Back when I was in college, someone gifted me Randy Pausch's "The Last Lecture". It was my first introduction to this terrible disease. Little did I know then, that a decade later, I would lose my beloved father in-law to the same disease.

When he was diagnosed, I digged into Randy's old blog, and realized how little things have changed since then. There is now a new cocktail of Chemotherapy drugs, but apart from that we have hardly progressed on this front. I don't think we could have really saved him even with an early diagnosis.

Surgery seems to be the only permanent, generic cure as far as most cancers are concerned. But with Pancreas, from what I read, even that gave a very grim future (as in Randy's case). If at all you survive the Whipples, you will be entirely on expensive enzyme supplements for the rest of your life AND carry a significant risk of metastasis.