Teona Ducre survived pancreatic cancer | inoperable adenocarcinoma | folfirinox | gemzar abraxane
- Jim Foster
- Dec 8, 2021
- 28 min read
DESCRIPTION
What began as severe lower back pain for Teona Ducre led to a diagnosis of Stage III pancreatic cancer at age 41. She underwent surgery to remove a tumor, but that was preceded by an aggressive chemotherapy regimen, first six months with folfirinox, supplemented by xeloda and gemzar abraxane. Teona went through the terrible side effects associated with chemotherapy, but doctors determined she was in remission and fully cancer-free.
In March 2016, Teona Ducre of Atlanta, Georgia began to experience lower back pain. In addition, there was nausea. When she sought medical attention, she probably had acid reflux, perhaps irritable bowel syndrome. When she became sick and had the chills, she went back to a doctor, who ordered a CT scan. It revealed a large mass on her pancreas and on April Fool’s Day, she was told she could have cancer.
Teona went before another group of doctors who looked at the same scan and immediately said that she has Stage III pancreatic cancer, inoperable adenocarcinoma. The decision was made to have a chance to remove the tumor, she would need to go on chemotherapy in an attempt to shrink the tumor. If that was successful, then they would try surgery in about six months. Ultimately this plan worked, but in 2016, the prospect of chemo before surgery was not the standard of care. However, the care team had data that suggested it was better to first shrink the tumor and then operate.
Teona’s chemotherapy experience included getting a port in her chest, hair loss, her losing weight when eating became unpleasant as food tasted like metal. All this was a result of her going on six months of folfirinox, a platinum-based chemotherapy. She did 12 rounds and her white blood cells had dropped so low she had to take a break before resuming. The chemotherapy regimen did what it was supposed to do, it shrunk the tumor and doctors were able to successfully remove what was left of the tumor.
Ironically, after once being diagnosed with inoperable adenocarcinoma, she went in for her first post-treatment checkup, and her oncologist didn’t know what to do. That was because so few people diagnosed with Stage III pancreatic cancer don’t make it as far as she did.
The oncologist wanted to be safe and put Teona on a regimen of an oral chemotherapy, gemzar abraxane and xeloda. Once that regimen was complete, the oncologist said Teona Ducre was in remission and cancer-free. She still was not 100 percent, but had to go back to work because if she didn’t, her employer would have to discontinue her health benefits. She split the difference and returned to work part-time as she was still feeling some fatigue.
As of November 2021, Teona Ducre was cancer-free for five years. With part of her pancreas gone, she still goes in for periodic checkups to check her blood sugar levels to make sure no tumors have developed and that she doesn’t develop diabetes.
Additional Resources:
Support Group:
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
Purple Pansies
Piedmont Oncology Andrew Page Pancreas Cancer Foundation
TRANSCRIPT
Jim Foster: Hello and welcome to the @CancerInterviews podcast, where we are sharing the cancer journey together. On today’s program, we have an incredible guest with us, whose story will hopefully provide a great deal of information and inspiration. She is a single mother of two adult children, a very active volunteer with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, a blogger, as well as a Stage III pancreatic cancer survivor, and is joining us today from her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Please join me in welcoming Teona Ducre. Teona, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Teona Ducre: Hi, Jim, thank you for having me. This is exciting.
JF: Well, thanks so much for being here and taking time out of your busy day, and if you’re ready, let’s get right to it.
TD: Absolutely, let’s go.
JF: So, Teona, before we get into talking about cancer journey, why don’t you take a few moments and tell us about yourself, where you are from, and what your life was like before your diagnosis.
