Ian Buckley

Two years ago, I wrote here that my wife Carol had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and that we'd had the rare good fortune of catching it early enough for surgery. She came through the Whipple procedure, a 12 month clinical trial and six months of chemotherapy, and for a while, things looked good.
This year, the cancer came back.
I won't pretend I'm approaching this Dry July with the same energy I had the first time. That first year, I didn't really know what we were up against — there was a kind of hope in the not-knowing. Now I do know, and it's harder. But I'm doing it anyway, because the reason for doing it hasn't changed: pancreatic cancer is still one of the hardest cancers to catch early and one of the hardest to treat, and that's exactly what research funding is trying to fix.
Carol is home now after another major surgery in June and 5 weeks in hospital, and we're working through what comes next together. I've personally put in $350 this year and haven't had a drink all July. If you've ever wondered whether pancreatic cancer research actually matters — it does, to real families, right now, including mine. Any contribution, big or small, goes toward Pancare's work trying to find better ways to detect and treat this disease before it gets the chance to come back.
Thank you for any support you can give!