I'm Diagnosed With An Aggressive Pancreatic Cancer

Best of luck and keep fighting Tim. Here's a clickable link to your GoFundMe page:

https://www.gofundme.com/d9dak7h8

Keeping you and your family in my prayers, Tim. If any thoughts or ideas or people who can help come to mind, I'll be in touch.

My prayers and healing thoughts on their way. God Bless

Best of luck and keep fighting Tim. Keep positive thought!

So terribly sorry to hear of all the additional stress on top of your illness. Wishing that you find peace and comfort that the utter nonsense stops soon - so you can get on to the business of healing.
Will keep you in my prayers.

I will be praying for you Tim.

Tim have you tried to contact your local TV stations on that has a call to action type reporters to see if they can pressure your insurance company. That happened here and they were able to get the insurance company to go ahead with treatment for the lady.

Hope they help you soon. That is so not right for them to do that to people. My thoughts are with you Tim!

Praying for healing and that all your physical and financial needs will be provided for. God bless you!

So sorry ,prayers for you and your family try natural remedies see if they help if green tea helps and turmeric spice

Tim look into Swedish's Chairty care. Will keep you in prayer , very sorry to hear of your illness.
http://www.swedish.org/about/overview/mission-outreach/community-engagement/charity-care

bump

I wish you a full recovery, Tim. My brother-in-law has just been through treatments for throat cancer, and his cancer is now in remission. I pray for the same happy results for you.

hang in there Tim

Healing prayers for you, Tim.

Thank you so much for all the great comments. Despite being agnostic, I really, really appreciate the prayers and your healing thoughts.

Chaline, I am indeed looking at charity care. Have to wait until my PET CT is done on Friday for them to make me an appointment.

Andee, thank you. I may do that. I've already appealed via email and let them know I would be in contact with my congressman if it is denied. Everybody, but EVERYBODY, I have talked to on this matter says it is ludicrous that they would deny me something that is STANDARD procedure. This is NOT EXPERIMENTAL!!! And talking with an assistant at my Oncolgists office, I'm told this is common practice among insurance companies in the hope that people will simply give up at that point so the companies can save money. I already have my representative at my local calling my company to ask why they have insurance that does not cover Chemo. Keeping the pressure on. But I like the thought of calling a local TV station. Maybe all of them.

I am fighting this. Meantime, I will be working today and tomorrow at a building downtown. I am a security officer by trade and I will be doing a "special assignment" at a highrise office tower downtown simply running a freight elevator for eight hours. Should be easy. Hope I can sit down. We'll see. I work my normal weekend shift of walking a garage looking for car prowls. That is fairly easy as well and if I get tired, by orders of none other than one of my supervisors, I will find a place to sit down and take a break.

That said, I am just overwhelmed with the kind thoughts and prayers from everyone as well as the generosity in giving to my Go Fund Me site. I've been able to keep a level head through so much of this as I know I've been living on borrowed time for 58 years. At 4 months of age, being in a car accident at the time, I very well could have been 6 feet under before I was 6 months old. I take nothing for granted anymore and know each and every day I walk this earth is a blessing.

Thank you all. And keep those thoughts and prayers coming. I will beat this and join Jimmy Carter as Cancer Survivor. :D

Oh Tim, I'm so so sorry at what has happened to you. You don't need rotten insurance companies on top of what you're already dealing with.

My heart goes out to you and all my warmest thoughts for healing are on their way.

Hugs to you. x

Sending one more prayer and healing thoughts your way Tim!

I am very sorry to read you are going through the this. Best wishes to you and yours x

Just got an email from Universal Services of America, the parent company of my employer Universal Protection Services (UPS), and it notes in the notice (required as I have enrolled in their 401k program) that I can enroll in Medicaid. I will definitely be doing that as well. I've already had many people suggest that as an option. And I would still keep my current insurance.