TD: When I got diagnosed, it was 2016, April Fools Day, but before that, I had a pretty normal, everyday life. I was a special education teacher, I was a single mom, I had two kids. Prior to my diagnosis, my daughter was 13 and my son was 15, so, a middle schooler and sophomore in high school. For the most part, my life was kind of basic. I was a football mom, and I did all kinds of things with my son, and just hanging out with the kids most of the time. I was originally from El Paso, Texas. I was born and raised there. My parents still reside there as does my uncle, so my life wasn’t all that exciting. I had done a few things in the media prior to going into teaching, so that was my original career. Then when I had kids, that wasn’t the most ideal situation, so I became an educator, and for the most part, that’s what I was doing leading up to 2016.
JF: What was your overall health like in your years prior to cancer?
TD: When I was diagnosed, I was only 41 years old. I would have to say I was a pretty healthy person. I didn’t eat a whole lot of junk food. I was relatively healthy. I stayed active. The running joke when I got diagnosed from my family, my kids, especially, and even my oncologist, was, “Teona, you’re really healthy, but you have this darn tumor that is messing things up right now.” So, I think that I had a pretty active lifestyle, and I think that is part of the reason that why nobody was looking for pancreatic cancer when I got diagnosed. Nothing about me and my profile really fit what people thought somebody with pancreatic cancer would be, so it was completely unexpected, and I was misdiagnosed twice actually during the process of trying to get a diagnosis.
JF: What caused you to think something was wrong?
TD: As a lot of people might know, the symptoms for pancreatic cancer are incredibly vague and the reason why are diagnosed so late is not only because the symptoms are vague, but the symptoms start when the disease has progressed, so usually around Stage III and Stage IV is when people really start to notice a lot of the symptoms, and I was Stage III when I got diagnosed. The very first thing that I had noticed I had this lower back pain that over time became excruciating. It just became unbearable, but for years, not months, but years, I had been going to a chiropractor and getting a message. I thought it was my back and I had just pulled a muscle at some point, but the pain got worse over time. When I finally did go to the doctor, I had started experiencing very severe abdominal pain. On top of that, I was having nausea. I actually started vomiting, and I just was not feeling well. My teaching partner, one day in class, she said I didn’t look good and that I should go to a doctor. It was March of 2016 by that time, and I told her I am fine, I am just feeling a little bit under the weather; but she noticed for weeks I wasn’t feeling good, and she finally convinced me to go to a doctor. I was getting ready to go out of town and visit my daughter was still living in New Mexico at the time, and I stopped by an Urgent Care kind of thing, very briefly and told them I have some stomach pain. They said it was probably acid reflux, maybe irritable bowel syndrome, gave me some medicine. I then jumped on a plane, and I remember that plane ride being excruciatingly painful. I was very sick. I had the chills. I had a horrible stomachache that was just making it unbearable. I went through the weekend, I came back, I called the doctor again and said I am not getting better. The doctor wanted to come back in to test me for an ulcer. They did a blood test, then as I was leaving, she called me back to her office before I got to the lobby. She said she noticed I had lost a few pounds since my previous visit; said I was running a fever and ordered a scan. By the time I went in for the scan, I had lost several more pounds from the day before. I underwent the scan, and the doctor said I didn’t have an ulcer, but that I had a large mass on my pancreas, and that I needed to get to a doctor immediately. In my naivety, I asked where my pancreas is located, and what could be wrong. Then she said I could have cancer. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. It was April Fools Day, 2016.
JF: What type of scan was it?
TD: It was just a regular CT scan. I had noticed that I had lost weight, and when I was at the CT scan facility, I laid down and when I did so, a sign showed my current weight. I was four pounds less than I was the day before, and I thought that can’t be right. It was early in the morning, and I last saw my weight late in the previous day.
JF: So, at that point they determined there was a mass. What was the doctor’s recommended next step?
