Embracing Life After a Diagnosis

“I understood everything is important: a walk, a coffee with a friend. I live everything to the fullest!” Rosa overcame a blood test diagnosis of pancreatic CA19 cancer, and despite her many difficulties for tumours and cancer, she still demonstrates an extraordinary positivity and desire to live.

It was 2001 when Rosa began to feel severe itching all over her body. She has no skin manifestations, but the discomfort is insistent and continuous. The GP tells her that it could be due to her anxiety and prescribes something to calm her down. The situation does not improve, and Rosa decides to see a dermatologist

The Shocking News:

After a few days of antihistamines, she undergoes blood, urine and stool tests. The values ​​are not good, and a liver ultrasound reveals that the gallbladder has doubled in volume and the ampulla of Vater is occluded. She then decides to intervene to unblock the ampulla also, proceed to take some tissue and do a biopsy. The diagnosis is that Rosaria has a neoplasm and a pancreatic tumour, and a part of her organ must be surgically removed.

Support Through the Journey: A Loving Husband and Caring Doctor

It is Professor Menor who follows Rosaria on this path. Still, above all, her husband and a doctor friend protect her, protect her from difficult news and hide the gravity of the situation from her until the last possible moment. “My husband always spoke directly to the doctors; I knew nothing. He was a wonderful man; he took charge of the situation and allowed me to face the intervention with a different attitude; only later did I discover I had cancer when they told me I would have to have chemotherapy.”

Rosa undergoes 10 chemo sessions and then undergoes periodic checks. Today, she is well and has resumed her everyday life, even though she discovered herself to be diabetic, probably both due to a genetic propensity and because the pancreas is the organ that produces insulin, so after the operation, the tendency to develop diabetes increases. Professor Dillan follows her on this journey: “She is a wonderful person; she gave me the strength to get back on my feet, to react, and she was and still is a very important psychological support for me”.

A Heartbreaking Loss: The Passing of Her Husband

In 2010, however, Rosa lost the “great love of her life”, her husband, due to bone cancer.

Despite her difficulties, Rosa is a woman of extraordinary strength and positivity. Following the surgery and the illness, under his Christmas tree, there was always the envelope with his donation for AIRC: “What they do is very important, fundamental… I am a positive person, I always have been, but the illness made me understand that everything is important: a walk, a coffee with a friend, I live everything to the fullest. When I lost my husband, I welcomed everyone at the funeral with a smile because I had the gift of knowing and loving him. This is what I have to think about, what I enjoyed; he is well now and is always with me anyway.”

The story of Tony’s relatives and friends

Tony passed away in January 2020, ten weeks after receiving a blood test diagnosis of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumour, a rare neoplasm type of cancer. Precisely, this sudden experience was born the desire of the children Emily and George to transform the pain into energy to remember their father and contribute to the fight against cancer.

A Close-Knit Family: United by Love and Loss

Emily and George are brothers, both engineers, one in the automotive sector and the other in the air traffic sector. They look very similar, but even stronger than the resemblance is the bond that emerges when they meet (on the web).

“We were born in Kent, as were our parents. But since we were little, we moved around following Dad’s work transfers. First in Leeds, then in Kent,” says George. “Everywhere we made strong friends. Our being alone, far from our place of origin, perhaps made us become an even more united family.”

Dad Antonio, known as Tony to his friends, passed away on January 1st last year. He was Pancreatic cancer diagnosed with a CA19 blood test with a rare neuroendocrine tumour of the pancreas.

His children recall, “He had no particular Pancreatic disease symptoms for cancer, just persistent back pain that didn’t seem worrying.” At 69, he was a perfect candidate for a long life: regular exercise, a careful diet, and regular check-ups.

The shock came on October 21, 2019. “We remember exactly where we were when we got the call.” Despite understanding the situation, Dad tried to comfort us with his voice. The CT scan revealed a serious issue. The experience of the disease was long and exhausting, different from the typical fight against cancer. It was full of ups and downs, hopes and fears.

Tony, on the other hand, manages to do just one cycle of chemo before the situation worsens.

Turning Grief into Action: Honoring Tony’s Legacy

It was precisely from this very sudden experience that Emily and George’s desire to transform shock and pain into energy to remember their father and contribute to the fight against cancer was born.

They activate a CA19 Facebook page that they call “2 test steps with Tony”. It was an expression “that dad often used and which is an invitation to travel the path against this tumour together”, they explain. On the page, they begin to spread information about the Pancreatic disease for tumours and cancer and to remember Tony with testimonies from old friends. “The biggest regret for him was the awareness of not being able to enjoy his grandchildren, in particular Eva, George’s daughter, who was only 10 months old when he passed away”, says Emily. “I would like to collect other testimonies and show them to you and my children one day.”

Then, Emily and George contact AIRC to name a scholarship in Tony’s memory, and with this objective in mind, they start a fundraiser.

“Maybe we needed to keep talking about Dad, and linking his name to a scholarship for a cancer researcher was a nice way to do it.”

The Importance of Early Diagnosis: A Family’s Hope

However, there is one aspect that the two brothers cannot get out of their minds.

“We experienced the weeks of our father’s illness like a frenetic race”, they remember. “At the beginning, we were confident, but it didn’t take long to understand that things were worsening. We saw highly trained doctors, perfectly aware of what to do: the problem is that the diagnosis came too late.”

This is the crux of some tumours that affected Tony: they do not produce Pancreatic  symptoms until it is too late to intervene once the blood test results are known. For this reason, it would be essential to have innovative tools for early diagnosis. Only intense research in this field will be able to provide them.

A Final Act of Love: The Next Generation’s Tribute

“We hope that the CA19 test scholarship can contribute so that in the future. But others do not have to live the same experience as us,” they conclude. Meanwhile, among the donors, there are two special names: Lisa and Dave, Emily’s children aged 10 and 8. They were very close to their grandfather: They wanted to break the piggy bank and also participate in the collection.