This is still a very fluid situation. I will keep you all updated on how things go. And keep those thoughts and prayers coming. Love you all.

I am so sorry to hear what has happened to you Tim. Thinking of you and sending my best wishes and good luck with your treatment. x

Sending you Love and Positive thoughts and energy.

I'm sorry to hear about your diagnosis and will definitely say a prayer for you. I hope you get your insurance company to pay as well.

Prayer has been proven to work scientifically whether the recipient believes or not. So I am saying prayers for you Tim. I am believing in your healing!

Sending healing thoughts and positive energy your way Tim!

You will beat this Tim.
My thoughts are with you, sending out some positive vibes.

Keeping you in my prayers. Please look into the Budwig Diet and the Budwig Center.

Tim and Harold, I'm glad you've both posted updates and you will remain in my prayers. I so admire your attitudes.

Thank you both, Jessica and MM. I'm hanging in there. I now need to call my employers corporate offices down in California to iron out a misunderstanding. I have disability finally starting this month on the 24th and on the 8th I applied for Family Medical Leave and thought that I had asked for the entire 12 weeks of leave starting 8/13. Turns out I received in the mail the appoval of the leave the day I was to start the leave, Aug. 13 but the leave, according to the letter I got ends Aug. 29. Only 16 days later. This will not work as the fact that if I work as little as 2 days a month I will have earned too much and I will lose the disability. Very counter productive. If I can get them to agree to grant me the full 12 weeks through to the end of October, by then I may have kicked this cancer or, at least got it into remission. That is my hope. But, meantime, I need a source of money coming in to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. The $1,222 a month will barely pay for rent cable, phone and internet. with maybe $100 left over for food and other needs. I'll have to call Comcast and cut back on my cable service. That is my only option at this point. I really am that poor. Maybe around $1000 still in savings but rent is $875. My Comcast bill (bundle of phone, internet and cable) is around $200. Gotta cut somewhere.

But I'm trying not to stress too much. I know I'll get through this one way or another.

Thanks again for all your support.

Maybe Comcast would work out a better rate for you, at least for a six month period? If you can go to a local office instead of calling, take some proof of what is happening, someone might find a better deal for you. I say go in person as I did this recently for my mom and her cable bill, calling and talking to a rep did nothing, going and talking to a person yielded a much better result....of course I had 35 numbers in front of me....o...m...g...never go on the first of the month or the third (disability checks). Had to go on the first since it's when I was off work.

Well, that was a wild ride. I had my first infusion of immunotherapy Aug. 31 with a CT scan a couple hours afterwards. During the prep for the scan I got nauseous and threw up. In the ensuing next few days I was throwing up almost everything until calling 911 on Sept. 4 after throwing up almost immediately AFTER taking an ANTI-NAUSEA pill.

Turned out it was a good thing I called. I had an infection around my gall bladder, there was blockage to the two stents between my liver and pancreas and some of the cancer had pressed up against the duodenum leading to the small intestine and that was forcing everything to come up instead of go down.

Spent 5 days at Harborview Medical Center before being sent over to Bremerton on the other side of the sound where I could be closer to my mother and an extraordinarily good friend who has been exceptional assistance for both me and my mom ever since this whole ordeal started nearly a year ago. I was at a recovery center, Forest Ridge, for 9 days while they gave me a 30 minute IV once a day of an anti-bacterial.

Got back home to my own bed and recliner as well as my desktop. (I only had my Kindle at the recovery center which was difficult to type on). Mail should resume tomorrow and I'm set up for what is known as "Chicken Soup Brigade" in which I will get a weekly delivery of 7 frozen meals and a bag of groceries.

While there at Forest Ridge, I got a call from someone at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance who works with the social workers there. She stated that they had assisted me with $300 to bridge a gap of a few weeks until I was able to start on disability. Well, she had heard my story of "Could'a been 6 feet under before I was 6 months old" and the whole nine yards about 41 years of epilepsy, the surgery and the amazing transformation I had afterwards and continues today. That said, they annually put out a donor letter to people who have donated to their cause of helping families with assistance through difficult times and they usually add a story of someone who was assisted by them in with that letter.