TD: This doctor was at an Urgent Care, and she said I needed to get to a specialist and referred me to a specialist. I went to that specialist the same day. He said he looked at my imaging and thought what was said to be a mass was just a cyst, very large cyst, but not cancerous at all. It was spring break, everyone was away, including the specialist who was supposed to see me. I instead was seen by his partner who he said this wasn’t his area of expertise, but he said looking at the scan, he said it looked like a cyst. He said I was young and had no previous health problems, no history of cancer in my family and that I should go home, enjoy spring break and that I should come back in a few weeks for another look. My mother said she didn’t like this diagnosis and said I should find another specialist. So, I spent all of spring break looking for somebody that would be able to look at my images and see me and give a second opinion. I did find somebody thankfully, a wonderful group of doctors at Emory University. They took one look at the scan and said this is cancer, they were 99.9 percent sure it was pancreatic cancer, and despite my age, they said it looked like a malignancy. At that point, the options were surgery or chemo. When this went before the tumor board, all of this happened very, very rapidly, but when it went before the tumor board, they decided it was inoperable because of the size of the tumor I wouldn’t make it through surgery. At that point I was diagnosed Stage III, adenocarcinoma, inoperable, and the decision was made that I would do chemo first in an effort to shrink the tumor. Then they would try surgery in about six months. That was actually what we did, and it was successful. At the time in 2016, doing chemo before surgery was not necessarily standard of care. It was something they were trying to see, and they had data that suggested it was better to shrink the tumor first, then going in to have surgery.
JF: You mentioned that your mom encouraged you to go and get the second opinion. Was your mom with you, or were you with anyone when you learned you had cancer?
TD: I had only been in Atlanta a few years when all of this happened, so I did have a friend with me, who graciously came with me to the doctor. We knew something was not right. My mom was back in El Paso. We had talked over the phone a lot in the days after I got the original scan and talked about what options are available. At the time, because pancreatic cancer did not have the best outcomes, there weren’t a lot of options available. There weren’t a lot of clinical trials. I don’t think I knew what a clinical trial was at the time, but I think I educated myself and found out a little more about it, but that wasn’t an option for a variety of reasons. One of the things, though, was that I honestly was very taken aback by the statistics at the time. In 2016, the five-year survival rate for a pancreatic cancer patient was seven percent, single digits. That for a maximum of five years and I just remember seeing that within the first couple of days and I couldn’t on the Internet anymore because I was terrified of what I was reading, and I just didn’t want to know at the point how bad it really was. I remember thinking, “Five years. That’s not enough time to do anything.” My daughter was 13, my son was 15. I was thinking about them graduating and all the things that parents think about, and five years was not enough time to do any of that. My initial prognosis wasn’t even five years. It was 21 months, I believe, and kind of the conversation was, if they were able to shrink the tumor, if they are able to get me to surgery, if I live that long, I will have a good chance of making it, but those were all big ifs, and fortunately, I was able to get through all the big ifs, and became in remission five years in November 2021.
JF: That’s fantastic. I can tell you are a strong and dynamic person, but if you would, go back to the moment you were diagnosed. What was that moment like?
TD: April 1, 2016 I had plans to go on a date that day, and it was such an awkward situation because I remember getting off the phone with the doctor and saying to my friend, “I think I have pancreatic cancer. Let’s go to lunch.” It was weird because I had a wonderful medical team. They were kind and compassionate and so knowledgeable, and I had people around me who were so helpful. One of my good friends was a nurse and she was one of the football moms and everybody was kind of surrounding me and helping me from Day One, so I had a wonderful support network and I know a lot of people don’t have that, so I was very fortunate to have the people that I had in my life. By the time I got to the official day, and it was the official diagnosis and they told me I had cancer and this was happening, everything happened very quickly from that point. You’re going to get a port and you’re starting chemo. When I am sitting in the doctor’s office and he said he was pretty sure it was cancer and that it was not a cyst, I remember looking around the room for a minute and asking myself, “Is this really happening?” It was the most surreal, bizarre feeling I had ever had in my life, but my initial response was, “Okay. What are we doing? Let’s get on the ball with this.” It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, I remember I was in the house by myself, I was laying in bed, and I had a little panic attack and I thought I was getting ready to die. My children are young, I’m single, I don’t have life insurance and it was just a flood of emotions hit me, everything from anger to extraordinary fear like I have never felt in my life. I called my mom. I remember laying in bed and crying and telling my mom I was really scared. I asked what are we going to do about the kids, and I want to know if they are going to be okay. Who is going to take care of them? Where are they going to go? Where is the money going to come from? And my mom, being my mom, she said everything was going to be okay. If it doesn’t go the way we want it to, we’ve got the kids, we’ll figure it out, don’t worry, everything will be fine. Then I felt better after that. I was able to go forward and do treatment and do all the things that were required of me to get to 2021, cancer free.
