Anne Shimabukuro beat pancreatic cancer with a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
- Bruce Morton
- Jul 21, 2023
- 12 min read
DESCRIPTION
In 2005, Anne Shimabukuro of Potomac, Maryland, a healthy mother of mom, began to feel a sharp pain in her left side after a meal. At the time she didn’t have a primary care physician, so she made an appointment with her gynecologist. She didn’t think Anne’s problem was anything gynecological, but had a sonogram machine at her office, so then and there, she conducted a sonogram. She thought something she on her pancreas might be a cyst on her pancreas or pancreatitis, so the doctor suggested Anne go to a gastroenterologist.
With the gastroenterologist, a few more scans were performed, a CT scan and an MRI. Each time they saw something on Anne’s pancreas. Finally, the doctor ordered a biopsy. What became the possibility of a tumor began to concern Anne. The day after the biopsy, Anne received a call from a nurse at the hospital, who said the doctor would like to see her in person. Anne and her husband met at the hospital, where Anne was told by the doctor that the biopsy had revealed a malignant tumor, which he called an adenocarcinoma.
Just before Christmas 2005, Anne underwent the surgery, and was able to come home on Christmas Day.
Anne had enjoyed excellent health prior to her diagnosis, but the pain in her side, the nausea and the limping drove home the point something was wrong, which made being proactive about addressing the tumor an easy call. Her decision was made easier by her confidence in the specialist who treated her.
Anne Shimabukuro said the toughest part of her journey was recovering from the surgery, and the post-op abdominal pain. Once back home, she did a lot of resting and was away from work for a week. After a few weeks, though, she said began to feel physically normal.
About six weeks after the surgery, Anne began to undergo a chemotherapy regimen that lasted about three months. Each Friday she had to go in for about an hour. After that, she began radiation treatment. It was presented as a choice, but she thought her care team recommended radiation, she should go through with it. The radiation treatment lasted five weeks.
With the chemo, Anne experienced fatigue. With the radiation, she found the regimen relatively easy. Each visit to the hospital lasted about one minute. She suffered a bit of nausea, but it wasn’t too bad.
Anne said during her chemotherapy regimen, she was on a medication called gemcitabine, which around 2005 was considered the standard of care. While she took gemcitabine by itself, Anne says today it is generally part of a cocktail.
She says in her chemotherapy experience, she didn’t have many cognitive issues and didn’t suffer hair loss. Fatigue, she said, was the worst part.
Anne thought her treatment was over, but her urologist said Anne should go on a regimen of an oral form of chemotherapy. She took one pill in the morning and one at night, for about two and a half years. At that time, the doctor said she should stop taking the pill because they had no data as to the safety of taking this pill for this long. Meanwhile, she was still going in for periodic CT scans.
Looking back, Anne says she was quite fortunate that her tumor made its presence known with the pain in her left side. That drove her to seek medical attention, which led to early detection, which is important with any type of cancer, but especially with pancreatic cancer, which is rarely detected in an early stage.
Anne Shimabukuro says a big part of her recovery was her successful effort to come as close as she could to her pre-diagnosis life. That, early detection, and a positive attitude made her journey as smooth as possible.
Additional Resources:
Support Group: Pancreatic Cancer Action Network https://www.pancan.org
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Morton: Greetings. This is the @CancerInterviews podcast, and I’m your host, Bruce Morton. One point we try to drive home on our interviews with cancer survivors is the importance of early detection. Our guest on this episode was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but wasted no time in addressing her diagnosis. She is Anne Shimabukuro of Potomac, Maryland. Hers is a story that can provide information and inspiration, so when you hear Anne talk, you should listen. Here she is, and Anne, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Anne Shimabukuro: Thank you, Bruce. Good to be here, and thanks for having me.
BM: Anne, it is custom before we get into the subject of cancer to learn a bit about our guests and their lives outside of cancer. So, if you would tell us a bit about where you are from, what you do for work and what you do for fun.
AS: I live in Potomac, Maryland, which is right outside Washington, DC and have been here for more than 20 years, but grew up in New York and New Jersey. I work in the finance area in the hotel industry. When I was diagnosed, I was working at Marriott World Headquarters in Maryland, and I am now with PM Hotel Group. It is a management company, managing hotels for all brands, including Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and others. I am married with two children, two daughters and I love to spend time with them. They are both in college now, and they play lacrosse, so I love watching them play lacrosse.
BM: For all of us who have survived cancer, there came that time in which we thought we were in good health and then something abnormal happened, and that event led to a diagnosis of cancer. For you, how did such an event manifest itself.?
