Cancer has been known to be a disease that robs patient off their lives. They give you no symptoms at first, but when something feels off and you decide to go see a doctor, you'd be surprised with the results. Yet the disease is still ignored and does not get the attention it should get. Let's get to know the disease from a survivor himself.
The doctor asked Ivan McMinn if he had been in the sun, as he was in for a treatment for instance skin itching. However, the doctor was more concerned with his yellowish skin. He recalls the doctor sending him to accident and emergency on Armistice Day 2011, at 11:11 on November 11th. Thinking about it still gives him goosebumps.
While at A&E, McMinn, 53, head of business acquisition with Danske Bank, was asked to stay for tests. Doctors were suspecting the Belfast native, and a father-of-two to have gallstones, but two days later he was that the doctors found a cancerous tumor at the head of his pancreas.
About 88,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer every year. The illness that took the life of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and actor Patrick Swayze is considered to be the fifth most common cause of cancer death in Britain. In 2030, it is expected to overtake breast cancer as the nation's fourth-largest cancer killer.
A recent study revealed that ¾ of Britons doesn't know a single symptom of this deadly disease. Unawareness both of the public and doctors and inadequate treatment and research implies that the chances of survival are slim. Statistics show that only 4 percent of patients survive this illness in the past 5 years compared to the 87 percent that breast cancer have.
The numbers are shocking, as an early diagnosis can mean the difference between a tumor that is operable and one that isn't. Almost 50% of diagnosed cases like McMinn get their diagnosis in A&E.