JF: Sounds like you dealt with the emotions head on and took action to get where you are today. When you were diagnosed, did you have to travel far to get treatment?
TD: I was very fortunate. With Atlanta being a major city, I had access to multiple treatment centers. One of the things I mentioned, I was a single mom, I was a teacher and financially that didn’t lend itself to being able to travel someplace like Sloan-Kettering or Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, all of the big clinics that are out there that have some of the best treatment options including clinical trials. So, for me, that was not an option, just strictly for financial reasons, plus my son was home with me and I couldn’t be gone for six months at a time doing treatment. So, I was very fortunate that I had treatment right here in Atlanta at Winship-Emory and was about 20 minutes from where I lived at the time. It was a phenomenal treatment facility. Every physician that I dealt with was amazing, the nurses were wonderful, and I had a really positive experience being able to stay home. That was part of my choice, too. Everybody has different options available to them, things that are important. For me, it was important to be home. I really needed my life to have some sense of normalcy. My son was playing football and our football family at the time, we were so close. The moms and the dads and the coaches and the players, that was part of my routine that I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to be there for Thursday night football and be at the stadium every day after practice, just like I had been in the months leading up to my diagnosis. I was the team photographer. At the time I was in treatment, I was still at every football game, taking pictures. Every football game. We spent the summer on the road going to seven-on-sevens and I made sure I was there. That was important to me because it is what kept me grounded. Being around my friends kept me motivated and hopeful. Being in my home and sleeping in my own bed every night was comforting for me, so the idea of going away for treatment just wasn’t something that was financially available and just wasn’t personally appealing.
JF: It’s great that you had the treatment facilities right there in Atlanta. Did your activities with the football team get your mind off the treatments?
TD: It really did. I was so fortunate. I was always cognizant of the fact that I was in a situation that so many people are not. There happened to be a neighbor in the community where I lived, an older gentleman that also had pancreatic cancer. He did not have family, the neighbors were not checking on him. I think he was probably in his seventies. Then again, sometimes it can be really hard to be around somebody who has cancer. I was fortunate in that I had this wonderful group of people, I had personal friends that are like family to me. I was never alone. Even though I was single, I was never alone. My son was never alone. My daughter was in New Mexico with her dad, so she had support as well. To your point about staying motivated and giving me something to do, I was still continuing to work part time, I was very involved in my community activities, I became involved with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network as a volunteer, I was doing a lot of speaking engagements, I was blogging and I think all those things are things I needed at the time to stay motivated. One of the things that can happen that we don’t always talk about as cancer survivors is there is this feeling of being left out of society, in particular with pancreatic cancer. I remember when I would tell people, people would literally gasp and then some people would start crying, and I would ask why they were crying. That’s when I realized people assumed that I was going to die. The statistics were that bad that if I said I had pancreatic cancer, people that I knew, people that I didn’t know, they would just lament for a moment, and I would let them I was still here and not dead yet, and me staying involved was a way to remind myself that I haven’t died and that I am still here, I am still useful, I can still do things and it was very healing for me to be able to get up every day and have something to do. I know that not everybody can do that. I mean, the treatment is brutal. You feel sick all the time, but it was what got me up out of bed every day.
JF: When you went through the treatment, did you lose your hair?