Well, they liked hearing my inspiring story so much that they will be having a writer call me today around 10am to hear my story so they can include it in that donor letter. I am completely humbled and honored that they would chose little ol' me. I am beyond words. It just makes me so happy to know others feel inspired by what happened to me and how I've dealt with adversity and overcome obstacles along the way.

Life is GOOD!!!!!

Meantime, tomorrow I will go in for my second infusion of immunotherapy. Both I and my doctor think that this whole ordeal was not caused by the infusion but rather that 8 week "break" I had in which the cancer had the chance to grow. The infusions are every 3 weeks with the infusion itself only taking around 90 minutes as opposed to coming in on a Wed. for several hours of chemo and other drugs, getting hooked up with a fusion pack that I wear around my neck for 48 hours then come in the following Friday for 6 hours of "hydration" followed by more chemo and other drugs. UGGGH!

My doctor explained the difference between standard chemo and immunotherapy. Chemo is a poison that kills ALL cells, good and bad. Immunotherapy attaches "receptors" to good cells and those "receptors" attract cancer cells to them where they attach and then the good cells can kill them.

And I am on the forefront of all this.

It is very gratifying to know that, whatever happens to me, whether I survive this cancer or I do not, the information they glean from me will not only help other gall bladder cancer patients that come behind me but, ALSO, it will help ALL cancer patients in that immunotherapy is still so experimental. And SCCA as well as the University of Washington Medical Center are on the forefront of that experimentation.

I expect that things will get better from here on out. It's just a matter of patience and perseverance. I will survive this. I WILL become a CANCER SURVIVOR!! Just you watch. ;)

Life is GOOD!!!

So glad to hear you are so upbeat Tim and still staying on top of the battle!

Tim, as always, I really admire your outlook on life. I wish you the best and that this treatment will be a success.

I'm sure your doctors love you! As do all of us! Keep on, keepin' on, my friend!

Immunotherapy is sooooo promising. Wishing you all the best, Tim. Bon courage.

Tim, your upbeat attitude will see you come through this! All the best to you!

Thanks for the update, Tim - keep up the good work and positive attitude!

Good luck and I hope everything works out well for you.

God bless you, Tim!! What an ordeal you have been through...but, what a great attitude!!

I'm tired but I'm upbeat about all this. Thank you all for the kind words. They really help in the long run knowing I have so many friends literally worldwide who are rooting for me. Heck, I still occasionally get a chat window pop up in Facebook and a fellow artist in Scotland will ask the question "How are you doing?" It's enough to bring a tear to my eye. Knowing I have so much support. Despite living alone with noone close by to help, I know I'm not going through this alone.

Thank you all for your kind support in these trying times. Love you all very much.

I might also add that both I and my doctor agree that the infection and other problems I had right after that first infusion were not the result of the infusion itself but of the 8 week break I had in which the cancer had time to grow again. I'm pumped about this immunotherapy and feel good that things will simply get better from here on out.

Thanks again.

Hiya Tim,

I am very happy to hear you are getting some good treatment and therapy (finally). As for me, I have had the Port in my chest for over 4 months now. I also carry a pump that has a strap attached so I can have a certain amount of mobility. The difference between yo an I are vast. I have stage 4 cancer in my liver, lungs and colin. They have me on the general Chemo which I experienced this past Monday for over 4 hours and the same Chemo running through me for 3 days which is in the pump strapped around my shoulder. Unlike you, I am 74 years old with stage 4 all through my body and I am scheduled for a CT scan in October to see if the Chemo is working. The reason I mentioned my age is, I feel I have had a long and prosperous life, so I have no complaints whatsoever.

