dr. Elizabeth Jaffee, a pancreatic cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, also emphasized the location of the patient’s metastases or where the cancer had spread. Metastases arose only in the patient’s lungs. Most patients with pancreatic cancer have metastases in their liver that are more difficult to treat.
“I’d like to see liver lesions go away,” said Dr. jaffee.
Kathy Wilkes, the patient who was successfully treated, is 71 and lives in Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida. It’s too early to know if the cancer will come back.
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Mrs. Wilkes’s cancer was serious.
“This lady had had all available treatments and failed,” said Dr Jarnagin, who did not treat Ms Wilkes but looked at her case. Usually, in such cases, the cancer has developed resistance to any additional treatments.
“For most in that situation, the cancer will soon win,” he said.
Ms. Wilkes first noticed symptoms later attributed to pancreatic cancer in 2015. She was tired, lethargic and had bouts of intense pain. Initially, no tumors showed up on scans. But in early 2018, a tumor appeared — a 3.5-centimeter mass in the head of her pancreas.
She had chemotherapy followed by a grueling surgery — the Whipple procedure — in which surgeons remove the head of the pancreas, the first part of the small intestine, the gallbladder, and the bile duct. Then she had more chemotherapy, followed by radiation and more chemotherapy.
The cancer had cleared from her pancreas, but nodules appeared in her lungs – metastases. Chemotherapy and radiation continued into 2018.
“I just kept going. I certainly wasn’t ready to die,’ said Mrs Wilkes. “I had a voice inside that said, ‘You can do this best.'”