At the end of June, four months after the surgery for pancreatic cancer, I played a full match in an official soccer match. In the past, no matter how much I dieted, I could only lose till 78kg, but now I’m down to 72kg, and thanks to my daily muscle training, my body has become much firmer, so I can play soccer more nimbly than ever before. I’ve started going out to eat with friends, which I had previously refrained from, and in August I was planning to go to Singapore with my son and his wife. I thought I had completely recovered from pancreatic cancer and was healthier than ever, but…
When I had my diagnosis with Dr. M in early July, he ran his finger over each item on my blood test and said, “Ah, the numbers are still good…huh?” and his finger stopped on the last item. CA19-9, a tumor marker for pancreatic cancer, was close to 550. CA19-9 is normal at 37 or less, and I had never exceeded 37 in any previous tests, but the number suddenly became high. CA19-9 can be high in conditions other than pancreatic cancer, so this doesn’t mean that pancreatic cancer has recurred. However, the next diagnosis is usually in 6 weeks, but it’s better to check sooner, so we decided to do another blood test in 3 weeks.
My wife and I were talking about how it probably wasn’t cancer, and that I probably had been infected with the COVIT-19 or flu, which have been going around recently, even though I haven’t developed symptoms, and that’s why the blood test results were so bad. I’ve always been the type of person who is not susceptible to infection, so even if my family members have the flu, I don’t develop symptoms myself, but I thought that I was a so-called super-spreader type of person who is infected but doesn’t develop symptoms such as fever. Several people around me were infected with the COVIT-19, so I thought that I had been infected, even though I hadn’t developed symptoms of the COVIT-19, and that this had caused my CA19-9 results to go up.
That was our selfish and wishful thinking. In July, I was busy at work, with dinner parties with friends at night, and playing soccer and working in the fields on the weekends, so I didn’t give too much thought to the possibility of a recurrence of pancreatic cancer. I took another blood test three weeks later, but my CA19-9 level was even higher, at just under 1800. Dr. M told me at the time that my pancreatic cancer was poorly differentiated, meaning it was more malignant than normal cancers and had a poor prognosis. Cancer is a type of cell tissue that has deviated from the role of the original cells, and cancers that have differentiated to a point close to the original cells are called well-differentiated cancers, while cancers that have a structure far removed from the original cells are called poorly differentiated cancers. Poorly differentiated cancers have a poor prognosis and progress quickly. Most cancers are well-differentiated cancers, but my cancer was a poorly differentiated one. Pancreatic cancer itself is poor prognosis, but mine seems to be even worse than normal pancreatic cancer.
Since this was highly likely a recurrence, we decided to take a CT scan to confirm, and he quickly scheduled a CT scan for the following week. I had made an appointment to see Dr. M a week after the CT scan, but a few days after the CT scan, I suddenly got a call from K Hospital while I was at work. It was Dr. M. The CT scan confirmed that the cancer had metastasized to the liver. In the case of metastasis after surgery, it is not a surgeon but an internist who is in charge, and since it is better to deal with it as soon as possible, he called me without waiting for the diagnosis date. Listening to Dr. M’s apologetic tone, I thought to myself as if it was someone else’s problem that Dr. M must be frustrated that the cancer recurred after such a difficult operation, but since I had heard that it was a poorly differentiated cancer, I was prepared to some extent, so I was able to listen to what Dr. M had to say more calmly than I expected. My internist would be Dr. I, who had looked after me before the surgery, and I made an appointment with Dr. I over the phone.
And so I ended up being looked after by Dr. I again, who had said it would be better not to meet me after the surgery.