Bereaved Story

“Pancreatic cancer is such a horrible disease as your life is turned upside down in a matter of days. Retirement isn’t what I thought it was going to be as Chris isn’t here with me.”

Carol Weston’s husband Chris died of pancreatic cancer in January 2024, only two weeks after being diagnosed. Carol reflects on the impact the loss has had on their whole family.

“Chris had been taking medication for high blood pressure for a while. As a result of that he had a health check every year where they checked his bloods. In October 2023 they checked his urine and bloods and the results showed that he was pre-diabetic. They asked him to look at his lifestyle, eat well, and lose a few pounds.

He had been experiencing a bit of acid reflux for a few years, especially if we went out for a meal and had rich food or a few drinks. In December 2023, Chris got indigestion in the night, and it wouldn’t stop – it went on and on. I said to him that it wasn’t right and that he needed to get it checked out. He had lost some weight, but we put it down to him changing diet and being active. He was always going on long walks with our cocker spaniel and making things in the garage. He had been keeping himself busy since he retired.

When he started to feel unwell, he just put it down that down to the fact that he was 64. We were getting on with life. We went out and had a meal with friends in December. We had pie, cheese and biscuits and a glass of port and remarkably, he experienced no symptoms from this.

Later in December his indigestion came back, and it didn’t seem to ever stop. So, he went to see his GP who prescribed him a course of omeprazole, but he didn’t like taking them as they didn’t agree with him. He also had a pain in his calf and the GP suspected deep vein thrombosis, so they put him on blood thinners.

Christmas was an exciting time for our family as our son and his partner were due a baby in the new year. Chris ate his Christmas dinner, and he spent the day building toys up for our Grandson. We saw in the new year together but, a couple of nights later, he woke up with stomach pains, so I called an ambulance. We were caught up in a junior doctors strike though so it took four hours for an ambulance to arrive. The paramedics took him into hospital and the doctors there mentioned the possibility of cancer and said that they wanted to fast track him for a scan in two weeks’ time.

We came home, and fortunately we always have a spare bed made up which let him get some much-needed rest. The next day when I asked him how he was feeling, he replied, ‘so-so’. I said to him ‘you are talking to me, but you aren’t looking at me’. He said his eyes were blurry. He tried to get up, but his coordination had gone. He couldn’t even put his socks on by himself.

I called the doctors surgery and they said to bring him down. The triage nurse talked me through how to get him ready and bring him down to surgery over the phone. He would normally always be able to do things himself and I could feel him getting frustrated. I called my daughter to meet me at the doctor’s surgery and help me take him in. When the doctor saw him, she was concerned, and she wanted to get him admitted to the hospital. It was a mystery to them. They couldn’t understand how he had been walking the dog and driving the car a few days before and now had deteriorated so much.

He finally had a scan and they found something on his liver first, but they decided that it was secondary. They did more tests and found out the primary cause was pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, it was too far advanced to do anything except palliative care. Chris was in hospital for 10 days and then he was moved to the local hospice. Sadly, he was only there for 48 hours. He was admitted the Sunday lunchtime and died on Tuesday 16th January.

It was so hard for all of us that it happened so quickly. We try to take some comfort in the fact that at least we got to have one last Christmas with him. But he wasn’t here to meet his new Grandson when he was born. He was only 64 when he died and had retired at 63 so he never got a chance to fully enjoy retirement. We went on a big holiday to Canada when we were 60 and I am so glad we got the chance to do that.

I am left feeling quite angry about it all as I think he should have had more tests when he was first told he was prediabetic. Pancreatic cancer seems to be taking people so quickly. The doctors at the surgery were really shocked at how quickly it all happened, and they are taking learnings from it.

Losing Chris has changed our whole family setup and support after grief isn’t always what it has cracked up to be. My daughter has been supporting me and I have been journaling, which has helped me through. Certain days are hard, like Father’s Day. It was my son’s first Father’s Day as a father but also his first Father’s Day without his own Dad there. It has also been difficult to navigate with our three-year-old Grandson as Chis, who he called ‘Gaga’, was his best friend. When I would go over to see him after Chris died, he would run to see if his Gaga was coming in behind me, which was heart-breaking.

You’ve got to live, haven’t you? And you’ve got to laugh sometimes. My daughter sometimes says, ‘what would he say if he saw us doing this?’. He was always a DIY man and since he died, I’ve been having to do those things. I had to look up on YouTube how to fix the boiler and I cut the grass now. Little hurdles keep coming up, but you have to keep jumping over them and getting on with it.