Pancreatic Cancer and Rolling the Dice

A big part of my job is counselling cancer patients, many (if not most) of whom have a very poor prognosis. When I first started nursing, pancreatic cancer was pretty much a death sentence, with a five-year survival rate of (essentially) zero. I had the pleasure of telling a pancreatic cancer patient today that he had, based on his tumor, it's location, and his response to treatment 15 times the chance of survival that most pancreatic cancer patients have today. That is, he has a 15% chance of living five years.

Damn.

But still, it's better than it was, and believe it or not, the guy was relieved to hear this.