AS: This started in the fall of 2005. I was otherwise healthy. I was young, I was 37 years old. My daughters were toddlers. My life was very active, taking them to their daycare and their weekend activities and such. I started feeling a pain in my side one day and it was very sudden after I ate. I had been working at the office, ate lunch, then I felt a pain on my left side. The pain was pretty sharp. It lasted the whole rest of the day. When I woke up the next morning, I felt fine, but when I ate, the pain came back, and again, it lasted all day. It was more of a dull pain. Over the next couple of days, it didn’t go away until on the weekend I was out with my family, we had gone to a show and walking back to our car in the parking garage, I started limping and couldn’t keep up with the group. I thought this is not normal. When I got home, I got sick. I vomited, so I definitely realized that something was wrong. I didn’t even have a primary care physician, so I reached out to my gynecologist. I made up a reason to get the appointment. I was pretty sure it was not something gynecological, but something related to GI because it seemed to hurt more when I ate. The doctor said it was too high up in my abdomen to be anything gynecological, but, being an OBGYN, she had a sonogram machine in the office and we did a sonogram right then and there, and she saw something small and called it a cyst. She said it might be pancreatitis because she knew it was on the pancreas. It was very small, but visible, which is why she suggested that I go to a gastroenterologist. We did a couple more scans, a CT scan and an MRI. Each time they saw something. So, finally, the doctor ordered a biopsy. I was concerned because at first my doctor had been calling it a cyst and this was the first time that it had been called a potential tumor. I had been researching pancreatitis on line and as I was reading about it, I also read about pancreatic cancer, thinking it was a good thing I don’t have that. It was really nerve-racking to go in for a biopsy. We did that at George Washington University Hospital, which is not far from where I live. The day after the biopsy, I got a call from a nurse at the hospital saying the doctor would like to see me in person. I thought that can’t be good. I called my husband and he met me at the hospital. The doctor told us they found a malignant tumor and he called it an adenocarcinoma. At the time I really didn’t know what that meant. I said we can do surgery. This was right before Christmas. We had a trip to Disney planned, so he said go on your trip, come back and we’ll perform the surgery. I was little concerned, doing it so close to the holidays. We scheduled the surgery for December 22nd, we did go on our Disney vacation, we did come back a day early so I could do some pre-op work. I did the surgery on December 22nd, was there for three days and came home on Christmas Day, so that was the best Christmas ever being able to come home after a successful surgery and spend it with my family.
BM: By the way, we’re confident you’ll be able to learn some tips and tools to help you through your cancer journey, but first we’d like to invite you to please give us a ‘like,’ leave a comment or review below and share this story with your friends. Kindly click on the Subscribe button below and click on the bell icon, so you’ll be notified the next time we post an interview. And if you or a loved one are facing a cancer diagnosis, please click on the link in the Description and Show Notes below to check out our free guide, “The Top Ten Things I Wish I Knew When I First Got Cancer.”
Anne, I want to get back to what happened before the treatment. A key part of your story is your choosing to be proactive at a time in which others might have chosen to ignore the symptoms. What was behind your being proactive?
AS: The encouragement from my family because I was otherwise healthy and this was a very unusual episode for me to be in pain for so long and limping and nauseous. So, my sister and my husband encouraged to get it checked out. It was also very fortunate that my original doctor for whom the pancreas was not her specialty, she did not turn me away. She continued investigating while I was with her and found something.
BM: Let’s go back to that twixt and tween zone, post-diagnosis and pre-treatment. Based on what I am hearing, it sounds like pre-treatment, you were pretty optimistic. Is that fair to say?
AS: The very first day it was very overwhelming I was just emotionally a wreck thinking about what could happen with my two young children. Fortunately that anxiety only lasted a day. The doctor was very optimistic. It is a small tumor. It is located in a place where we can remove just a portion of the pancreas. They just removed the bottom third, or the tail of the pancreas. He helped me get comfortable with it, and based on his optimism, I felt better also.
BM: You have addressed the emotional side of going through treatment, but from a physical perspective, in terms of the treatment, what was the toughest part?
AS: Recovering from the surgery itself. You have to get sliced open. I was only in the hospital for three days and they encourage you to walk around, just to begin the healing process, but even when I left the hospital, I was very sore and tender. The nurses had given me a little pillow so I could clutch it around my stomach. I just moved around very slowly. After I got home, I would be laying on the couch for a while and was home for just a week from work, it was the Christmas week, anyway. I wasn’t used to be cooped up like that. With two little kids at home, I just wanted to give them a huge hug, but I had to careful about that. After a couple weeks, I was back to normal.
BM: Anne, at what point did you feel like you were starting to get the upper hand on cancer?
