In 2013 an estimated 43,920 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and nearly 38,460 will die from the disease.
In the first year of being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, 73 percent of patients will die.
The pancreas is an important organ in the digestive system. It produces several important hormones, including insulin, glucagon, somatostatin, and pancreatic polypeptide. It is also a digestive organ, secreting pancreatic juice containing digestive enzymes that assist the absorption of nutrients and the digestion in the small intestine. These enzymes help to further break down the carbohydrates, proteins and lipids.
According to the Pancreatic Cancer Network, this cancer is the most under-funded, under-recognized, and least studied of all the major killers. Only two percent of the National Cancer Institute’s annual budget is dedicated to pancreatic cancer research.
Tracy Bruns, whose father-in-law Dwayne has been fighting pancreatic cancer since 2008, heads up the Annandale effort to make people aware of this terrible disease.
"I joined this network so that I can be a voice for Dwayne, my father-in-law," Tracy said.
Purple Ride
In Minnesota, Purple Ride was an event held Sunday, Sept. 15 to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer and to raise much needed money for research.
Purple Ride was held at the Elm Creek Park Preserve in Maple Grove. There were 151 teams, with 1,700 bikers participating. Teams could either bike an eight-mile loop or a 25-mile loop. Tracy and the Annandale team rode the eight-mile loop.
Team Annandale consisted of Tracy and Riley Bruns, Alec Fournier, Kelli Bloomquist, Kindra and Anna Liebhard, Keith, Sandy, Josie and Jack Jerpseth, John and Naomi Volden, Rick and Renee Walberg, Jeff and Erin Pettit, Michelle Macelana, Roxanne McNellis, Trudy Segner, and Becki and Bailey Kelly.
Team Annandale raised over $7,500 and was No. 9 in the top 10 fundraisers. All teams combined raised over $473,000 at Purple Ride.
Wear purple Nov. 22
Friday, Nov. 22, is the national Purple with a Purpose Day. Tracy has distributed Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Bags to the 20 businesses that have signed up to participate in Purple with a Purpose Day.
The awareness bags contained fliers about pancreatic cancer, a sign to hang and a ribbon for each employee to wear throughout the month.
Employees working in Annandale businesses that day will be encouraged to wear purple to help raise awareness about pancreatic cancer.
Tracy attended the Monday, Oct. 7, Annandale City Council meeting where the council approved a proclamation declaring November as Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
A tree has been lit throughout the month of November with purple lights in Memorial Park.
"The tree is lit to raise awareness but also to honor those who are fighting this ugly disease and in memory of those who have lost the fight," Tracy said.
Dwayne’s journey
Dwayne, 70, has had pancreatic cancer since 2008. He is an Annandale native, born and raised. His father was from Maple Lake and his mother from Fair Haven. His parents were farmers and their farm was where what is now Southbrook.
Bruns’ first job was working for Kaz Hardware in Annandale. When the store no longer needed him, Bruns went to work for PayCo Corporation, where he traveled 48 states for seven years.
Bruns went to work for Colin MacDonald at the Annandale State Bank in 1971. He eventually became president of the bank and is currently chairman and CEO.
Bruns and his wife Shirley have three children, Becki, Brent and Bryan. Bryan is the current president of the Annandale State Bank. The couple have six grandchildren.
Bruns had been feeling good in 2008 and enjoyed living between Annandale and a home in Arizona.
"I had no indication something was wrong," Bruns said. "In fact I was at a golf outing the day before I was diagnosed."
Symptoms can include back or stomach pains, digestive issues or weight loss, all symptoms that might indicate a number of other ailments. Pancreatic cancer is also hard to detect because the pancreas is located deep within the abdomen.
The symptom that brought Bruns to the doctor was jaundice, a yellowing of the skin and eyes.
"The yellowing of his skin and eyes came on gradual," said his wife Shirley. "So we did not notice the change right away."
