Cancer Warrior & Rapper
- Alex Trebek, currently battling pancreatic cancer, rapped Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” hit while presenting a clue on Jeopardy.
- Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat.
- The disease is usually caught in advanced stages since screening for the cancer is difficult.
.@theestallion’s “Savage” was a clue on tonight’s episode of @Jeopardy. 📺 pic.twitter.com/TMMbjUUhTF
— Stallion Access (@stallionaccess) October 16, 2020
Currently, the one-year survival rate of stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients is just 18%. Trebek surpassed that goal in March, and doctors expect he’ll also make it to the two-year-mark. During his initial treatment, Trebek had chemotherapy which targets and kills all cells quickly. Now, he’s going through an experimental immunotherapy regime which has shown enormous promise. A stage four pancreatic cancer diagnosis isn’t necessarily surprising, since it’s very difficult to catch the disease early.
Related: Detecting Pancreatic Cancer Early Is Crucial
"Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen, it often doesn't have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas," Dr. Anirban Maitra, co-leader of Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview. "By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain, or diabetes, it's often very late in the stage of the disease. Each year in the United States, about 53,000 patients get pancreatic cancer, and unfortunately, most will die from this disease within a few months to a year or so from the diagnosis."
Dr. Anirban Maitra explains why pancreatic cancer is often caught in late stages
Why is Pancreatic Cancer So Hard to Treat?
Pancreatic cancer is a tough disease to treat, and it’s largely due to the stroma a barrier around cancer cells which prevents medications, such as chemotherapy and radiation, from eliminating them. This makes targeting and kill cancer cells extremely difficult, which means the disease can progress into later stages and spread throughout the body.
“Think of pancreatic cancer as an oatmeal raisin cookie and the raisins are actually the cancer cells, and the cookie part is actually all the stroma around it,” Dr. Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, tells SurvivorNet. “And imagine having to navigate through all that stroma for a treatment to be able to get into a cell to kill it. So that's why the treatments just really aren't good enough to penetrate the cancer. But we're improving, we're getting better treatments.”
Dr. Ocean is right. Researchers have been working tirelessly to find more treatment options for the disease, and it’s been worth it. Clinical trials show a class of drugs called PARP inhibitors may be very beneficial for pancreatic cancer patients, as they prevent cancer cells that have been damaged often during the course of chemotherapy from naturally healing themselves. Studies have also shown that immunotherapy, a therapy which activates a patient's own immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells, found that when patients’ tumors decreased when combining two immunotherapy drugs with chemotherapy.
Dr. Allyson Ocean explains why pancreatic cancer is so hard to treat
Find Pockets of Joy During Treatment
Studies have proven that patients who are able to stay positive and uplifted during treatment have more successful outcomes. There’s a few things that can keep someone positive a support group, creative expression, or doing activities you love. While battling cancer, experts recommend patients take some time out of their days, every day, and do something that brings them joy in order to keep their mental and emotional health strong.
Related: Stay Positive, It Matters
“We know that emotional health is associated with survival, meaning better quality of life is associated with better survival, better outcomes,” Dr. Dana Chase, a gynecologic oncologist at Arizona Oncology, tells SurvivorNet. “So working on your emotional health, your physical well-being, and your social environment, definitely working on those things and making them better are important and can impact your survival. If that’s related to what activities you do that bring you joy, then you should try to do more of those activities.”
Whether it’s a walk in the park, picnic with friends, or rapping your favorite song, it’s important to just take some time and focus on you and your happiness.
Dr. Dana Chase says emotional health is key in cancer treatment
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