The battle with pancreatic cancer is a tough one.  When the tumor appears on the pancreas, it is often well advanced.  There are no symptoms until the size of the tumor starts irritating the celiac nerve.  In my dungeon-like cubicle where I worked at the University of Chicago, I was popping Excedrin like Tic Tacs.  How I could have such recurring back and stomach aches?  I was blaming my chair, the height of my desk.  I was flipping over the mattress of my bed at home.  My boss and co-worker, Findley Hubbard, suggested that maybe the back and stomach pains were related.  Finally I had the fateful CT scan and I got the feeling that I was a dead man walking.

The ride home after the diagnosis was a time for tearful phone calls to my wife and my sons.  Billy was giving a computer class at Shedd Park not far away in the seam between North and South Lawndale.  He had trouble hearing me because there was a lot of clatter and chatter in the room.  What happened next was another story to fill out the redemption theme – the theme of recovery from adversity.

When Billy got back to his class after stepping out of the room, his laptop was gone and most of the students had gone home.  He had a suspicion that it was a young African American who only infrequently came to class.  He started driving around the neighborhood – flagging down cop cars, stopping in pawn shops, quizzing groups of kids on corners.  If he was going the wrong way on a one way street, if he was alone as a diminutive light skinned Mexican-American in an Afro American neighborhood, it didn’t matter.   He was on a mission to get back his property.

Finally he spotted some of his students.  He had always treated them with respect, yet they didn’t want to reveal who the thief was.  He made a deal to pay pennies on the dollar to get the computer back.  Bravo, my son.  You made me proud.  You proved that you are going to do just fine when I’m not around.

Back to the treatment story.  The tumor is inoperable because it is wrapped around the celiac artery.  My in-network oncologist at McNeal Hospital proscribed chemo-therapy with a concurrent radiation sessions.  Dr. Kindler of the University of Chicago gave me a second opinion that was strongly against the in-network proposal.  She told me that his suggestion to pair the low intensity radiation with a less aggressive chemo regimen would “compromise my survival”.

Instead she wanted to start me on Folfurinox, a very strong cocktail of three different chemo agents.  When we told the doctor at McNeal that we were skeptical of the judgment that the tumor was inoperable, he told us that we were “grasping at straws” and to “stop dicking around” and get started on his plan.  I saw Ricky’s jaws tighten as he formed a fist.

Fortunately, my primary care physician backed my request to get treated out of network at U of C.  He cited the more advanced methods and a clinical trial.  Six months later, those noxious fluids seemed to have done their job.  I sat in the chemo chair every two weeks.

Most of the other patients were weak and shaky.  I tried to pick up a few stories from them and tried to keep up some banter with the nurses.  When one of the schedulers routinely asked me my birthday, I said, “I was born under a bad sign.”  I took some head scratching for us to recall if that was Albert or BB King.  Sometimes I would shuffle out walking a little unsteady.  “You all right?” one nurse said.  “Just practicing some dance moves”, I replied.

At two month intervals, I got increasingly good news.  First it was that the tumor had shrunk by 25%.  The next time the shrinkage was another 25%.  The final measurement was 1.2 cm by 2.3 cm – about a quarter of the original size.  I had felt that I was at death’s door when I was at the low point of my chemo swoon.   I even started to believe that maybe I could beat the silent slayer.

I might have taken a completely different route.  In fact, there had been a third opinion presented to me.  In my darkest days of uncertainty, my former employer, Ernie Freudman, contacted me to say that a relative of his had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had received miraculous treatment from a doctor in Arlington Heights.  I went to visit Dr. Bilimoria out northwest with Ricky.  He told me that there are only a couple of surgeons in the Midwest who would be willing to operate on my tumor and that he was one of them.

We left that meeting kind of exhilarated.  The guy has such supreme self-confidence and an aura of concern for his patients.  I called Ernie from the car and thanked him to the heavens for putting me in touch with Bilimoria.  When Dr. Kindler read Billimoria’s proposal, she brought it to a meeting with the U of C surgeons.  She reported to me that one of them had said, “If this patient was my friend, I would not operate.  I might consider it if his name was Adolph Hitler”.  Her scare tactic worked.  I just kept to the going for chemo.

Bilimoria countered that chemo without surgery is a palliative.  It is not going to cure the disease.  He allowed that even surgery has slim odds.  Eight-two percent of those with tumors removed from the pancreas eventually end up with a tumor growing elsewhere.  So his proposition was this: “With my operation, you have a one in five chance of being cured.  At the U of C, you have a zero percent chance.”

The counter argument from Dr. Kindler was that Bilimoria’s technique is very risky and unproven.  Bilimoria admitted that he would have to remove a vital artery that supplies blood to my liver.  His technique which has been done 29 times in Japan and once here in the U.S. involves re-routing blood to the liver through a secondary channel.  The one case here in the U.S. was Robert Dipzinski, an Elgin heavy equipment operator, who Bilimoria operated on last year.

I met Dipzinski at a cancer support meeting.  He credits Bilimoria with saving his life.  It was a long and complicated surgery from which he is only now recovering.  My U of C doctors advised that such an operation is not only dangerous but would leave me vulnerable to a renewed cancer attack.  In light of my progress at shrinking the tumor, I’ve decided to stay with the U of C guidance.

I just finished a clinical trial with high intensity radiation.  Next week, I’ll find out if this has further shrunk the tumor.  For now my quality of life is good due to the absence of chemo hangovers and a gradual recovery from radiation fatigue.

I try to keep in mind the haunting words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “Like anybody I would like to have a long life.  Longevity has its place.  But I’m not concerned about that now.”  I just want to be able to hang in for as long as I can.  I want enjoy my last chapter by making sure that my family is in good shape.  And I want to be an example in the struggle for a just society.