Pancreatic Cancer: Families Move On

By Lisa Strahs-Lorenc

Pancreatic Cancer: Families Move On is a follow-up book from the book that was published on September 3, 2010, entitled Pancreatic Cancer: It’s a Family Affair. Ten years have passed for the families, and we want to share what has happened in our lives after the passing of our loved ones, and the one contributor who is a survivor of this very deadly disease. Our stories illustrate that life goes on, not as we all had planned, but in ways that may have surprised us all. In addition, the proceeds of the sale of this book will be donated to the Lustgarten Foundation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796098204

Lisa Strahs-Lorenc

Lisa M. Strahs-Lorenc is the widow of Fred Strahs-Lorenc who died of pancreatic cancer on January 30, 2009. They were together for 33 ½ years and had 2 children, Sari and Ryan. In the 11 years since his passing, she has been with a fellow widow for the past 8 years. She held an engagement party for her daughter, a wedding in California, and has 3 granddaughters. She saw her son grow in his career, graduate from college and buy a home in Florida. She has changed jobs a number of times and works part-time for a non-profit organization. This book is an important passion project for her to support others who have lost their loved ones, demonstrating how life goes on, and to support the research of the Lustgarten Foundation for early detection and an eventual cure for this deadly disease.

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Copyright © 2020 by Lisa Strahs-Lorenc.

Library of Congress Control Number:           2020907782

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/17/2020

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

About the Lustgarten Foundation

Acknowledgments

Who Are We?

Chapter 1 Looking Back: Memories and Loss

Chapter 1—Pictures

Chapter 2 The First Year After Death—Dealing with so Many Firsts

Chapter 2—Pictures

Chapter 3 The Second Year After Death—Beginning Changes

Chapter 3—Pictures

Chapter 4 Five Years Later After Death—More Changes

Chapter 4—Pictures

Chapter 5 Ten Years Later After Death—Where I Am Now

Chapter 5—Pictures

Chapter 6 Significant Changes in My Life: Surprises and Lessons Learned

Chapter 6—Pictures

Chapter 7 Looking Ahead but Never Forgetting the Past

Chapter 7—Pictures

Chapter 8 Advice from the Trenches

Chapter 8—Pictures

Author Description

DEDICATION

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T o my husband, Fred, with whom I shared thirty-three and a half years, and our two children, Sari and Ryan. Memories never die, and you will live in my heart forever.

To my significant other, Stu, I am so grateful that we met and that I have been given the chance to love again. I love sharing our lives together and living each day to the fullest. Thank you for the new family that you have brought with you. I love having a sister and brother-in-law, nephew and niece-in-law, and another aunt with additional cousins.

To my children, Sari and Ryan, I wish for you long and happy lives. You know that I am always here for you. You know how precious life is. Make the most of every day. You were raised by two loving parents, and you know the meaning of unconditional love. To my granddaughters, as long as we continue to talk about the loved ones who are no longer here, they will live forever in our hearts.

To all the book contributors, your willingness to share your stories and help support others is not only admirable but also demonstrates your compassion and understanding about the importance of moving on. We have shared this experience and want to help others in the same situation know that they are not alone. Thank you for your time and dedication to making this book possible.

FOREWORD

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T his book exists because of the resilience of families who have undergone unimaginable pain and challenges and have moved on with their lives. We represent twelve out of the original twenty families that contributed to the first book, Pancreatic Cancer: It’s a Family Affair , published on September 3, 2010. Each of us has coped differently, and we want to share what our lives have been like through the years without our loved ones. In addition, our one survivor will share her health and life challenges in these past ten years. Here are the chapters that make up this updated support book:

Chapter 1: Looking Back: Memories and Loss

Chapter 2: The First Year After Death—Dealing with so Many Firsts

Chapter 3: The Second Year After Death—Beginning Changes

Chapter 4: Five Years Later After Death—More Changes

Chapter 5: Ten Years Later After Death—Where I Am Now

Chapter 6: Significant Changes in My Life: Surprises and Lessons Learned

Chapter 7: Looking Ahead but Never Forgetting the Past

Chapter 8: Advice from the Trenches

It is our hope that we will support and help others in similar situations. The theme of this book is hope, resilience, and optimism. We have and will never forget our loved ones. I have no doubt that our loved ones would want us to live happily and make the most of our lives.

ABOUT THE LUSTGARTEN FOUNDATION

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T he Lustgarten Foundation, based in Bethpage, New York, is America’s largest private foundation dedicated solely to funding pancreatic cancer research. Founded in 1998, the foundation provides critical support in the search for better diagnostics and treatment of pancreatic cancer and, to date, has provided more than $32 million to more than 115 research projects at forty-one medical and research centers worldwide.