TD: I did, and that is such a great question. You know, there are several milestones that happen on a cancer journey that make cancer real. For me, getting the port was one. I looked down and there was this thing sticking out of my chest. I looked at it and thought this thing is really happening. I am really getting ready to get chemo. The second big thing was losing my hair. I was really afraid of losing my hair, but it has finally grown out and I have a lot more hair than I used to. I had a friend who had cancer a year before mme, and I kind of went through that journey with her, my friend, Liz. One of the things that was recommended to her was to cut her hair really short before it all falls out, and I remember watching her going through that process of losing her hair. I remember this was so traumatic. I was in the same situation a year later. I cut my hair really short, and didn’t want to watch it fall out because every day I would brush my hair and see it all over the sink. I remember running my hands through my hair, and seeing big clumps of hair being in my hand and had it cut shorter. Then about a month and a half later, because I had bald spots about to come in, I just called up a very good friend of mine, a guy friend, and told him I needed to get rid of all of my hair. He just shaved it all off. I put it on Facebook, I put it on social media. I wore wigs in the beginning, when my hair was kinda spotty before I shaved it, but then I decided I was going to own all of this and be bald and be proud, and not having any hair to deal with for as long as this is going to last. I have lots of pictures in which I sported this bald, shiny head for a year almost.
JF: That’s wonderful that you had the self-esteem to be able to do that. It is kind of a stigma that goes with being a cancer patient. I lost my hair both times I had Hodgkin lymphoma cancer. You feel like everyone is staring at you. The good news is, in almost all cases, the hair does grow back. We kind of put a burden on ourselves when we worry about that. It’s a big thing, but I am very proud of you that you were proud to go ahead and be bald.
TD: I have said I might go back to that just for the ease of it, but when I was in treatment, there was this woman who was next to me, and she said, “I don’t know how you do it because I can’t even let my husband see me with my bald head.” I think I recognize the emotion that goes behind it because whether you are a male or female, whatever you ethnicity is, that is the defining moment that one has cancer. This is what people look at, and the interesting thing was, when they would see me bald, people didn’t ask me if I had cancer; they just asked if I voluntarily shaved my head. So, it didn’t feel as stigmatizing when I actually did it. I think it was more the anxiety of thinking this is what people were going to think, but I had a totally different experience. I know once I was in remission, I posted pictures of my bald head on my dating website and people still asked me out, so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.
JF: That’s just a great story. Some of the other things that sometimes happen due to chemo are one’s loss of taste. Did you experience any of those side effects?
TD: Yeah. I think that was one of the worst side effects that I remember losing my taste buds. Chemo causes what they call ‘metal mouth,’ which makes it hard to eat, for one, and then, the other part of it was, I love food. So, having a gastrointestinal type cancer was devastating on many levels because I loved to go out to eat, and it was a social thing around eating for about a year when I couldn’t eat hardly anything. So, between the metal mouth and everything constantly making me sick, and my mouth going numb after a few months of chemo and I was on chemo for almost a year, all that was horrible. Then I remember the first day I could taste something, it was like the best day ever. It was like my mouth was no longer sore, that kind of thing, so that was a good day.
JF: You had mentioned previously your treatments for chemotherapy to try to reduce the size of the mass. Were there treatments other than chemo?
