I read with much interest and enthusiasm your post with stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. My wife who is in her mid 60's was recently diagnosed with stage 4 non operable pancreatic cancer which has metastasized to her liver. She has never smoked, only a few glasses of champagne a year, no family history of liver or pancreatic cancer, however some family cancer history, father lived into his late mid 80's mother is still living at mid 90's, grandmother 101, grandfather early 80's.
She had increasing amount of mid-back pain which she thought might be pancreatitis. Her local doctors set up an endoscopy and colonoscopy which showed some thickening on the duodenum wall and some irritation on her stomach lining. After a severe pain attack a week later she was set up with some blood work and a CT scan which was sent off to a liver specialist. He then ordered an MRI which she had 10 days later. The blood work showed her tumor markers to be at 1800 and there were a number of tumors on her liver the largest being approx 1 inch in size. The diagnosis was received during a phone call as inoperable metastasized pancreatic cancer, our world was crushed and our future was now in question!
While we do have a very good health care system here in Canada, some of our processes take time and I always worry that it is taking too long. She has an appointment for a liver biopsy in another 2 weeks, and then another week to analysis the sample. So the earliest she would be able to start chemo would be after Christmas. Just just trying to stay positive but the "hurry up and wait" is increasing our anxiety.