I wonder which retard wrote this. Rub your two brain cells together. Obviously, an inoperable tumor is a very bad sign. Of course remission is no longer on the table. Are they in denial, willfully ignorant or purposely misrepresenting this to the people donating? This sounds like palliative chemo to me. I love the sugarcoating language. If it was J or Corissa, they would be using melodramatic language and making themselves a victim somehow.
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If he's not even a candidate for a Whipple (pancreaticoduodenectomy) after two full rounds of first line chemotherapy, he's fucked. Not that I've run into many Whipple patients who had any quality of life at all.
Not only his his tumor inoperable, it appears that it's refractory (treatment-resistant) at this point. I still suspect he has a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (NET) rather than the more common pancreatic adenocarcinoma because he isn't dead quite yet; you don't usually get the luxury of doing two rounds of ineffective chemotherapy with a pancreatic adenocarcinoma. It's hard for me to tell by reading the update whether he actually has progressive disease or if it's currently stable but he never achieved even a partial response to treatment. Obviously, the second scenario is much more positive, although neither is truly "good".
I'm also curious what specific drugs he's on. As with any cancer, first line treatment options for pancreatic NET depend on the stage of disease and grade of tumor. Low stage, localized disease (i.e., a tumor that has not spread outside the pancreas) is treated with surgery. In some cases, neoadjuvant chemotherapy is given to shrink the tumor so that it can be surgically removed. I would guess that this was the original plan for Steve. Surgery is the only truly curative treatment for this type of tumor, which is why it's so bad that he's not resectable.
So, he's out of curative options. What happens next? Well, this is sort of the oncologist's bread and butter. At this point, we are talking about options to control the disease for as long as possible without absolutely destroying the patient's quality of life, not magical ways of making the cancer go away. Some lucky people find an effective treatment right away and stay on it for years. Others achieve stable disease initially, but experience progression within weeks or months, requiring a change in regimen. Unfortunately, with any cancer, likelihood of disease control and overall survival diminish with each failed treatment. Once a tumor develops resistance to one drug, the odds of success with further treatment decrease.
In general, any tumors arising high in the digestive tract are nasty, tricky beasts. He's actually been lucky to have survived this long. He's in the shit now, though. It's immensely stupid that Corissa or whoever wrote the recent update thinks that they're waiting to find out whether he might still be curable (what normies mean when they say "remission"). Gorl, he ain't been curable since diagnosis. People like this are usually of the Lance Armstrong school of oncologisophy, the type to express that their relative is a unique "fighter" or a "warrior", not a big gaping pussy like all those other dEaD cancer guys. Inevitably, they'll encourage him to continue futile treatment despite enormous and ever increasing suffering. Stopping treatment, opting for palliative care, or entering hospice is "giving up". Super annoying. Often, this is when the oncologist suggests a consultation with the hospital social worker, not for the benefit of the patient but for the family, who believe that dying means "losing the battle".