Betty Beech

Our beautiful momma was diagnosed with stage 3 locally advanced pancreatic cancer on Thursday, March 12, 2020.  The Mayo Clinic found the tumor during a CT scan that was conducted for an unrelated reason.  It's an adenocarcinoma, which is the fast growing type of pancreatic cancers.  It has not spread to other organs but does have some vascular involvement.  Here's the plan:



She started an aggressive 3 medicine chemotherapy regimen called Folfirinox on Thursday, March 19, 2020.  She spent about 5 hours at Mayo getting two of the medications and then has a pump for at home delivery of the third medication through a port installed in her chest wall.  The third medicine takes 46 hours to dispense into her body and then the pump is disconnected from the port.  We are about halfway into the pump delivered medication at this writing.  She has experienced some of the side effects that were expected- like cold sensitivity, and we have good instructions about how to mitigate those effects.  She will repeat this treatment every two weeks for two months and then there will be another scan.  The goal of the chemotherapy is to shrink the tumor enough to create a margin (space) between the tumor and the vein so they can remove it.  Depending on how that looks, they may offer another round of the same chemotherapy treatment followed by another scan.  If there is sufficient reduction in the tumor at that time, they will offer a bit of radiation therapy with chemotherapy, rest for one month and then do surgery.  So, surgery would take place in 5 months or so if the tumor has sufficiently receded.  


I'm not going to play around with you, this is serious business.  Mom is a very private person and she prefers not to talk directly to a lot of people right now.  This site offers a really nice way for you to send words of encouragement that she can look at when she is ready.  Thank you in advance for your thoughtful and loving words.  


Can I ask a favor?  Will you please gather the children to pray for her?  Maybe you could send me a picture of that happening to share with mom....
My cell is 507-993-8865 for text or email is hunterlakelady@gmail.com
Thank you very very much for those efforts.  

Stacy