AS: Pretty soon. After the surgery, the doctor said the operation was a success. There were clean margins, and no evidence of spread. I was starting to feel. However, my doctors had more treatment in store for me, which they didn’t tell me about in the beginning. I am not sure if they just wanted me to focus on one step at a time, but about six weeks after my surgery, I started chemotherapy. That was another three months, where I went in once a week, going in on Fridays for a couple of hours of infusion of chemo. After that was done, once again I was surprised with another step of treatment when they recommended radiation. It was actually presented as a choice. I thought if they are going to recommend it, I’m going to do it. I don’t want to not do it, then later regret it. So, after the chemo for three months, I did five weeks of radiation, and the radiation wasn’t too bad. From the chemo I had mild side effects, mainly fatigue, so I would the chemo on Fridays, then rest over the weekend and go back to work and continue with life on Mondays and return for the treatment on Friday. With radiation, it was pretty quick and easy I would say. I was a little nauseous after the first time, so when I mentioned that, they prescribed this anti-nausea medication which I took beforehand and then it was not a problem. After five weeks of radiation, I thought I was done with the treatment, but the doctor said to be on the same side, the doctor prescribed an oral form of chemo, a pill that I would take morning and night. That was easy to do, and I did it for the next two-and-a-half years. Then the doctor said there weren’t long term studies about this drug because I had survived longer than most people who take it, so they said continuing with the pill might do more harm than good. I found a lot of comfort in taking, so I kind of hated to stop. After that, I was just getting scanned regularly. At first it was once a month doing a CT scan, then it became once every three months, then once every six months, then once a year, then eventually I stopped altogether. Once again, it was important to catch it early.
BM: I want to talk about your experience with chemotherapy. Unfortunately, there are certain things that are part of the territory when one undergoes chemotherapy. First of all, did you have any problem with the taste of food?
AS: Actually, no. The drug I was on was called gemcitabine. Back then, it was considered the standard of care. Now they mix it with another drug as part of a cocktail. So, I really didn’t have any change in taste. I also didn’t lose my hair. I had been worried about that. There was just fatigue.
BM: Once you got to a point in which it looked like the worst was behind you, how exciting was that? How gratified were you?
AS: I guess I didn’t feel like there was a moment. All during my treatment, I was just trying to continue my normal life. The other thing that helped were my family needs. I had two very young daughters. I had to continue being their mom.
BM: Anne, while we begin our interviews from the same place, we try to conclude from the same place with the following question; If you encountered someone who had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, they might have a lot of questions and would have a lot of information; but if there is one salient you would want to be sure to get across to this individual, what would it be?
AS: I would say listen to your body. If something does not feel normal, get it checked out. Preferably, bring a friend or a loved one to the appointment because you might so many emotions or thoughts and it would help to have someone there with you who can maybe take notes, and you can compare what you heard afterwards. There’s always hope.
BM: Anne, thank you so much for sharing your story, both in terms of the past and in terms of the present. We mentioned the words education and inspiration, and you have checked both boxes in a major way, so Anne, thanks very much for being with us on Cancer Interviews.
AS: Thank you, Bruce.
BM: And we want to remind you as we always do when we wrap up that if you or a loved one are on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are people out there like Anne, organizations like PanCAN, that can ease your journey. So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.
Additional Resources:
Support Group:
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network: www.pancan.org
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Anne Shimabukuro, Pancreatic Cancer Survivor – Potomac, Maryland, USA
When Anne Shimabukuro, a healthy mother of two, noticed a sharp pain in her left side in 2005, one that manifested itself when she ate, she immediately sought medical attention. That led to a diagnosis of a malignant tumor in her pancreas. She wasted no time in getting part of her pancreas removed. It required a surgical procedure, followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Anne survived pancreatic cancer and today enjoys a healthy lifestyle.
Additional Resources:
Cancer Interviews: www.cancerinterviews.com
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network: www.pancan.org
Time Stamps:
02:29 Anne first noticed something was wrong when she felt pain in her left side.
04:28 What an ensuing sonogram revealed.
06:21 Learned of her diagnosis.
08:29 Why she took a proactive approach to her diagnosis.
12:05 Anne describes the toughest part of her treatment regimen.
14:01 Her family was very supportive before and during treatment.
15:16 Post-surgery, she underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
20:35 Anne is asked if chemo presented cognitive issues.
27:20 Her message to those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
KEYWORDS (tags):
pancreatic cancer
gemcitabine
cancer
adenocarcinoma
cancer interviews
chemotherapy
radiation treatment
bruce morton
pancreatitis
anne shimabukuro
immunotherapy
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