I momentarily forgot that I had cancer
And I hadn't done that you know for a good 18 months
It's given me a way to function or feel as normal as I can possibly feel,
As opposed to constantly feeling like I'm fighting myself.
I have Pancreatic Cancer and this is a trial to find a drug that's less difficult to take, as far as meanness.
Just in the last couple of years pancreatic cancer has become
the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States overtaking breast cancer
It affects about 50,000 people in the United States each year.
The sad reality is that most of those individuals won't be alive five years
after the time of diagnosis.
We feel a great sense of urgency
Really an emergency that we figure out how to move the standard of care forward
Both patients that are found earlier with both for improved screening and detection
and for those patients for whom surgery is not an option
we want to have better strategies to deal with this clinical emergency
the Penn pancreatic cancer Research Center is a multidisciplinary center
where we're trying to attack the
problem of pancreatic cancer from multiple different angles.
this includes doctors nurses surgeons clinical researchers bench researchers all
working together to try to understand the biology of the disease to put in
Place better therapies for patients for better outcome.
Here's the answer invading into the wall of the intestine
Decades before us clinical trials where sometimes seen as a last resort
We're trying to change that
We are encouraging our patients to join our clinical trials as the first therapy
Clinical trial is the state of the art therapy, new drugs new immune therapies gene therapy.
things beyond chemotherapy and surgery and radiation
going along with that philosophy is what we call hope for all stages.
Which means that regardless of which stage of disease an individual patient has
we have a trial for that person.
It's much much easier than coming for chemotherapy.
I have have very little side effects to this, it's only an half an hour and it's just way better
It's very exciting to be able to come and not feel bad
One of our major priorities is helping patients navigate the very scary and difficult
time after their initial diagnosis
We have in place a team including a very very talented nurse navigator
She's expert at helping guide patients do they need to see a gastroenterologist first,
do they need to see a surgeon first?
The care needs to be multidisciplinary for the patient.
making sure everyone's involved and integrated is really important, we work so closely
together we know each other so well we have the same mission
and we can make change happen quickly
What I say is you know we don't cure high blood pressure, we treat it
We don't cure diabetes, we treat it.
And we're trying to turn cancer, even pancreatic cancer into more of a chronic illness.
So I plan my treatments around life. My basic mantra is the better you live the longer you live
And I actually think our outcomes are better not just because our treatments are better
But because our care is better.
I like this job because it gives me the opportunity to have an impact
I can use what we learn about how cancer operates
To develop better therapies and actually make a difference in people's lives