Pancreatic Cancer

Davinder: I was so much relieved. I can't be grateful enough to God or my body that it responded really well to the treatment and my own efforts being paid. That I don't have to go through chemotherapies. It could have been that my life would have turned the other way around.

Tony:

So how is life now?

My life is like it was before -, before I had the operation. No different whatsoever. It's just I'm not going to work until I'm ready. You know.

Peter: In myself, as far as my attitude and my reaction to all this is, I've always been a positive person, and I remain so. In fact more so, because I've made this conscious decision that I'm going to get as much out of life now as I possibly can given that I don't know how much longer of-, of that life I've got left.

Steve: There's a psychological aspect to the illness, and that is being reconciled to being terminally ill. I feel I am quite reconciled to this condition, and I think there's two reasons for that. Firstly, because I have a strong Christian faith. Both my wife and I have that, and we have a very supportive local church that helps me because I, I don't have an intellectual fear of death.

Ann:

Say something about your photographs.

Oh, yes. The thing I have done, which have been the most enormous pleasure, is over the years I've always kept photograph albums, and I now must have about 30 enormous books of photos and I spent a lot of time recently just going through them, looking at them and enjoying the times that I’ve -, they remind me of times which have been very good, not all of them very good, but all the sorts of things we've done as a family and as friends.

Alison:

You said the future, how do you view the future yourself?

Day by day, I try not to think too much. At my lowest days I think I'm not going to get to 50. But I don't think about that too often. There were times when I was when I was diagnosed and they were talking about the 2012 Olympics and I thought I wonder if I'll get to see that. I've got more hope now that I will be watching the javelin, or whatever it is that that's going on, at the 2012 Olympics. So that's encouraging.

Donna:

How do you feel about your future, given that you've got this hideous thing and you've not had any treatment for it?

I'm trying not to think about the future too much and try to live in the present. Take each day as it comes. What will-, what will be will be. I can't alter it. I can't make it go away by any of my actions. So I just try and live day by day really, not think about the future. My husband has counselling to help him cope with the future that's coming and him being on his own, because it's going to be hard for him.