Is Patrick Swayze Dying of Pancreatic Cancer Fact or Fiction?

Per the National Enquirer, Patrick Swayze is losing his battle against pancreatic cancer and only has five weeks to live. Apparently they believe he maybe visiting Stanford Hospital shortly for serious treatments. Patrick Swayze is 55 years old and most widely known for movies such as Ghost and Dirty Dancing. National Enquire states that Swayze has been receiving treatments and his tumor shrank but otherwise his cancer is not responding to chemotherapy treatments. Other sources on the net have not been able to confirm the National Enquirer's claim so currently this is all speculation.

Cancer one of the leading causes of death affected approximately 1,444,920 people in 2007 according to the American Cancer Society, my mother was one of them. In 2007 she was ran over by a car which made her almost lose her leg, break 11 ribs, crack her sternum, and most likely saved her life. Because of the severity of the accident she kept getting ill with pneumonia due to the inability to breath and she should. They were continuously doing x-rays to check on her and found a nodule in her thyroid. We found out very quickly that women over 50 get little nodule or small pea shaped masses in their thyroids often and it should not be a big deal but they wanted to do a biopsy and a scan to make sure it was benign. After the biopsy they found the mass was malignant, and once they scanned her thyroid they realize she actually had 2 nodules not just one.

When you look up thyroid cancer you find there re 4 types, Papillary, Follicular, Medullary, Anaplastic. Mostly it comes down to easy to cure, easy to cure if caught in time, difficult to cure but slow moving, and difficult to cure and fast moving.

My mother luckily had Papillary Thyroid Cancer, and it should be easy to cure. However, when they finally went into the hospital for surgery to remove the nodules, they had to remove all of her thyroid, her parathyroid, and found that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes which is incredibly dangerous. After she came to from her surgery they explained that she would have to be on thyroid medication the rest of her life however with radiation treatment she should have a long life. They however did not explain that the pre treatment before the radiation would really be what her my mom the most.

They had to make sure that she had no thyroid in her system prior to her radiation therapy. She was off her thyroid pills for 3 weeks. For those three weeks she stopped eating everything except yogurt since that was all her body would process, she would conversations we had fully or in pieces, her tongue started to swell making speaking almost impossible, and her body hurt all over. She is miserable but the radiation therapy only consisted of taking a large pill of radioactive iodine that would process through her lymph nodes and what was left of her thyroid. The therapy itself was much easier than the preparation.

It has been just a few months now since her therapy and she is doing much better, her immune system is almost null but other than that she is slowly feeling better and is back on her thyroid medication. The unfortunate thing with this type of cancer and where it progressed to is that they will not be able to know if it is gone for a full year and then if it isn't than it is likely to have spread. The smallest of things like a blood test to check on thyroid levels would have actually alerted them right away and she had not had one of those tests for years. The doctor actually told her she could have had those nodules for years and never known. Luckily for my mom though she has the less progressive cancer and should be able to pull through with flying colors. I could not imagine only being given a 5 week time frame left with my mother.

American Cancer Society "Cancer Facts and Figures" 2008
National Inquirer "Patrick Swayze has 5 Weeks to Live" 03/05/2008