Pancreatic cancer: Sometimes you need more than a second opinion

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — There’s fresh hope for pancreatic cancer patients. While the five-year survival rate is 13%, doctors and researchers are making great strides to increase awareness for earlier diagnosis and better outcomes.

We caught up with one survivor who says sometimes, you need a lot more than a second opinion. Demetra Salls says she just knew something was very wrong.

“I could not get out of bed,” Salls said. Fatigued beyond her typical master’s course load at ASU, she didn’t stop at a second or third opinion on what was causing her severe abdominal pain and cramps. She went to seven different doctors in a year to get an accurate diagnosis.

“I get a call from my primary care doctor and he’s conference-called my mom in because she was at work and he asks, ‘Are you sitting down?” Salls said. A CT scan revealed a softball-sized tumor on her pancreas.

“I was a month away from my 22nd birthday, and that was three days before Christmas,” Salls said. It was tough not to go down the Google rabbit hole of worst-case scenarios. “The clinical name for the type of tumor I had is solid pseudopapillary neoplasm of the pancreas, also known as a Frantz tumor,” Salls said.

Extremely rare, doctors told her it was non-cancerous but also malignant, because it was growing and causing problems. They told her she needed a risky Whipple surgery to remove it. Because your pancreas is so deep near your spine, it’s tough to get to. “They ended up taking out 10 inches of my small intestine, my gallbladder, and they ended up taking about a third of my pancreas along with the tumor. We had doctors telling me that I could be on a feeding tube for months if they did it wrong,” Salls said.

While it was a lot to adjust to, Salls said she never took for granted it wasn’t radiation or chemotherapy. “I definitely consider myself among the lucky ones,” she said.

Four months after the surgery, she was the Phoenix Pancan Purple Stride, sharing her survivor story, encouraging pancreatic cancer patients and their families to keep fighting and pushing for a cure.

“I am so grateful that I get to tell my story, and it’s definitely put a charge on me and with the rest of my life to advocate for the people who can’t,” Salls said. “We are the few who can tell our story and living out our lives and living it, well, is the best way to say ‘screw you’ to the diagnosis from hell.”

She got her master’s while going through recovery and then landed her dream job as a rocket scientist and systems engineer at Cape Canaveral, Florida, fueled by the drive to keep living well and encouraging others to never give up. “I went from pancreatic cancer survivor to rocket scientist,” Salls said.

You can get involved with this year’s Pancan Purple Stride, sign up or donate online to help the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network support families and patients. The Phoenix event is one of 60 nationwide on track to raise $287,000.

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