Hello! My name is Dale, I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2023. My cancer was found by accident, I had had my ovaries and fallopian tubes removed in early November, and that surgery irritated my pancreas and gave me pancreatitis. My doctor sent me to emerg to get a CT scan, and lo and behold a tumor was spotted in the head of my pancreas. I quickly got an MRI to confirm suspicion for carcinoma. Had become jaundiced so had an Endoscopy with biopsy and bile stent placement. Early indications were no metastases, tumor was 2.5 cm, no lymphadenopathy, so I was hoping it was caught early enough. My doctor referred me to Princess Margaret hospital in Toronto for treatment, they are a centre of excellence.
I got into an immunotherapy clinical trial, and had 2 infusions of durvalumab and oleclumab in January.
On February 9th I had pylori-preserving Whipple surgery. My recovery is going very well. However I just got the pathology report with what seems like really bad news - metastases was found in 3 out of 25 lymph nodes, and my cancer is adenosquamous carcinoma. Everything I read about adenosquamous is that it is very rare and prognosis is poor. Only thing holding me together is that there is very little data on adenosquamous since it is so rare.
I am starting Folfirinox in early April.
Anyone with experience with adenosquamous or thoughts in general on where I'm at I'd like to hear from you.
Thank you! Dale