Pancreatic Cancer
Marianne
MariAnne - born 1942, an RN. Dx August 2000, Whipple done. She had surgery once to remove scar tissue from the Whipple. In February 2002, she had chest pains, testing confirmed that the cancer was back on the pancreas tail and in the liver. They wanted to give her Chemo and radiation, which she declined. She contacted us for help, she tried the program, her pain was greatly relieved. Through her improvements, she showed diminishing tumor size. In August 2002, she reported that her cancer was gone, PET scan showed "No evidence" of cancer. She was happy, yet she was not surprised because she felt a lot better.
In February 2003, during her routine bloodwork, her oncologist wanted her to get an CT scan, she did not have any since her last surgery for scar tissue. The CT showed "something", her doctor said it looked like her cancer was back and said that she needed surgery. I told her that it did not make sense. I recommended that she get a PET scan because it sounded more like scar tissue from the Whipple and there was no need to do additional surgery. Her doctor told her that my opinion was nonsense, he told her to expect two weeks in the hospital. He did the surgery on a Monday, 2/22/03.
She called us on Thursday, she said that he told her that there was no tumor, it was all scar tissue from the Whipple, I was correct. She was so happy to know that she did not have cancer. She went home 3 days later on Thursday 2/25/03. She was ready to go out and do things again.
On Sunday, 2/28/03, she had extreme pain from a Urinary Track Infection (UTI). Her doctor was not available, her brother brought her to the hospital emergency ward. He told the doctors of the UTI. The doctors looked at her chart, "Pancreatic cancer", set up an IV and said, this will make her comfortable. The next day, her brother went back, she was groggy and out of it. He asked the doctors what the problem was, they said, "Oh, the cancer is ravaging her body", they gave her high morphine as a hospice treatment. He argued, " She has no cancer, she has a severe UTI from the catheter due to last weeks surgery." They ignored him. They did not confirm anything with her doctor, a week later, they did a CA19-9, it was in "Normal range". The following day, sweet MariAnne passed away, we were all devastated. Upon tests after her death, she had a severe urinary tract infection which was her sole cause of pain, there was no cancer evident anywhere, she was "cancer free". Her son and daughter lost their mom for no reason, yet the doctors got away with the death certificate "complications due to pancreatic cancer" when the real cause was due to a morphine overdose and failure to administer antibiotics. MariAnne's family has documented this information.