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Let’s Win Pancreatic Cancer

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Let's Win Pancreatic Cancer plays a critical role in getting research to patients, to transform outcomes.

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This week in our #PancreaticCancer series, we discuss resectable disease. How do we define if someone is a surgical candidate? Is surgery enough? Is there a role for chemotherapy? We discuss this and more.

As always, be sure to check out our comprehensive show notes for this episode and others on our website!

**This episode is sponsored by our friends at Primum! To learn more, sign up for your free account, and to ask questions to Primum experts, visit https://primum.co/fellows

Links in bio!

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Anxiety and I do everything together these days.

Last night was another sleepless night. Not because I wasn’t exhausted, but because my mind simply wouldn’t let me rest.

Something I’ve learned about widowhood is that anxiety becomes a part of your grief in ways you never could have imagined.

It’s the constant feeling of being overwhelmed, even when nothing is happening. It’s worrying about things that haven’t happened, questioning every decision, feeling guilty about things you shouldn’t, and carrying this overwhelming fear that something else could go wrong.

Because when you’ve already experienced your entire world falling apart, it’s hard to convince your mind that everything is going to be okay.

This week, Rob would have turned 45. His first birthday without him here. And as that day approaches, I can physically feel my grief changing. My body seems to recognize these milestones before my mind can even process them.

Grief is so much more than sadness. It’s the racing heart, sleepless nights, inability to concentrate, and constant feeling that something terrible is about to happen.

I miss the version of myself who didn’t have to think this way. Who could make plans without imagining everything that could go wrong. Who could enjoy a moment without feeling guilty for being happy.

But more than anything, I miss the security of knowing that no matter what happened, Rob and I would figure it out together.

That’s one of the loneliest parts of widowhood. Losing your person also means losing the sense of safety you spent years building together.

The mental exhaustion of grief is something I’m still learning to navigate. Carrying memories, fears, responsibilities, and emotions while trying to continue living a life that looks nothing like the one you imagined.

Some days I do better than others.

But lately, anxiety has been coming along for just about everything.

And sometimes the hardest part of grief isn’t just missing the person you lost.

It’s trying to recognize the person you’ve become without them.

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Educational edit for @letswinpc 💜

Here, our very own @lexi.moran speaks on Whipple Procedures, breaking them down step-by-step to make this complex surgery easier to understand 🩺

Plural supported Let’s Win with social strategy, community management, and content production.

Strategy/Community/Content: @tspenczer @alex_fabinaba @mary__stringham @lexi.moran

Production: @wesley.z_f @ajarofblue @nickbradhsaw20

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What happens next?

It’s a question I’ve learned to ask even when I don’t want to hear the answer.

Treatments stop working. Plans change. Sometimes the information you’re given even turns out to be wrong.

You can briefly lose your mind. I did.

And then you start asking questions.

This week’s One Thing You Can Do is about looking ahead, even while you’re hoping you won’t need to.

Ask what’s next.

Your Advocate,
Marnie Reed

#OneThingYouCanDo #CancerCaregiver #PatientAdvocate #BoardCertifiedPatientAdvocate #pancreaticcancerawareness

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There isn’t a cure in either case. Not yet, anyway.

It’s been a rough ride these past few years, and this year has been the worst of them all. Both of my parents were diagnosed with “rare” terminal illnesses in Taiwan — MSA-P and stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

My dad died in just a few months after his diagnosis.

Since we are all at the age of eventually caring for our aging parents, all I know is that you must have the conversation about advanced directives NOW. It sucks, it’s painful but it’s a million times worse when you are the medical proxy, and you’re in the ER on no sleep only to find that a DNR directive is not on file.

And worst of all, you’ll always feel like a kid through it all.

#caregiving #palliative #multiplesystematrophy #pancreaticcancer

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New series alert!

Episode 166 kicks off our Pancreatic Cancer Series, and we're starting where every pancreatic cancer case should start — with the diagnosis you almost missed.