TD: I only had chemotherapy, I didn’t do radiation, but I did surgery. So, I did six months of folfirinox, the little cocktail that is considered standard of care, like five different types of chemo. It is a platinum-based chemotherapy, a very strong chemotherapy. The side effects are tough. A lot of people don’t make it through. I did 12 rounds, and I remember at one point my white blood cells had dropped so low that we had to take a break, then I went back at did more. So, by the time I got back to surgery, the chemo did work. It successfully shrunk the tumor, so they were able to operate and get the remainder of it through removing what was left of it, surgically. After that, and I think this is something unique to pancreatic cancer, unfortunately because there are not a lot of survivors, there isn’t a lot of data to support what comes next; so, after I had surgery, I literally remember going in for my first appointment after surgery with my oncologist, and didn’t know what to do next because most people don’t make it this far. That was disconcerting because nobody knew what to do. When I went into chemo, my oncologist didn’t share this with me until later, there were four or five other people that started when I did, and in January 2017, which was seven months later after I had started chemo, none of them had survived. I was the one that was left, that had pancreatic cancer, and he said he didn’t know what to do next. He said he was researching it, and said I should do some extra chemo for good measure, and I did. I did an oral regimen of chemo, then I got a weekly infusion. I think it was gemzar abraxane and xeloda was the oral chemo that I took, and that lasted about four, maybe five months. I stopped because I got an infection in my port and didn’t want to get the port put back in and had some really bad side effects and said it’s enough, we have done everything we can do, let’s just wait and see what happens. I have heard of lot of cancer survivors and particularly with pancreatic cancer say that when you stop getting the chemotherapy, you are so nervous about recurrence that you would almost rather keep going with it because at least you know you’re doing something, and I did have a little of that anxiety; but now that I stopped with the chemo, I wondered how that would affect a good, long-term outcome. However, the decision was made that I was in remission, I was fully cancer-free, and there was no need to continue on with radiation or any type of oral treatment at that point.
JF: You mentioned earlier that you were able to work part time. Once you had your surgery, were you able to work some. I know a lot of people struggle with that because they are not able to work at all. Tell us about your work experience.
TD: I love that question. I was recently talking to another cancer survivor about this idea of what comes next. For so many people who have cancer, not everybody is able to work, and I think it is the demographics of pancreatic cancer and specific change, people are getting diagnosed younger and younger. It’s one thing to get a cancer diagnosis when you are in your seventies, maybe you’re already retired versus you’re in your thirties and forties, you have all this time left to be able to work, but maybe you can’t work full time like you used to. Maybe you want to do something different. In my case, I had to go back to work because unfortunately my employer was going to end my insurance. I had been in treatment since the year before. They notified me and said if I don’t come back to work, I will lose my health insurance, and there is nothing we can do about it. That was hard. So, these are some of the things that happen when we are thinking of long term survivorship. What happens to all of those pieces? How are you paying for your medical bills and everything else that you have amassed while you have been in treatment? I went back to work, and my employer was flexible since I was working not quite full time, and I was a teacher and they kind of put me in a different position. I wasn’t quite in the classroom anymore, I was doing other things just to get the work and keep my insurance. I was on disability on top of that. The way that it works is you have a certain period of time in the right-to-work program in which you can work as much as you want but still get your disability check. So, I was stockpiling the money because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do that forever. Eventually I just went part time because I wasn’t able to maintain the level of stress and being on my feet the way I was prior to cancer. The fatigue after having cancer, I have been in remission five years now and I am still fatigued, still tired in the middle of the day which is not how I used to be before cancer. So, I think that we have to think about these things for cancer survivors because with so many people continuing to get diagnosed, we have to think how we are going to support this population of people who may not be able to work full time anymore.
JF: It was wonderful that your employer was willing to work with you. It’s been a number of years for me since remission, and I still love a nap in the afternoon. So, your doctor wanted you to undergo additional chemo. Did you experience any other side effects?
TD: I had a few mild scares, but I am thankful to say I am still in remission. That is huge because the statistics, I try not to listen to them too much even though they are relevant. Statistically, the odds at the five-year mark for pancreatic cancer survivors that you will be able to be cancer-free, so I was really excited for a number of reasons to make it to November 16, 2021, because that was five years, and I felt I could be ‘home free,’ so I am sticking to that idea that I got to that point and I am not going to have to worry; but I still go in as part of my treatment plan, I still go in, I still do surveillance. I saw my oncologist every three months until my five-year point. Now it’s every six months. I continue to check bloodwork. With pancreatic cancer, it is very important to look at blood sugar levels because diabetes can unfortunately develop. I had a big chunk of my pancreas removed. I am not producing insulin and enzymes and things like that the way my body normally would, so I am under a lot of surveillance just to make sure no tumors have developed and that nothing has changed, but I have to also make sure I don’t develop diabetes.
