Compass Lake resident John Melchiorre of Compass Lake was diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in July. His prognosis is a week-to-week affair, but he knows he’s facing some serious facts.
His cancer will not enter remission and it is inoperable. His particular kind of cancer has the highest mortality rate of the pancreatic types.
He doesn’t know how long he’ll live, but he wants to make a difference while he’s here. That’s why he often leaves his house dressed in his royal-purple pancreatic cancer awareness bling. He wears purple Marti Gras beads around his neck, purple ribbons on his cap, sports a purple t-shirt and carries a supply of purple ribbons to give away to anyone he can strike up a conversation with. “This is what a plum on steroids looks like,” he joked on a recent day when he was all dressed up. But his mission in wearing his colors is no joking matter.
He’s trying to raise awareness about pancreatic cancer so that others in general might be more knowledgeable about it and potentially recognize symptoms earlier than he did.
Melchiorre is also doing his best to establish a support group here for pancreatic cancer victims and their caregivers. But he says he’s not seeing much enthusiasm for the effort. He doesn’t know why that is the case. He knows that, based on his research, pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the country and that the numbers are climbing. He knows that there’s a very low survival rate among its victims.
But answers to his dilemma in trying to get a support group going may lie in some of the other facts associated with pancreatic cancer. Because there are few or no early detection symptoms to work with, those who suffer the illness may be, like Melchiorre, already in the late stages by the time they have noticeable symptoms that lead them to see a doctor. He doesn’t know whether that might mean people are too sick by then to believe they could benefit from a support group.
Whatever the reasons, Melchiorre is hoping to create a turn-around and get a group going. He can be reached at johnmelchiorre@rocketmail.com . He’s hoping to hear from someone soon, so that he can help organize a group. It’s a legacy he said he’d be proud to leave for the benefit of others down through time.
Last year, 45,000 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He believes some of them live here or in surrounding counties and that they need an avenue to connect with each other if they want. “I want them to know that this is not a gloom and doom support group that I have in mind,” he said. “It’s all about people helping each other through this, and it’s also about us helping bring more general awareness of pancreatic cancer to the community so that people don’t procrastinate themselves into that percent of people who find out as late as I did and who had no idea of what they could do to keep themselves out of the percentage of victims, period. The only tool we have is prevention, but that tool can’t really be used without more awareness of it.” Melchiorre gave an example of how awareness of the facts can help.
He said that once he made his doctors aware that other physicians had found lumps on his sister’s pancreas, “the bloodlines kicked open the door” to them ordering tests that led to his diagnosis.
In his own life, he said, more awareness, might have helped him change his lifestyle in ways that could have reduced his chances of getting pancreatic cancer down the line. “I know now about the reports that smoking, alcohol consumption and a high-fat diet are risk factors. Well, I smoked like an industrial chimney, drank like a blue whale, and ate like a dinosaur. About 12 years ago that stopped, but it took years for this to be developed and I didn’t know back in my youth. I want more people to know about these things earlier than I knew. I want some partners in helping to de-stigmatize pancreatic cancer, too, because I think that’s part of the problem along with simple ignorance of the facts and malaise. We can get together and we can work on these things. I want to be able to say to others who have it, ‘You don’t have to be isolated. You don’t have to go through this alone. Come to the support group.’ I really want to get one going so I can say that.”