In Part 1, we lay the foundation for the whole series:

→ Why PDAC is the third-leading cause of cancer death with only 13% overall 5-year survival — and where that number actually comes from
→ New-onset diabetes as a paraneoplastic sign, not a cause
→ Why every PDAC patient gets germline testing regardless of family history (and the syndromes worth knowing cold: CDKN2A, STK11, Lynch, PRSS1)
→ Head vs. body/tail: how location shapes presentation, and why Courvoisier's sign is on every shelf exam for a reason
→ Pancreatic-protocol CT, EUS-guided biopsy, and why you should image before you stent
→ The four-gene molecular story: KRAS, CDKN2A, TP53, SMAD4
→ The 180-degree rule and the resectability framework that drives everything else in this series

Part 1 is the map. The rest of the series is the territory. Start here.

This episode is sponsored by our friends at Primum! To learn more, sign up for your free account, and to ask questions to Primum experts, visit https://primum.co/fellows

Links in our bio 🎧

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I want to be the best mom I can possibly be for Ava.

I want to give her the right advice. Say the right things. Make the right decisions. Protect her while still teaching her how to navigate this life.

But the truth is… I’m fucking terrified sometimes.

Because I’m her mom, but now I’m also trying to carry the pieces of being her dad too.

And when your daughter had a dad like Rob, those are some pretty fucking impossible shoes to fill.

He just knew.

He knew what to say and when to say it. He knew what I was thinking before I could even get the words out. He could tell when I was struggling before I even realized it myself, or before I was willing to admit it.

There was never supposed to be a world where I had to make all of these decisions without turning to him and saying, “What do you think?”

Before we lost him, we recorded so many conversations. We talked about Ava. About life. About the future. About the things he wanted her to know and the things he wanted me to remember.

Words for years from now.

Words for the days when I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

And listening to his voice is still one of the hardest things for me.

Because the second I hear it, I can almost forget.

For just a second, he’s still here.

Then it stops.

There are days I feel confident that I can do this. And there are days I would give absolutely anything to sit next to him for five minutes and ask him what the hell I’m supposed to do.

Today was one of those days.

So I went back to his words.

And as hard as they are to hear, I’m so fucking grateful we have them.

Because even though Ava and I have to keep figuring out this life without him physically here…

her dad still has something to say.

And these are his words. ❤️‍🩹

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Gracias @letswinpc por compartir mi historia 🤍🙏🏻🤍 https://share.google/r2ymUhPcHmbAq7PA7

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On this episode of PancChat, host @AlisynCamerota is joined by Dr. Eileen O’Reilly of @MemorialSloanKettering Cancer Center to discuss what the recent approval of RASONQUE™ (daraxonrasib) means for people with pancreatic cancer. 💊

Dr. O’Reilly breaks down RAS signaling, common RAS mutations including G12D, G12V and G12R, how RAS-targeting drugs work, what RAS mutation testing involves and what “RAS wild type” means.

Comment PODCAST to listen. 💜

The PancChat podcast is a collaboration between Let's Win Pancreatic Cancer and PanCAN, and this episode is sponsored by @RevolutionMedicines.

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💜 The “Invincible Myth” and The History Behind RAS

👉 CEO of @revolutionmedicines (Dr. Mark Goldsmith) joined us to discuss the history of RAS and the myth that pancreatic cancer is invincible.

🔗 Full discussion available: https://oncbrothers.com/ceo-mgoldsmith-revmed
👉 Also available on “Oncology Brothers podcasts and YouTube”

👍 Like, share, and follow along for more cancer updates!

#pancreaticcancer #pancreaticcancerawareness #learnoninstagram #cancercare #ras

@letswinpc @pancan @pancreaticcancer_northamerica

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In the latest episode of PancChat, host @AlisynCamerota and Dr. Brian Wolpin of @DanaFarber Cancer Institute discuss the FDA approval of RASONQUE™ (daraxonrasib), a new treatment for pancreatic cancer, and what it means for patients — including how it works, potential side effects and what’s next for RAS-targeted therapies. 💊

Comment PODCAST to listen now.

PancChat is a collaboration between Let’s Win Pancreatic Cancer and PanCAN. This episode is sponsored by @RevolutionMedicines. 💜

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We spend a lot of time telling our medical teams what’s wrong.
But there’s another conversation we need to have.
What matters to the patient?
Because the person living with the illness has their own milestones, priorities and plans. And the people caring for them need to know what those are.
This week’s One Thing You Can Do is about making sure those things are heard.
Tell them what matters.
Your Advocate, Marnie Reed
#OneThingYouCanDo #CancerCaregiver #PatientAdvocate #BoardCertifiedPatientAdvocate #pancreaticcancerawareness

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