JF: As for PanCAN, what can you tell us about the volunteer work you do?
TD: I started as a volunteer with PanCAN about three weeks after I got diagnosed. I googles pancreatic cancer and the PanCAN website came up. That was actually my starting point for even figuring out how to get a second opinion. PanCAN patient services really helped me navigate that system, then also helped with things like, how could I get Social Security, those types of things. The organization is really wonderful in that regard. So, I started volunteering with them as a way to stay busy. I had a background in the media previously. That was my undergraduate work I did, and I had worked in newspapers and marketing, television and all these kinds of things. I thought this is a kind of skill set I have and I don’t use it anymore, but if you ever need somebody for speaking engagements or anything, I am happy to do it. So, right away they took me up on that offer. I start doing a series of interviews. I did some national television interviews, I did some local interviews here in Atlanta, on-air things as well as print. There were a few magazines that picked up our stories. Those were some of the things I was doing, but I was also in the role of Atlanta affiliate chair, which was really kind of running our local affiliate here and working with our volunteers locally in Atlanta. What I really try to do is create awareness for the disease, particularly in the Black community because pancreatic cancer affects African-Americans more than any other racial or ethnic group, and our outcomes, like it is across the board with any illness, the outcomes for the African-American community, the outcomes are dismal. You know, we’re getting diagnosed more. Indicators that I might have pancreatic cancer were tied to my being Black. So, part of what I am really committed to is having an opportunity and a platform to talk to the Black community, or just talk to people in general to tell them the symptoms they need to know about, and whether you think they are small symptoms or not, go to your doctor. I think some of the conversations we have to start having is why Black Americans, not just why they are getting diagnosed more, but why don’t they have access to the information so that they know what the symptoms are, and that they know where to go to get the clinical trials. That’s something that is a huge priority to me because I see how my community is being impacted by this disease more so than any other ethnic or racial community, and that’s something that I really want to try to impact, if I can, through lending my voice and lending my experience as much as possible for the community. I am hoping if I have a platform to speak to people, and I hope I can talk to the Black community so that we can learn what to look for, and we’re not on the tail end of finding out what pancreatic cancer is.
JF: We’re honored to have you here on our platform and hopefully everything that you have said will help others. You also do some blogging. Tell us about that.
TD: I started blogging during my treatments, but haven’t done a lot since. I still have a social media page and still do a lot of advocacy and awareness on my personal Facebook page. I have a blog. It’s called Healthful Life blog on Wordpress, and what I did was I kind of chronicled my cancer journey. I am glad you brought that up because now I am on the other side of it. I wrote a lot during treatment, what it was like and what was happening. Sometimes cancer is still this hidden disease and people don’t know what it is like, so I wrote about experiences that I had while I was in treatment. Now I am on the other side of it, and it’s kinda like, ‘To Be Continued,’ life after cancer. That’s whole different part of the experience and the journey, but it is still very much a part of my journey as somebody who has had to live with a cancer diagnosis. For the rest of my life, that will kind of be in my health history, so I would like to start writing and blogging again about this side of cancer and what it’s like.
JF: Any other resources you’d like to mention?
TD: Sure. At Piedmont Oncology (in Atlanta), Dr. Andrew Page, also has a website and a foundation, and they are doing wonderful work as well. Every year at Piedmont Hospital, Dr. Page puts together an annual pancreas conference. I am fortunate because I get to host the survival panel on that day. We have survivors that come to share their experience. Every year we try to have a diverse group of people to talk about their cancer journey.
JF: Before we wrap up, we want to ask one final question. If you were speaking one-on-one with someone who had just been diagnosed, what single point would you want to make to that person?
