My Story is about William Price

This event took place from 30 May 2006 to 02 Mar 2008

The Discovery

My father became jaundice. Got checked out and the pancreatic cancer was discovered.

This is My Story

I had heard about pancreatic cancer long before my dad, William Price, was diagnosed with this horrible disease in May of 2006.

My friend, Todd Cohen, lost his dad, Richie, to pancreatic cancer several years earlier, and I knew Todd was heavily involved in the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. But it wasn’t until my dad was diagnosed and I started to do deeper research that I realized just how awful it was.

Like anyone, hearing a loved one has pancreatic cancer is devastating, and that’s how I felt that day. But my dad never lost hope, never gave up, never got down. He had the Whipple procedure less than a week after being diagnosed, and for a time it appeared as if the cancer has been eliminated. But it resurfaced in his liver about 6 months later. Still, he didn’t get down, was determined to fight, taking trips to a local hospital for chemotherapy and occasional trips to Sloan Kettering in New York.

I always knew my father, despite being one of the kindest men you would ever meet, was tough, but I didn’t realize how tough and how strong he was until this ordeal. And he vowed to not let it beat him.

In fact, in December of 2007, less than three months before he would die, he flew to Florida with my mom for a relative’s wedding. He knew the cancer was getting worse, it had spread to his hip at this point and he had started radiation treatment, but it wasn’t going to stop him until he decided to stop.

When he died, of course I was shattered, but I was inspired by his courage and fight and the hope he showed. It’s now 13 years later, and though strides have been made in the fight against pancreatic cancer, we are nowhere near where we should be. In that time I have lost friends and relatives to pancreatic cancer, I have joined a charity in the name of my good friend Steve Kelly, and I make sure to get to Purple Stride NJ every year.

This is an awful disease and none of us can give up the fight until there is a cure, or at the very least, early detection.

It’s taken way too many people.

The Impact of Time

The jaundice was actually a lucky break for my dad as the tumor in his pancreas was discovered early, he underwent the Whipple procedure almost immediately, and for about six months or so, appeared to have beaten it. But the cancer came back.

Still, for a man who was around 80 years old, he lived 18 months after the cancer was discovered, so the early detection, I would like to believe, gave him more time.