The Lustgarten Foundation and Cablevision Systems Corporation, a leading media and entertainment company, together launched curePC, a public awareness campaign that uses Cablevision’s high-profile assets to draw attention to the fight against pancreatic cancer. As part of this campaign, Cablevision made a multiyear commitment to underwrite all the Lustgarten Foundation’s administrative costs to ensure that 100 percent of every dollar donated to the foundation will go directly to pancreatic cancer research. To learn more, visit www.curepc.org.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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K erri Kaplan, Executive Director and CEO, Lustgarten Foundation

The Lustgarten Foundation congratulates Lisa M. Strahs-Lorenc, BS, MPS, on her second book, Pancreatic Cancer: Families Move On. This book is a valuable resource for those who have lost loved ones to this devastating disease and a noteworthy follow-up to Pancreatic Cancer: It’s a Family Affair. Lisa and her contributors share their firsthand experience and thought-provoking perspective and advice on the process of moving forward after the death of a loved one while continuing to find meaningful ways to honor these loved ones. We are grateful that Lisa will be donating the proceeds to the Lustgarten Foundation, the largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research in the world. Based in Woodbury, New York, the Foundation’s mission is to cure pancreatic cancer by funding scientific and clinical research related to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of pancreatic cancer; providing research information and clinical support services to patients, caregivers, and individuals at high risk; and increasing public awareness and hope for those dealing with this disease. Since its inception, the Lustgarten Foundation has directed nearly $200 million to research and has assembled the best scientific minds with the hope that one day a cure can be found. Thanks to separate funding to support administrative expenses, 100 percent of every donation to the Lustgarten Foundation goes directly to pancreatic cancer research. For more information, visit www.lustgarten.org.

WHO ARE WE?

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CHAPTER 1

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Looking Back: Memories and Loss

Look back at your life. It’s always the hardest

times that made you who you are.

—Casey Neistat

N o truer words have ever been said as we contributors to this support book look back at what we have been through during our loved one’s illness. The goal of this chapter is to recount and, unfortunately, relive the diagnosis, treatment, and outcome of the disease of pancreatic cancer. Our goal is to bring the reader up to date on what happened since some may not have read the first support book, Pancreatic Cancer: It’s a Family Af fair .

Each of the contributors will be writing about his/her experiences. This is a very challenging process, especially to remember what happened to our loved ones. Some of us write more about our relationship. Others write more about the diagnosis and outcomes.

These are our stories, painful at times, even after all these years. To understand where we are today, the reader needs to understand what we and our loved ones went through.

From Adult Children

Sari

To sum up my experience with cancer, I would say that it sucks. Cancer changes your day-to-day life; everything that was expected becomes unknown. Every day, every moment, every test result becomes inconsistent and unstable. One moment you feel fine, you are working or spending a weekend with your family, and the next moment you are told that you have six months or less to live. It can become maddening!

Before my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he started to get sick. He was coming home from work with terrible abominable pains. He was throwing up and could not get comfortable. He went into the doctor and had the tests done. A few days or weeks later, I received that phone call. I had previously decided to move to California with my ex-boyfriend. He was going to pursue a degree in California, and I wanted the relationship to work, so I wanted to move with him. When my dad called me, I was on an interview in California and looking at apartments. I had this sick feeling of pain and sadness; I had no idea what to do. The next couple of months, I stayed in New York to spend what I thought would probably be my last Christmas and holiday with my dad. With all the instability of cancer, one thing that it does give you is closure. You have time with the person, even though it is the hardest time in their life. You are able to say goodbye, talk about good times, and reminisce about what might have been.

When I moved out to California in January 2008, time stopped. My dad went to the doctor with my mom, who was his caretaker. We spoke on the phone and tried to mend our disagreements from the past but never really talked about the inevitable, his death, until the very end at least. Life continued for me as if he wasn’t sick. He went into remission, and I felt a relief that he might not die. That November testing continued, and we were told that the cancer was back, but now it had spread (from what I remember).

In January 2009, I received that call, the call that you never want to get. My mom called and said that it was time to come home. I went to the airport and took the first flight to New York. I arrived seven hours later and went straight to the hospital. We took my dad home the next day and went through the final steps with hospice. We were able to say goodbye. We cried a lot and talked about life. My dad was able to meet my current husband and gave our relationship a blessing. Even though my dad’s passing away has been one of the hardest events of my life, it is easier to comprehend than other deaths that I have had in my life. I feel that when someone older than you passes away, it is expected—when you get older, that is what happens. You are not supposed to die young, but you are supposed to die when you get older. The dying process when you are diagnosed with cancer, though horribly painful, allows you to have time and closure with your loved ones. I guess there is a price to pay for everything.

Ernesto

I had just turned forty years old. I knew that my father was experiencing something. He had been going for tests for a few months now. Fast-forward a few weeks and my father had another appointment with his doctor. That was when the doctor had told him it was pancreatic cancer. As I drove into Brooklyn to meet my parents at the doctor’s office, the first thing my father had said to me was A cosi e finite la storia. Translated from his native Italian, it means This is how the story ends.

