In 2004, the actress Star Trek, Kitty Swink, he noticed that he was losing a lot of weight. “I’m a thin person by nature, so I didn’t give it much importance,” she said in an interview with the magazine People. Shocked, the actress who played Luaran in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, who also works in theater plays and is married to the actor Armin Shimermanadmitted that “I had back pain all the time, but I thought I was just stressed.”
Swink had battled breast cancer when she was 38, and at her husband’s insistence, she sought a doctor’s appointment to have her blood tested. The day after that visit, she noticed that her urine had turned brown. Surprised, she answered a call: it was her doctor informing her that her kidneys and liver were failing.
“When I got to the emergency room, I was turning yellow with jaundice,” she says of the body’s reaction that occurs when too much bilirubin builds up.
That’s when the tests began: a CT scan and a biopsy, and then the shocking news. “At 49 years old, he had pancreatic cancer.”
“Seventeen days later, I left Cedars-Sinai (the clinic where it was treated) with half my stomach, half my pancreas, my gallbladder removed, two feet of my intestines removed, 28 lymph nodes removed and 4% chance of surviving five years”he recalled.
The prognosis was grim, but Swink knew he still had hope. “I looked at my husband and said: ‘I’m going to live’. I don’t know why I thought he was going to live, but I thought: ‘I have things to do‘”.
Now, 20 years later, he is free of pancreatic cancer and hopes to turn 70 next year. She has also now accepted his new mission, which is to raise awareness and funds for PanCan.org.
“On April 27th we will have our annual walk PurpleStride. It is our largest fundraiser with Trek Against Pancreatic Cancer, my team and I do it every year,” he added.
Star Trek actors are also part of their team, Jonathan Frakeswho lost his brother to the disease 20 years ago, and John Billingsleywho lost his mother to pancreatic cancer.
About the organization he says that it is not only about raising funds for research but is also educating the public about pancreatic cancer because “it has long been considered one of the most difficult cancers to detect and one of the deadliest.”
“I know things have gotten better because when I was diagnosed, I had a 4% chance. Ten years ago, there was only a 6% chance of reaching five years, and now it is 13. It has increased by a percentage every year. which is a lot, but not clear enough,” Swink said.
“One of the things we’re doing is trying to teach doctors what to look for. And one of the best things you can do if you’re worried or have been diagnosed is to call patient services. PanCan and they can help you find a doctor who really knows what to look for,” he said.
Swink said that too wants people to be aware of possible symptoms.
“If people have this in their family, we have to make them aware,” he considered. “We also have a campaign to help people understand that if you become diabetic at 50 for no reason, you’re thirsty all the time, that could be a factor. Do you have lower back pain? Are you losing weight inexplicably?”
In that sense, she said that part of her role as a survivor is to talk to other patients every day.
“People just give my phone number to other people and I always answer the call.”, says. “This is what I tell you: ‘Call PanCan right away to know you are with the right doctor’. They are also very useful because there are now specific treatments and many trials. “It’s not just a death sentence.”
Swink knows he’s lucky to have made it this far from his initial diagnosis. “I tried to live by the mantra that ‘I’m going to live every day I’m alive’. That’s how I did it,” she stated.
Happily, he said: “I went back to the gym. I took my dogs for a walk every day. I went to the theater. As long as my white blood cell count allowed, I would do it. I think it makes you want to fight to be alive when you are engaged in the world.”
“Here I am, 20 years later. I know I’m very lucky.”he finished.
