Peer Support

I volunteer for an outfit called PCAN, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. You don't want what it takes to do my job. But I am a psychotherapist, as well as a person who has—has had?—pancreatic cancer, so I thought my skills would make me a good candidate to help others. Newly diagnosed patients can phone someone experienced. I had about a year's experience when I signed on. Too much; not enough.

Betsy, a woman my age, calls. She has recently been released from the hospital after a Whipple. The Whipple is the Mt. Everest of surgery—ask a doc who has done one. Betsy is a therapist too. Her diagnosis is the same as mine, except they found a positive lymph node outside her pancreas. “Just one,” she says.

She is alone, never married, recently moved from the Bay Area to a planned community near San Luis. I couldn't imagine going through the months ahead without a partner. Who will call the visiting nurse when the electric drain attached to her incision screams, scaring the dog, and fails to pump? Who will change her dressings, drive her to chemo, cook the weird foods she craves?

Like me, she is furious that the life she planned is lost. “I don't want this marvelous new life survivors tout. I want the old one where I didn't have to appreciate every day!” But she is resourceful: before she called me, she tracked down a program that provides nutritional counseling and a group that will pay for a consult when she is well enough to travel. She found a program that would pay her airfare, too. I tell her about the vaccine trial I hope to join. I contacted them first when I was still in chemo, traveled to Baltimore, was assured of acceptance into the next cohort.

She is upbeat. I'm supposed to support her, I think. The next day I call Baltimore—soon, they say.

After talking to Betsy, I call Baltimore every few weeks. My oncologist, Rebecca, calls too. The physician who runs the study is impressed by that; he sends her warm emails. He says no oncologist has ever supported a patient for his trial. I think he'd like to know her better.

At last he emails that the next phase of the trial is about to begin and I should contact the study nurse to book an appointment. The next day he emails again, rescinding the invitation. I have lived too long since surgery and no longer qualify for his vaccine. Eighteen months is their limit. “Sorry,” he says.

I give Betsy his name and, having barely finished her initial treatment, she is accepted at once. She is grateful. We agree that she is taking my place.

Other voices I hear on the phone haunt me. They are frightened voices, not upbeat at all. A man is living alone somewhere in Boston—he could be down my street. I don't understand his story. Why was it a “chest doctor” who told Joe he had pancreatic cancer? Why has no physician seen him since that distressing news six weeks ago?

Mostly he wants reassurance that he can “beat this,” so the story dribbles out around the edge of his desperation. The Ride took him to an appointment with an oncologist, but though he waited hours, no one saw him. The Ride transports disabled people. Another dribble of information: he is on oxygen. And he has diabetes. He asks me questions: what did I do? I had surgery. No one has suggested surgery to him. Well no, I think. You don't have a physician to recommend any treatment. “How long ago did you have surgery?” he asks. Now it is over two years. I don't want to remember, but the memory seems like a film.

Joe is crying. “Pat,” he says. “I have to beat this.”

Really, over and over, this is what he says.

Rudely I interrupt: “How old are you?” I don't know where that came from, but he answers—he is 86.

Wow. Sometimes I dream of 80...