@jayligon ,

Everyone is different and no doctor has a crystal ball. My first oncologist estimated 2-3 years for me back when I was Stage-2, before Whipple surgery. I'm still doing well, despite the recurrence and Stage-4 status, 3 1/4 years post-diagnosis. Another oncologist told me most patients on my chemo (GAC) develop resistance or intolerance to it after 6-9 months. I'm still going fairly strong on it at the 2-year mark.

@stageivsurvivor linked a good paper a while back about interpreting the statistics and how they change over time. I failed to bookmark it then, so I'm hoping he'll re-post if he reads this -- it was a pretty encouraging read. 🙂

I have two close friends I met through my pancreatic cancer journey and advocacy. Camille Moses and Davi Dagistino were ineligible for the Whipple procedure. Both are long-term survivors and no longer are on chemo in quite some time. Camille is coming up on 13 years in March having been diagnosed in 2012. Davi just celebrated 7 years last week.

I did have the Whipple procedure because the micrometastatic disease in my liver was too small at the time of the initial CT scan to detect it and was expedited to surgery because the tumor looked to be very close to my portal vein. They opened me up and saw the tumor was already in contact with the portal vein and the surgical specimen showed it had penetrated the portal vein confirming the source of the metastatic disease.

After 8 weeks surgical recovery, the first chemo I was put on had no effect from the first cycle and only realized 3 months later at the first scan. So at this point, I went 20 weeks with no effective chemo. My care team members never said a word about life expectancy let alone being told I would need chemo for live….how wrong they would have been. I did the effective chemo from November 2012 to October 2014. I never needed further chemo in the ensuing 10 years. I have survived over 12.5 years since diagnosis of stage IV disease and considered by a number of noted surgical and medical oncologists as cured. Statistically every one is n=1. No one can accurately predict the prognosis. There are many affections that can influence the end result. I didn’t worry about what I could not control. I focused on what I could control and followed the medical advice and pushed myself in doing daily moderate exercise and keeping a positive mindset.

This doctor gave you a textbook answer. Same for my husband in Feb/March 2024 - onco gave him a year. We changed onco (not recommending you do that but do ask questions). My husband, while still on chemo, is here and doing well with few side effects from chemo.
You can read the posts from @stageivsurvivor and @markymarkfl. No doctor can be that sure how long your wife has or how well she will do with chemo; you both be positive and fight on. It will be tough and there will be really bad days but I can attest to plenty of good days too.