TD: Be your own best advocate. This disease is beatable. When I got diagnosed in 2016, the statistics were horrible, but I am still here. There’s hope. It’s possible. I think to get to that point you have to equip yourself with the best knowledge possible. You have to be your own best advocate. Surround yourself with as many people who can be encouraging to you as possible because if you have encouragement, then it makes this journey just a little bit easier. The last thing I would say is, protecting your mental health after a cancer diagnosis is incredibly important. We always talk about the treatments in your physical body, but protecting your spirit, your mind. Half the battle is fought in those spaces, so if you can be sure to address and attend to your mental health, you can make sure that part of you is healthy as well, you will be able to win this battle and you will be able to fight. So, I wish everybody good health, lots of joy and lots of goodness in the coming year.
JF: You mentioned mental health and spiritual health. Were there some things that you did in those areas?
TD: Yes. One of the things that I did was maintain this very positive mental health state. So much of it was speaking positive affirmations. I actually had on my mirror, in lipstick every single time I went to chemo, I would write some positive and encouraging message up there. After a while I had so many messages I couldn’t see myself anymore. As one loves sports, I would say before going to chemo, it’s not, ‘Chemo Day,’ it’s ‘Game Day.’ And I did surround myself with positive, encouraging people. I have the most wonderful group of women in my life. I have amazing friends that are supportive, and every single day they showed up for me. They know who they are. I appreciate them so much. On top of that, I like to spend a lot of time encouraging myself, but also encouraging other people, so that was also part of the volunteerism I was doing. It was really helpful for me to be talking to those who were going through the same thing, some kind of cancer diagnosis, whether it was pancreatic or not, and I tried to spend time in those spaces, so I could be encouraging and positive. The only note I will say is that sometimes it is really hard to do that. Don’t beat yourself if you have a day or a week or a month in which you don’t feel like doing that. Cancer is hard. It is probably the hardest thing anybody could ever go through. When you are not able to stay positive and surround yourself with people who can boost you up, there is self-care, and there is community care, and you need both of them to maintain a healthy outlook and get better outcomes in life.
JF: That’s excellent advice, and you truly are a person who inspires me and inspires others, so it’s wonderful that you helped people while you were a patient yourself, and yet you were a caring enough person to give back and try and help others while you were going through treatment yourself. Hats off to you. I know I have learned from you, and I hope our listeners have as well, and we’re so grateful to have you here today. Thank you very much.
TD: Thank you for putting this format together. These are really important conversations in the work you are doing because it is bringing so much information to people, so thank you both for doing this. And thank you for having me.
JF: Thank you, Teona. Remember, you are not alone. We’re all in this together, and we wish you the very best outcome with your cancer. So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Teona Ducre, Stage Three Pancreatic Cancer Survivor – Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Teona Ducre survived first a misdiagnosis, then a correct diagnosis of Stage III pancreatic cancer. Even while going through treatment, which included chemotherapy, she was a vigorous advocate for those going through a pancreatic cancer journey. In remission since 2016, Teona is a blogger, a public speaker in the fight against cancer, and she is a tireless volunteer for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN.org).
Additional Resources:
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network
Purple Pansies
Piedmont Oncology Andrew Page Pancreas Cancer Foundation
Time Stamps:
09:25 Teona’s cancer-related problems began when she noticed back pain.
12:10 Scan revealed a large mass on her pancreas.
12:30 Teona was told she could have cancer.
14:07 Specialist told her the mass was a non-cancerous cyst.
14:55 After seeking a second opinion, she learned she had cancer.
15:13 Names her treatment options after learning she was Stage III.
15:47 Chemo, then surgery.
18:41 Became cancer free five years in November 2021.
26:40 How Teona stayed motivated during her cancer journey.
28:15 Chemo caused hair loss.
33:00 Teona describes how chemo robbed her of her sense of taste.
39:35 Five years cancer free, she is still fatigued.
43:14 Teona describes her aftercare routine.
KEYWORDS (tags):
pancreatic cancer
cancer
irritable bowel syndrome
cancer interviews
inoperable adenocarcinoma
jim foster
chemotherapy
folfirinox
teora ducre
gemzar abraxane
xeloda
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