15th February 2019 - Results of biopsy

The stream of visits continued with the welcome arrival of my sister Ilaria and her two children, Andrea and Alessandro. I was really happy to see them and their presence helped to maintain a cheerful mood inside the family.

That was very much needed since, at some point during the afternoon, I received a call from the oncologist recommended by my gastroenterologist with the results of my biopsy.

He explained something I had already read about, namely that there are two types of pancreatic cancer: exocrine and endocrine. The latter is typically associated with much longer survival rates (Steve Jobs, former chairman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple survived 8 years after his initial diagnosis in 2003) but it is very rare.

The vast majority of pancreatic cancers (around 95%) are so-called exocrine, and they tend to be much more aggressive and deadly. The oncologist told me that unfortunately my cancer was an adenocarcinoma, which is the most common type of exocrine pancreatic cancer. Given the probabilities of which I was already aware, I could not say that I was particularly surprised by this news, though hearing it for certain did hurt quite a bit.

I thanked the oncologist and agreed to meet him the following Monday afternoon to discuss next steps.

I clearly had no time to waste as my tumour was sending me unambiguous signals that it was getting worse and that I’d better get going with treatment with no delay. However, I wanted to make an informed decision before committing to anything. For this reason, I arranged a consultation with a surgeon on Monday morning and another oncologist on Tuesday. The following week was definitely going to be a busy one.