Lori McGuire

Dear Family and Friends - Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep everyone updated on Lori in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement.  I also want to help to answer questions and create awareness of Pancreatic Cancer so please ask away and I or my co-authors will gladly answer.   Here too is a good site to learn more from an organization doing so much to fight this disease:  The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network at pancan.org.

The picture above was taken on Jan 25th in the British Virgin Islands which was just 48 hours after learning of my advanced pancreas cancer diagnosis.  I still had a lot to learn while I rested and relaxed among dear friends.  However, upon learning of the diagnosis and before we left town, we had one day to set up appointments with Froedtert's Dr Douglas Evans so that upon our return we could hit the ground running with tests, imaging, procedures and many  meetings.  It's been a whirlwind so let me now tell you how I got to this place.

Somewhere back in the summer of 2019 I remember starting to have on and off again stomach pain.  Nothing major but some OTC stuff I tried really didn't work and in the ongoing months it became worse.  Life sometimes gets in the way of staying on top of our health when it is more annoying  vs troublesome. By October I couldn't deny it I was losing my appetite and with it a little bit of weight.  Come November I was meeting with GI specialists but this too dragged on until Jan 16th when an ultrasound looking at my liver, gallbladder and pancreas revealed a small lesion on my pancreas.  Immediately an MRI was scheduled and now the small lesion was a moderately large one and some metastasis on the liver and nearby lymph nodes.  Then an Endoscopic Ultrasound with a biopsy date allowed for the pancreatic tumor tissue  to be aspirated and sent to pathology with diagnosis of adenocarcinoma pancreatic cancer, the most common  of the PC cancers.