A pancreatic most cancers survivor battling the illness for a second time has shared the early indicators individuals of all ages ought to know.
Charles Czajkowski, 63, a enterprise growth supervisor for a geotechnical firm from Surbiton, Kingston, has “declared war on pancreatic cancer” after a five-year ordeal with two rounds of the illness – which additionally brought about the dying of his mom Romaulda, aged 78, in 1999.
Mr Czajkowski, who’s hoping remedy he acquired by way of his spouse’s non-public healthcare bundle will save his life, is ready to talk to MPs on within the Commons on Wednesday to induce the federal government to offer larger funding for the situation.
He will converse alongside 20 others who both have the illness or who’ve misplaced somebody to it as a part of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
After his well being started to say no in 2017, Charles confronted a sequence of delays to his analysis and remedy by way of the NHS till he accessed Bupa healthcare by way of the office of his spouse of 16 years, Jackie Czajkowski.
After preliminary remedy success, in May 2022 Charles’ most cancers returned and personal oncologists are actually making an attempt to make use of a sequence of medication, a few of that are unavailable on the NHS, to avoid wasting his life.
Now working to struggle the sickness and assist sufferers to identify it early, Charles is a pancreatic affected person consultant and on the scientific advisory board for Pancreatic Cancer UK.
He can also be a pancreatic affected person consultant for NHS Cancer UK, as a part of the federal government’s 10-year plan to assist optimise the early diagnostics and early remedy plan for anyone with pancreatic most cancers, liver most cancers or biliary most cancers.
“It’s given me control,” Charles stated.
“Pancreatic cancer has declared war on me… so to get back at it, I’ve declared war on pancreatic cancer by being able to help educate and save other people’s lives.
“It’s an awareness battle because pancreatic cancer UK hasn’t had much air time and hasn’t had the investment.”
Charles’s ordeal as a most cancers affected person started in 2017 when he was identified with sort two diabetes.
Halfway by way of that yr, he had a pancreatic assault – also referred to as acute pancreatitis – which, in accordance with the NHS, is a extreme ache which begins abruptly within the centre of a affected person’s stomach and can be accompanied by vomiting and a excessive temperature.
For the remainder of the yr, Charles was below statement amid repeated pancreatic assaults and he was quickly reducing weight, dropping from 85kg to round 75kg at 6ft tall.
“Another sign that things weren’t going right was that my pancreas wasn’t producing the enzymes and so I started getting what they call pancreatic diarrhea, which is a true sign if your food’s not being digested properly,” Charles added.
As a consequence, his GP prescribed Charles Pancreatic Enzyme Replacement Therapy (Pert) which made Charles’ weight steady as he was now in a position to take up vitamins.
From there, Charles was despatched to a sequence of various hospitals for scans and assessments.
Eventually, firstly of March 2019, additional checks revealed a 10-millimetre tumour on the top of Charles’ pancreas.
On March 25 2019, Charles met with the top of the surgical staff at Hammersmith Hospital alongside his spouse and a Macmillan nurse.
“He said to me, Charles, you don’t have chronic pancreatitis, you have pancreatic cancer,” Charles stated.
“They had a Macmillan nurse there because obviously people generally go into shock.
“But I suddenly just said, ‘Okay, so what are we going to do about this Professor?’”
The NHS physician defined to Charles {that a} whipple process to take away the top of the pancreas, the primary a part of the small gut, the gallbladder and the bile duct, would happen two months later.
After researching the survival fee for pancreatic most cancers, Charles feared this wait time was a threat so determined to go non-public for the remainder of his remedy by way of his spouse’s Bupa medical cowl.
Just one week later, his operation was carried out on the London Clinic Hospital utilizing a Da Vinci surgical robotic.
“I was basically told to say goodbye to my wife, because the operation comes with a lot of risk,” Charles stated.
“So it was very hard when we both went into the pre-med room because I didn’t know if I was going to wake up from this major operation.
“But luckily for me, just when I was saying goodbye, they had just injected me with the pre-med and next thing I was out.”
On April 2, the non-public operation concerned making 5 holes in Charles’ stomach, that means there’s much less of an increase of an infection, and Charles was out of hospital 13 days later.
A month after that Charles started six months of fortnightly chemotherapy periods, which led to his weight dropping to simply round 67kg – earlier than his analysis he was round 85kg. “I looked skeletal,” Charles stated.
“But I managed to stick it out. With a lot of hard work, you have to fight it, it’s a battle.”
After the chemo, a scan discovered no situations of latest tumours till – at first of 2020 – one other scan revealed dots on his proper lung and a lymph node swelling near his aorta.
By August 2020, the dots had grown into 10-millimetre tumours, so Charles had a lung ablation – a surgical remedy the place a probe is inserted which is able to destroy the tumour with excessive warmth or chilly.
The lymph node remedy was extra difficult as commonplace radiotherapy would have additionally touched Charles’ aorta and there was a threat of it rupturing.
Instead, firstly of October, Charles was handled at Genesis Care in Oxford with a brand new know-how, MRIdian Linac – a directed radiotherapy utilizing an MRI system so collateral injury is minimised.
After 5 one-hour periods over two weeks, the lymph node tumour was gone and there was no injury to Charles’ aorta, that means Charles’ life might lastly return to regular apart from the three-month check-up scans.
At this level, Charles determined to dedicate his life, apart from his work and household, to pancreatic most cancers campaigning, becoming a member of Pancreatic Cancer UK and turning into a pancreatic most cancers affected person consultant for Genesis Care.
However, in May 2022, a CT scan revealed his pancreatic most cancers had returned in a secondary kind.
At this stage, there isn’t a remedy for his situation, however Charles’ oncologist put him again on chemotherapy with two new medication, one in all which isn’t obtainable on the NHS.
After three months of remedy the tumours continued to develop and, in September, Charles started one other spherical of chemotherapy fortnightly.
He will discover out if this remedy has shrunk his tumour later this month.
On his go to to parliament, he and others will converse individually to between 60 and 80 MPs who’ve signed as much as the Pancreatic Cancer UK initiative as a part of their No Time To Wait marketing campaign.
“Our role is to tell our story, basically, to educate them so they can understand we need more investments,” he stated.
Reflecting on his expertise with most cancers, Charles stated: “Fighting cancer is more than fighting it physically, it’s mental.
“You have to concentrate on all the positivity, you can get out of it.
“I’ve travelled all over the world in my job and have been to places that people would have dreamt of going, and I took that for granted.
“But going through cancer puts your whole life into perspective.”
Source: www.unbiased.co.uk