The jaundice does not show up in all patients. For them, the cancer can go undetected and untreated until the person is near death. The reason the jaundice showed up in Bruns was because the tumor was between the pancreas and the liver.
Bruns was diagnosed at the Minnesota Oncology Center in Minneapolis and underwent surgery there to remove the head of the tumor. The doctors cut off the head of the tumor using the Whipple Procedure. Following the surgery, Bruns underwent six months of chemotherapy.
Following the chemotherapy, Bruns entered a three-year blind study with Minnesota Oncology. It was a study that was testing a potential vaccine.
In a blind study, some patients got the real drug and others received a placebo. Bruns just recently found out that he had received the placebo.
"But I was not upset," Bruns said. "I was still alive and I had not gotten any worse. It is not about finding a cure for me; the objective is to keep me alive until they can find a cure."
Bruns came into the clinic once a month for two shots over a three-year period. While wintering in Arizona, he would fly back to Minnesota for the shots, then fly back.
During this three-year period Bruns had a CAT-scan every 90 days.
"It was odd," Bruns said. "One scan would show some cancer, 90 days later it was gone; 90 days after that, back again."
In November of 2011 one of those scans indicated that the cancer had reappeared and had spread to his spine. Bruns underwent radiation and chemotherapy treatments in December and January and then continued chemotherapy until August of 2012.
In April, Bruns started a trial in Arizona to test the drug BIND-014. The clinical trial was testing the maximum dose of BIND-014 that can be tolerated by cancer patients.
BIND-014 is a product developed by BIND Therapeutics, a company that develops and commercializes pharmaceutical products for the treatment of life-threatening diseases.
BIND Therapeutics is the sponsor of the clinical trial and is paying all the medical expenses related to the trial.
When Bruns entered the study, BIND-014 had not been used previously in any cancer patients, so it was impossible to predict the side effects or effectiveness.
The trial was not meant to provide a treatment for Bruns or any of the other participants. The purpose was to determine the maximum dose that would be tolerated.
The consent form participants signed agreeing to be part of the clinical trial indicated the length of the trial "depends on how BIND-014 affects your cancer and if it causes you to have side effects that are either dangerous for you or that you can not tolerate, or if you and your study doctor decide to stop."
The consent form goes on to say, "There may be no direct medical benefits to you from participating in this study. Information obtained is for the benefit of the sponsor. It might also lead to treatments that help others in the future."
At the beginning of the clinical trial Bruns was hospitalized for six days to determine how high he could tolerate the dosage.
"For just about any trial, the first 10 days are usually 10-12 hours of test after test," Shirley said.
Bruns’ treatments were three Wednesdays a month. Each treatment involved testing his blood, getting a saline solution, steroid injections, anti-nausea medicine and the chemotherapy. The Wednesday sessions lasted about five hours.
Bruns still gets a CAT-scan every 90 days.
"Some of my friends have told me that those cause cancer," Bruns said. "I tell them, ‘That train has already left the station.’"
The clinical trial was halted for Bruns at the end of October after he was hospitalized twice.
It is expected that Bruns will enter a new clinical trial before the end of the year, but at this time they do not know what the clinical trial will entail.
Bruns says that the only side effect he has experienced is feeling very tired all the time. He is not in pain and has no nausea.
"They tell me the reason I am tired is because of the drugs, not the cancer," Bruns said.
Bruns has maintained his weight, despite all the drugs.
"My appetite is all right, but the drugs have destroyed my taste buds." Bruns said. "Shirley will make a meal I used to really enjoy, but to be honest, it tastes like cardboard."
Dwayne has beat the odds already. He has survived five years with a disease that kills 94 percent of those diagnosed within the first five years.
The reason so many die from pancreatic cancer is because there is no early detection method. By the time they figure out it is pancreatic cancer, it is often already metastasized or spread to other organs.
"The reason pancreatic cancer is so under-funded compared to other cancers is that there are few survivors to advocate for more research funding," Tracy said.