@steveron , how much time are you looking at between chemo and Whipple? The norm seems to be a 4-week washout to let you recover and let blood counts return to normal. The Whipple can be tough on a patient, and radiation can be as well, so I don't know if they'd want you coming into surgery all beaten down by radiation -- it could make your recovery a good bit harder. Also, it seems common to co-administer Gemcitabine (oral chemo) with radiation to help sensitize tissue to it. I'm not sure if radiation without Gem would be effective enough to be worth the risk. I inquired about using the Tumor Treating Fields equipment between chemo and Whipple to provide some level of control, but got nowhere with it. From another perspective, I'd be curious about whether radiating the pancreas head before a Whipple could increase your chance of getting R0 resection (clean and possibly bigger margin) by killing microscopic disease that might exist and be undetectable beyond the margin. You could always ask, but I doubt you'll find any takers.

@marienewland99 : Off-topic, but one thing I just learned this week is that long-term GAC chemo can be pretty tough on the kidneys. When I get my biweekly blood tests, I normally don't look too closely at the trends of parameters that are coming back in normal range (obviously focusing on those that are high or low). But on my new treatment this week, blood tests have shown abnormal levels of Creatinine, EGFR, and BUN (signs of underfunctioning kidneys). When I looked at all the historical data from starting 15 months of biweekly GAC to the present, those levels all went from the good end of normal to the bad end of normal -- downhill in almost perfectly straight lines; i.e., they never raised a red flag in 15 months, but all fell into the bad range this week, which is keeping me tied to a hydration IV pole 24/7. Hydration definitely improves the numbers. Just something to keep an eye on the longer you stay on GAC. Hope that's all continuing to go well!