DENVER — November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. With no standard screening and symptoms that tend to appear late, pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest forms of cancer.
For 67-year-old Bob Emmerling, endurance has always been part of his life — raising grandchildren, exercising and cycling.
“Most of my hobbies are kind of right here,” he said, standing beside one of his three bicycles. “I have this gravel bike here that I can take anywhere.”
Earlier this year, unusual back and abdominal pain began a new challenge.
“March the third, this journey started,” Emmerling said. “It was more of an advanced stage, that whatever treatment needed to happen needed to happen as quick as possible.”
Doctors diagnosed him with stage-three pancreatic cancer. While scans showed it had not spread to other organs or his blood — “even though it’s stage three, we got a really great fighting chance here,” Emmerling said — surgery wasn’t an option. His oncologist, Dr. Yousuf Gaffar of AdventHealth Porter, said about 90% of pancreatic cancer patients face the same reality.
“He’s under what I call watch, wait and treat,” Gaffar said. “We’re watching what’s going on inside his body, waiting to see if anything happens to grow and progress, and then treat in terms of giving him treatment to try to shrink the cancer and keep it under control for as long as possible.”
For Emmerling, that’s meant chemotherapy and radiation — lifesaving but physically draining treatments.
“I would come home with a chemo pump that went into me, and it would take a solid week before I felt like even maybe walking around the block,” he said. “It was very defeating. For the first time in my life… I am not able to do what I used to do just a few months ago.”
Dr. Gaffar said the overall survival rate for pancreatic cancer remains below 20%, but has improved over the last two decades across all stages.
“There has been some improvement, but we definitely need to do better,” he said.
Symptoms of pancreatic cancer include:
- Belly pain that spreads to the sides or back.
- Loss of appetite.
- Weight loss.
- Yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes, called jaundice.
- Light-colored or floating stools.
- Dark-colored urine.
- Itching.
- New diagnosis of diabetes or diabetes that's getting harder to control.
- Pain and swelling in an arm or leg, which might be caused by a blood clot.
- Tiredness or weakness.
There’s no quick screening tool, like a colonoscopy, for pancreatic cancer. Instead, people should know their family history, be alert to symptoms such as sudden weight loss and jaundice, and seek medical advice quickly.
“Be in tune with your body,” Gaffar said. “That can be as simple as getting a CAT scan or even an ultrasound.”
Emmerling leans heavily on his wife, friends and family.
“Another big inspiration was my wife — bad days, good days, she would be there if I was struggling to put that hand on the shoulder that was always with me to keep fighting,” he said. “I have a lot of friends … I couldn’t have a better support group.”
He advises others not to get lost in online misinformation, but to “trust your doctor, trust your nurses” and stay focused on the guidance from their medical team.
“It’s one day at a time,” Emmerling said. “I fought through today. I can fight through tomorrow. Holidays are coming. I can fight through. I will be there for all of that.”
For more information on pancreatic cancer, visit the American Cancer Society's website.
