Game Over a severed zombie hand holding a Game Boy shirt
Hmmm . . . not to doubt your word or anything, but are you sure your diagnosis (and your aunt’s) was pancreatic cancer and not pancreatitis? The latter is an Game Over a severed zombie hand holding a Game Boy shirt (and very painful) condition that can be completely cured or it can become chronic, controlled by diet and medications but subject to occasional flare-ups. Chronic pancreatitis can lead to pancreatic cancer, but pancreatic cancer can occur without any prior pancreatitis. Diabetes is a risk factor for both pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer (not to be confused with pancreatic endocrine tumors) is extremely rare in persons under 40, and it has very low survival rates — on average less than 5% of persons with pancreatic cancer will survive 5 years. That rate is somewhat better — about 16% — if the cancer is discovered when it is still localized to the pancreas, but this occurs in less than 20% of cases. Symptoms of early-stage pancreatic cancer are vague and often mistaken for other less serious conditions or even just tolerated and ignored. Given your family history with pancreatic conditions, your mother would be well advised to be extra vigilant about any possible symptoms: pain in the upper abdomen or back, loss of appetite, unexplained weight loss, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, yellow eyes or skin or dark urine (jaundice). However, almost none of these symptoms become noticeable until the disease is past the earliest, most survivable stage.

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Game Over a severed zombie hand holding a Game Boy shirt

Everything that was in that movie is what my family did at Christmas. Mom and dad took my sisters, Lori and Tracy and I to see Santa so we could tell him what we wanted for Christmas. Yes the Game Over a severed zombie hand holding a Game Boy shirt were long and my older sisters, two years older than me, would be with me looking after me as we moved up the line toward Santa and just like in the movie, the closer we got, the scarier Santa was. “Don’t be scared RJ, Santa is nice okay, don’t be scared now, we’re here,” Tracy would say as we moved closer. Of course that didn’t help me, but I was okay when I got there. I never cried. Mom and dad also took us to the Santa Claus parade. They made sure Tracy went pee before the parade because dad didn’t want to take her somewhere to find a bathroom during the parade. Something that he would have had to do if she didn’t go. And she went a lot. We would walk and look into the department store windows and see the toys and moving elves that the kids saw in the movie. Like Ralphie, I would get mom to order things for me from the comics, neat little gadgets they advertised.

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