mums diagnosis

[kloum72]

Hello

My 68 year old mum was diagnosed on monday with pancreatic cancer with liver mets. Approximately eight weeks ago she woke up one morning and felt lethargic, shivery with no appetite...thats as quickly as it occured...went to bed feeling fine! My mum has no pain whatsoever has lost weight...but appetite has returned not quite what it was before. My mum says everything including savoury foods taste sweet but at the moment she is perservering. Her GP visited her at home yesterday at prescribed her anti sickness for nausea. Im still allowing the shock to sink in, my mum resigned herself weeks ago that something drastic was happening thus is coping relatively well emotionally. Biopsy is due in the next week to confirm type of pancreatic cancer but we are under no illusion that it is anything but adenocarcinoma (excuse my spelling). It will be great to have advice and support. Thank you.

[Didge]

So sorry to hear about your mum. Good that she is pain free and managing to eat. I assume they are considering treatment if they are doing a biopsy?

[PCUK Nurse Jeni]

Hello Kloum,

Welcome to the forums.

So sorry to hear about your mum's diagnosis - please do contact us on the support line (support@pancreaticcancer.org.uk) should you need any advice about anything.

Regarding the weight loss, please do ask about whether your mum needs pancreatic enzymes, as this is the cause of much weight loss in most pancreatic cancer patients - there is an insufficiency of enzymes being produced, leading to food not being digested properly, and therefore, malabsorption.

After a while, this translates into weight loss, and is treatable, so please ask about this as soon as you cam.

Kind regards,

Jeni.