33 lymph nodes that were clean.
Sounds like you are going to do great!

Hope you are doing well in your treatments, let us know if we can help in anyway.

Greg P
3x Survivor
Team WhatNext
Community Mgr.

Hello and welcome to the page. We are glad you found us. Hope your doing well. If you have questions post them in the questions page. There are lots of great people here on the site that have a wealth of knowledge that can help.

Hello, I seen that FreeBird wrote on your wall. I just wanted to wish you the best of luck with your chemo and treatments. Your extremely lucky to have been diagnosed so early. Not so many people are

Welcome to whatnext.com and best wishes to you. It looks like they found your pancreatic cancer very early at stage I. May I ask what caused you to see a doctor to discover that? Were you having pain or something?

There are people on this website who have had the whipple surgery. If you use the search features or enter your question in the questions section, you may have better results finding them. I have found that a good resource for information is pancan.org the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, because they have people you can talk to one-on-one to ask questions like who are the best specialists in your area with extensive experience in performing that operation.

Welcome. Thank you for registering. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1) Find other people like you. You can do this by clicking on "see more" in the "People Most Like You" box to the right.

2) Go to our Questions page to see what's been posted, ask a question or give some advice. Here is a link to our most popular questions: http://bit.ly/MfN45w

3) Complete your journey profile to share your experience. You can do this by clicking on "Add Experience" in the box next to your picture above.

4) Don't forget to upload a picture!

Thank you for being here and sharing your story. If you have any questions, please check out our FAQ or contact us.

Best,
Team WhatNext