Facing Stage 4 Cancer and the Tough Decisions That Come With It

Dan, a Cleveland-based lawyer, was just weeks away from his 41st birthday when he received a stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis. In a conversation with CURE, he opens up about the emotional impact of that news, the challenges of making critical treatment decisions, and how he and his family navigated the uncertainty that comes with a life-threatening illness.

Moreover, Dan shared insights on participating in clinical trials and the importance of advocating for oneself as a patient.

Transcript

Can you describe your initial reaction to your pancreatic cancer diagnosis and how you approached the early decisions that followed?

I come from a family of doctors. My three siblings are doctors; I’m the only non-doctor. But I knew enough about pancreatic cancer that it was a bad one, so it was a pretty devastating diagnosis. When I wasn’t staring off into the distance, I was very often in tears and very scared. I always tried to tell the doctors I didn’t want to know the prognosis; I didn’t want to know how many years. I knew pancreatic cancer is often fatal, but I specifically said I didn’t want to know what that meant in terms of time, because that knowledge felt too much to handle; it was never going to be enough time.

I tried my best not to live with that calendar counting in my mind, which I think in some ways helped. People approach that differently; that was my approach. I wasn’t able to avoid it for long, because eventually a doctor told me without me wanting to know, which sort of pulled the curtain up. But it was a devastating diagnosis. I think it’s a devastating diagnosis for anyone.

From that point forward, we really just tried to get as much information as possible about my disease, about what options were available, and then make the best choice among those options. Sometimes the options were limited; sometimes there were more options on the table than we would have thought. The first choice we had to make was where I was going to do chemotherapy.

That was the first of a series of decisions we were required to make. Anyone diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, or any type of cancer, is often required to make decisions they previously would have been incapable of making, based on imperfect information. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges, making life-changing decisions with imperfect information. That was always a challenge my wife, my family, and my team of people helping me were constantly struggling with.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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