Richard Lancaster

My darling husband and life partner for over 40 years, Richard, lost his bravely fought battle against pancreatic cancer - just 5 months after the initial diagnosis.

In Sept 2022, he had obstructive jaundice and was rushed to MAU for tests. (Since July 2021, he’d rapidly and unintentionally lost 3 stone in weight and been mis-diagnosis with type 2 diabetes and GERD)

After having a bile duct stent fitted in Sept 2022 to fix the obstructive jaundice, he caught 3 life threatening hospital infections. He spent a month in hospital and those infections took away his mobility and major bodily functions. He lost a further stone in weight. Fighting the hospital infections became our immediate priority and caused an extremely unwelcome and major delay tackling the pancreatic cancer mass itself. We also learnt at this point he had the much lesser known type 3C (not type 2) diabetes which would have flagged the cancer over a year earlier and enabled him to probably have had surgery.

I eventually got him back home to nurse and care for him 24/7, having had specialist equipment delivered to our converted dining room.

We managed to stablise him and in Nov/Dec 2022 he actually gained 6lbs in weight and we started talking to our oncologist about appropriate treatment plans.

It took 3 endoscopic procedures (Nov, Dec, Jan) to get a successful biopsy sample to confirm the exact type and stage of cancer. This was needed to know how to treat the 4cm mass at the head of the pancreas. By Dec, a new CT scan showed the mass had grown to 4.3 cm but hadn’t spread. By mid Jan23, we finally had a successful biopsy to enable a 6 month chemo plan to start 1 Feb. However in January he started being very sick again and we believe he caught another infection from the 3rd endoscopy and/or had a blocked gastric outlet. He had 2 chemo sessions in Feb and a late CT scan - the 3rd chemo session day (but was too ill to do). This, confirmed the gastric blockage, the cancer had spread to his liver and there was a blood clot. He transferred to the hospice and sadly died within 2 days.

Richard was my beloved husband for 33 years, rock and best friend; adored Grandad to Teddy and proud Dad to James. A loyal family member and trusted friend - an intelligent, articulate, elegant and much respected true gentleman. My hero.

Richard enjoyed a good life well lived, but was cruelly taken from us way too soon after a series of missed and late diagnosis and general poor awareness of PC by the GP, medical teams and NHS in crisis.

I want to share our story, as there are so many similarities and consistencies with other sufferers. I want to help increase (early) awareness and leverage the truly remarkable expert resources and personal services and support provided Pancreatic Cancer UK.

I want to help raise vital funds to continue the excellent research work and PCUK helpline.

Our story was all about lack of awareness & too little, too late.