Dolalin wrote:
turned out it was late-stage Pancreatic cancer.
Not that it's any consolation, but that form of cancer tends to be terminal any way, though there's no way to know if he might have been one of the lucky few to respond to treatment.
We've had a few relatives and friends die from it, and in every case it was 1-2 1/2 years of hellish medical treatments. Patrick Swayze is the first person I've seen (though I don't 'know' him obviously) to be surviving it. Maybe they have better treatments now, at least hopefully. I know I'd rather at least HAVE a chance, but it's not a given that it's better off had he found out sooner or rushed in with the first backache.
On the other end of it...a teacher in our local school district was getting ready to coach football, young (in his 30s) prime of life, fantastic shape etc...he went in for his physical it turned out he had lukemia (I know I'm spelling that wrong). Four days later he was dead. It wasn't that advanced they caught it before he had any symptoms, the treatment just killed him. It happens, but it was a shock to everyone. And there was no medical fuck ups or anything, you can die from the treatment. I'm not sure what treatment he went with but since he died so quickly I'm assuming they had a bone marrow match in the family and had killed off his immune system and he died to infection or graft v host or something (but I'm not sure).