Peter Llewellyn

Welcome to my CaringBridge blog. My primary goal in creating this site is to inform the reader not just about my condition, but also about the way it which I came to learn of  in such a way that any lessons I learn can be seen my others as well. There's nothing cautionary about it, but so little is known about pancreatic cancer that I hope it will be useful as the disease progresses to get an idea of the changes as they happen. Of course, I also want to be able to report the progress as it recedes ! This is far more important !

My story began, without me being aware that ut was even a story then, during early 2015. I had some digestive flare-ups that I was quite happy to put down to something I'd eaten. Abdominal distress and bloating were really uncomfortable but passed off. In September, Lyn returned from a trip to the UK and observed that my legs appeared to be wasting away. Four weeks after that, my weight was dropping alarmingly and I became extremely jaundiced. Visits to the G.P and a CT Scan later, I was diagnosed with locally advanced pancreatic cancer.

The diagnosis was confirmed later that week, after a trip to Boston for a specialist endoscopic outpatient surgery, during which a stent was installed to relieve blockage of the bile duct caused by the cancer. Unfortunately the cancer was identified as a very rare type, about which little is known for sure about either prognosis or treatment. (Lucky me :-))

On return to Bermuda from Boston, a further crisis led to a decision to undergo a gastric bypass, without which I was unable to get any nutrition into my system. This surgery also finally established that the tumour was inoperable, due to its diffuse nature. Chemotherapy is therefore my only option for survival going forward, but had to wait until the surgical wounds were fully healed before it could get under way