john amato

in july of this year, dr and i created a newsletter, the bexton gazette née the creeper times. we started with a select group of friends, somewhere around a baker’s dozen, that we knew would appreciate a monthly piece of mail and, perhaps, a deeper look into our thoughts. for the most part, we publish on a monthly basis. distribution is very exclusive (even leah was locked out of the first draft). subscriptions are now available on an invite only basis – you better contact a current subscriber if you’d like to receive your own personal copy of the bexton gazette, your creepiest monthly mailing from the brothers amato. due to the importance of this month’s issue, we have decided to share this with a broader audience. enjoy.

nancy pants

“You Can Hope or You Can Help”

Holland, OH – At the end of October the Amato Family and many friends participated in the LA Cancer Challenge. It was hosted by the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.

As most of you know, our mother, Nancy Pants Amato, is a three year pancreatic cancer survivor. For many years Pants struggled with chronic pancreatitis. Pancreatitis is an inflammation of the pancreas. It means the acid meant to digest food is stuck in the pancreas and begins to eat away at the walls of the pancreas. It is very painful. However, pancreatitis is rarely a precursor to pancreatic cancer.

When Pants couldn’t shake a case of pancreatitis in the summer of 2006, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic chose to perform a Whipple surgery. The Whipple surgery involves the removal of the gallbladder, common bile duct, duodenum and the head of the pancreas. Basically, Pants had a major section of her insides removed in the hope that it would eliminate her pancreatitis.

When the doctors went in to perform the operation, they took a section of her liver and tested it for cancer. At the time of the surgery the results came back negative. If it would have shown positive, they would not have performed the surgery. After further inspection of the liver sample, it was noticed that the sample was positive – meaning Pants was not suffering from pancreatitis, but had pancreatic cancer that had metastasized to her liver. This meant she had advanced to stage 4 pancreatic cancer. When the scale is out of 5, this was pretty serious.

We were very fortunate the doctors did not notice the spread of cancer to her liver when they performed the Whipple procedure. Undergoing this operation greatly increases the survival of the patient. However, very few inflicted with pancreatic cancer are eligible for the Whipple because it can only be performed on patients in the very early stages of pancreatic cancer. She also had very skilled doctors.

Shortly after the surgery, Pants began chemo and radiation treatments at the University of Michigan. When the treatments were done, we were told there was little else we could do to prevent the eventual spread of the cancer. This was not acceptable to Chris Amato. He fought the insurance companies for more. More coverage, more answers, more treatments.

It was through this fight that he stumbled upon a clinical trial vaccine at Johns Hopkins University. Pants has been one of the few success stories in trial.

Relatively little is still known about pancreatic cancer. It is a very difficult condition to diagnose. “The one-year relative survival rate is 20%, and the five-year rate is 4%. These low survival rates are attributable to the fact that fewer than 10% of patients’ tumors are confined to the pancreas at the time of diagnosis; in most cases, the malignancy has already progressed to the point where surgical removal is impossible. In those cases where resection can be performed, the average survival rate is 18 to 20 months[1].”

The LA Cancer Challenge was an amazing event. Pants trained all summer and successfully completed the run. Her first! About 50 friends came out for the weekend to support Pants and she even had her own videographer who chronicled the entire weekend. Her sisters and work colleagues all surprised her and made the weekend trip. The race is the largest fundraiser for the Hirshberg Foundation, which was the first foundation setup to support pancreatic cancer research.

One aspect of the race that stood out the most after the race was the realization that there were only two pancreatic cancer survivors present. This wasn’t because people with pancreatic cancer didn’t want to participate – it was because there are so few. All of the other teams were running in honor of a lost loved one. Pancreatic cancer research is the most significantly under-funded and unnoticed major cancer.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute funds pancreatic cancer research at shockingly low levels (year 2005-07 figures). Pancreatic cancer research receives (per mortality):

• 15% of the funding of breast cancer (but causes 82% of the mortality)
• 17% of the funding of prostate cancer (but causes more mortality)
• 41% of the funding of colorectal cancer (but causes 63% of the mortality)

This is all despite the fact that pancreatic cancer is the most aggressive form of cancer and is the fourth most common cause of death due to cancer.[2]

Since pancreatic cancer is such an important cause to us, we chose to highlight it this month because November is Pancreatic Cancer month. Pancreatic cancer has unnecessarily taken the lives of too many people. Everyday people equally loved by their family and friends. We want our mother to start a new trend, a trend of people who beat this terrible disease.

It’s strange to think about our mortality at such a young age. As a family we’ve lived a fairly tale existence. Even in the face of such long odds we’ve been given more than most. Our mother is impossible to adequately explain in words. We aren’t the most eloquent communicators, so we’d like to paraphrase a line from the Life of Pie to explain Nancy Pants. “Our mother, well, she’s like the sun above us.”

[2] Figures from pancreatica.org