But, as my artwork shows, I am a realist and believe that the Chemo may give me another year but after that I am in God's good graces. I am sitting here now waiting for the nurse to come over and disconnect the pump. I am on a two week rotation for Chemo. I receive the Chemo every other week. In other words, one week on and one week off. But my doctor told me Monday that everything (my vitals) looks great so I will be placed on management of my Chemo in three weeks. What that means is they will discontinue certain elements in my Chemo that causes my hands and throat to feel like I have pins and needles sticking in them. Also, since I can't go outside in the sunlight, that will change once they eliminate the serums that caused it. They can modify my Chemo since my body has grown stronger and can handle certain things on its own. God bless you Tim and I am praying that your body gets control of this menace that has invaded it through no fault of your own.

That's the problem with cancer, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you or I have done to cause all of this pain and misery. If you have any other sickness such as a cold or many other ailments, there are medicines and treatments that can 'cure' them but with cancer it's the same thing as throwing a fishing line out into a river hoping that some fish will take the bite. So, God bless and hang in there my friend, you are way to young to have to experience all this pain and suffering.

Well, it's been a while. Got back from Bremerton where I was in rehab for 8 days being given a daily anti-bacterial IV. Got home, though, and could only eat tiny amounts before getting really painfully bloated. And I could only sip small amounts of liquid lest I throw up.

Had my third immunotherapy infusion Oct 12 and a fourth stent put into my liver at University of Washington Medical Center's Digestive Health Center Oct 20. Still unable to eat solid foods but am slowly, oh so very slowly, eating more and trying to get back to solids. Gonna try maybe some scrambled eggs this morning. We'll see how it goes.

Go for a CT scan Nov 1 and my forth infusion Nov 2. Just hoping things are starting to turn for the positive.

Thanks for all your support. Life Is Good.

I'll keep you in my thoughts and prayers, Tim. I'm glad you posted to let us know how you are doing.

Thank you for this update, Tim. Please read Harold's good news today. Keep fighting!

You are going to beat this, Tim.

Greetings Tim, continue your fight and may your body heal. We all are continuing to keep up with your progress along the way. Keep strong and will be thinking of you November 1st and 2nd. Keep up the fight!!!!

Cheers from Nawlins

Try to keep us posted, dear friend!!! hope the eggs were tasty and that you were able to enjoy them without problems!!!

Hiya Tim,

I hope you can lick this solid food problem. That condition is what nearly killed me.

But with God's help and a great CT Scan, I found out today that my cancer is in a significant decrease of all my lesions and tumor to the degree that my oncologist is removing one of my medications from my Chemo which causes all of my neuropathy side effects. I had 12 lesions in my liver alone but with my Chemo program I have been on for the past 12 weeks the CT Scan showed my count went down to 4 and the largest of the remaining 4 is dying, poor thing. :) I hope these last operations that you went through will give you the same positive results similar to the ones that I received today.

Tim drink lots of Gatorade until you have reached the point where you can eat solid foods again. The Gatorade was one of the reasons I am alive today. While I was in the hospital I couldn't eat solid foods or drink large amounts of water because it left a metallic taste in my mouth. But it was the Gatorade that kept me going. I still drink it today. When you don't eat or hydrate your body to normal levels, you lose critical electrolytes, like sodium and potassium which helps your brain to communicate with your muscles to put your body back in balance. God bless you Tim and I hope and pray that you will begin to see some light in that dark tunnel you are trapped in.

We are all with you in this battle, Tim. May you improve daily.

Dear Tim,
Thinking of you during this difficult time you're going through. Hope you get more positive news soon. Harold is an inspiration too! We're all rooting for you both!

Thank you all for your wonderful comments. Words alone cannot express how I feel.

@Lois - Didn't get the eggs. When I opened the fridge and looked at the expiration date, it was ten days ago. They are trash now. 9 eggs gone. And my RN at my doctor's office told me to go slow. So maybe not quite yet.