My father’s battle with pancreatic cancer lasted just about six months from being diagnosed to passing away. The first consult we had was at Sloan Kettering to discuss our options. The doctor had said that it may be early enough that we can plan for surgery to perform the Whipple procedure, and so we had gone through the preliminary steps to schedule surgery and all the pre-op steps necessary. It was only a few days before the scheduled surgery that the doctor had gotten in touch with us because he was concerned about a few questionable spots that were seen on further testing and stated that surgery wasn’t going to be possible, and we then started with chemo treatments. During that span, he had spent a total of sixty-three days back and forth with being admitted into the hospital and trying to manage his condition and the effects of his treatments. We all were making ourselves available for the chemo treatments and the follow-up visits and just trying to spend that much more time together because deep down, though we wouldn’t share it with one another, we all knew that unfortunately, the prognosis for pancreatic cancer was not good.

It was in that time that not only did I learn so much more about and from my father, but it also brought my entire family that much closer, and we were already a close family. Realizing what the circumstances were, I wanted to spend as much time as possible with him. We were able to share and reflect on my father’s story. I was extremely fortunate to have my father in my life for forty-plus years as I realize each and every day the values that he had instilled in me and the rest of my family were exactly that, valuable beyond belief.

Carrie

My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July 2006. He was sixty-six years old and very excited to enjoy his retirement and golden years with his wife, family, and friends, traveling and making memories in all our usual places. He didn’t have many serious symptoms, and the diagnosis was a shock and very upsetting.

We didn’t really know much about PC, and of course, I Googled it. I shouldn’t have done that. I was not prepared for the fear and complete panic that set in when I read about the disease. I was just starting my family, and my dad was my best friend. He was an amazing father and grandpa, and we had plans. We had many, many plans, and this was not the way it was supposed to happen. My dad received treatment at the Mayo Clinic, and I remember the doctors looking very straight-faced and expressionless when they told us about what the next days and months were going to have in store for us. I remember thinking how depressing being a doctor in this department must be, knowing the statistics and telling people day after day they are not going to live very long, people like me crying and begging for some answer of how we can buy more time, and there must be something we can do. Those doctors are dealing with pure, raw emotions of desperate people.

As I look back on it, yuk. Just plain YUK. Not any fun or joy in those days or those appointments. We listened to the options to buy my dad a few more months of quality time to enjoy a select few bucket list items. We got the probabilities of his coming days in different scenarios and had no idea what it all meant. It was all a blur, and we lived on pure emotion and panic. My dad had some success with chemo, and it gave him some wonderful days and months to make some beautiful memories. Such great moments he used to say that it was almost dying for. He was happy and accepting of his fate but secretly said he cried at night alone in his bed. He was worried about all of us but stayed strong. At a certain point, I had to let go of being needy, in my grief and sadness, to stay positive for his mental state—celebrating his days and his love instead of crying all the time and bringing him down more than he already was.

In the first book, I wrote about what life was like for my family before the diagnosis, what we were doing, and how we felt during the diagnosis and life after that. It was all about the grief, heartache, and how a person gets back to wanting to live without the most special person in their life. To honor their memory must be by coming back to the land of the living. For them, it’s the only thing that got me back—knowing how sad he would be if I died alongside him and didn’t live this precious life he and my mother gave me.

Sherri

After a failed marriage, my mother, Margie, came to live with me. I lived alone at the time, so it worked out perfectly, and it was good for both of us. My parents had been divorced since the early 1980s, and as it turned out, I was caretaker for both. I was working full time during the day and going to a college that was about one hour away (each way) full time at night to get my bachelor’s degree and trying to handle the pressures of doing all that, along with taking care of my father. My father had been in a nursing home for what turned out to be about two and a half years when he passed away on August 2, 2006, and even though he was in a nursing home, family members such as myself always have to help out if they want their loved one to have adequate care. My mother, my best friend, was by my side as I sat by his side as he took his last breath.

Mom had just entered the official retirement stage of her life, so we thought she would have the opportunity to do whatever she wanted. It was about two months after my father died that Mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so I went from being caregiver for one parent, basically skipping a lot of the grieving process, to caring for the other parent. Please do not misunderstand; I would spend every minute again the same, but I did not want to have to. It turned out Mom had been experiencing symptoms, mostly sharp pains in the middle area of her back, which is next to where the pancreas sits, but she did not tell me about it so I would not worry. That’s what moms do, right?

She was tested for many things and had chest X-rays, stress tests, lab work, and I feel sure a few other things to rule out what it could be over a course of about three or four months. It was at this point when she started letting me know what had been going on, though I did know she had been going to the doctor. Next, they ordered what I believe was an abdominal CT scan. The doctor’s office was slow to get it ordered, to let us know they got the results, and when they did, to getting Mom in to review the results, but with the weekend approaching and knowing we could not wait over the weekend, I fussed and carried on a little. Mom finally got that appointment scheduled (before that weekend, mind you), and I went with her. We could tell just by the way they talked in getting her called back and the overall mood that things were not good. The doctor came to inform us of numerous tumors in her liver and pancreas and of the radiologist’s opinion that these were malignant. We tried to be strong in front of the doctor (why, I do not know), but he left the room, and we both just lost it. We hugged, we cried, and we tried