@Harold - That is fantastic news to hear. So very glad you are doing better. Yup. I know the chemo. Every 2 weeks. Wed - chemo and other drugs for a few hours before being hooked up to that fusion pack for 48 hours. Fri - Unhooked from the fusion pack and 6 hours of hydration before getting more chemo and being released. Then off the next week before coming back for more the following week. Glad that is over with. Last dose was July1. I think part of my problem was my 8 week "vacation" until Aug. 31 when I had my first dose of immunotherapy. The cancer had a chance to come back and that infection occurred. This immunotherapy is every 3 weeks and I am infused for maybe an hour or so and that is it. It is just all these other issues - infection, stents being clogged, adding a new stent, unable to eat much in the way of anything without being bloated, constipation, etc, etc, etc. - that have gotten in the way.

Meanwhile, I'll keep Gatorade in mind. My apt. is already overstocked with stuff like Vitamin Water and other drinks. But it is on my bucket list.

Thanks again everybody for the well wishes. Love you all.

Well, I had a great day yesterday. My brother from NC and his wife, wanting to see me for the first time since well before my cancer diagnosis, made arrangements several weeks ago to meet me at our Mom's place in Bremerton (just across the pond from Seattle) and then, on the second of November, I got my latest diagnosis that this immunotherapy isn't working and there wasn't much more my doctor could do for me. The arrival of my brother and his family, (his two daughters drove up from Portland, OR) was so serendipitous. I was then able to get my other brother, also down in Portland, along with his son from Vancouver, WA and his new girlfriend and his two little girls to show up too. And, on top of that, my very good friend Chris who has been amazing in helping me from day one of my diagnosis last year was able to be there and we had a great lunch on Sunday at Mom's retirement home. We had to reserve the "card room" as her small apartment is way too small for all of us. But we had a great time and I was able to reconnect with family that I hadn't seen in far too long.

And now to find out that I am scheduled to go over to Mom's place Thanksgiving eve, stay overnight and then, Thursday we will get a ride up to Marrowstone Island up on the Olympic Penninsula to have Thanksgiving with my aunt, my Mom's oldest sister, who is soon to turn 100 yo. My Mom is turning 90 Dec. 30, is the youngest of six and all her siblings, 4 sisters and one brother, are still alive. We'll have Thanksgiving with her and her son and his wife who take care of her.

This is getting to be a great time of year for me. Getting to see as many relatives as I can, while I can. Still have many more to see before it is time.

Meanwhile, looking at CBD oil as a possible way to stem this cancer. Also, I have hospice coming over to check in on me periodically. There will be a nurse every Thursday stopping by, a social worker as well, a chaplain every other week and volunteers to help with dishes, vacuuming, laundry, etc. And then Dec. 9 I see my doctor again.

I'm really feeling good about this despite the fact it is a bit scary now that my doctor can't help me anymore. The immunotherapy was so promising. I'm very disapponted but I know I have the best of the best in doctors and SCCA where I was getting treatment is top of the line rated the #5 hospital in the US as well as the best cancer center on the west coast.

Still, just plugging along. Looking into a voice recorder to dictate a memoir of sorts that many have said I should look into doing.

But I'm tired now. Need to take more morphine and get to bed.

Thanks again for all your support. I may end up putting up a new Go Fund Me page to help keep a roof over my head, food on the table and CBD oil to fight this cancer.

Thanks again.
Tim

Tim ... good to get an update from you, my friend. You know I keep an eye on you on FB ... but I like to keep touch here as well. As so many have said, your strength through all of this is a shining beacon to the rest of us. You are an inspiration. Applause to you for finding all of these wonderful resources in your area. And I know the people you're dealing with are filled with kindness and compassion ... because that's who YOU have always been to others. Sounds like your family visits are wonderful ... a lovely group of people, but what else would someone like yourself have!! Yes, get your rest ... we're here for you, always.

Sending much love ...

Lois