Click on her 2015 video clip and you’ll see Wendy Hammers in a hospital room, an IV tube connecting her to a small, drab machine as she undergoes chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. She is dancing and smiling during the infusion.
Hammers has approached her cancer journey – from the first excruciating pain to the diagnosis, and then through the treatment – with a positive attitude and a sense of humor.
“There were three prongs of treatment – chemotherapy, surgery and mindset. For me, mindset was the most important. It was the one that gave me the inner strength to deal with the other two,” Hammers said. “Comedy is part of the reason I’m alive. Humor is just another word for perspective – it helps makes sense of the nonsensical.”
Hammers has honed that attitude as a stand-up comic and actress who now travels the country giving motivational talks, loaded with laughs, on how she “broke up with cancer.”
A cancer with few clues
Pancreatic cancer is the No. 3 cause of cancer deaths in the U.S., behind lung and colon cancers. The five-year survival rate is just 13%, but improving by about 1% annually largely due to advances in treatment and therapies, said Timothy Donahue, MD, director of the UCLA Agi Hirshberg Center for Pancreatic Diseases.
Unlike other cancers – such as prostate cancer, which can be detected early through a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test – there are no known early markers for pancreatic cancer.
“They’ve never found an accurate tumor marker that can be used for screening and earlier diagnosis among the broader population,” said Dr. Donahue, a member of the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and professor of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “The main precursor lesion that turns into pancreatic cancer cannot be seen on any imaging tests.”
For Hammers, unexpected weight loss may have been the first clue that something was wrong. But it was a severe stabbing pain on her left side, near her hip, that caught her attention.
“I felt good, until I felt terrible,” she said. “I lived with that pain for about a week before I went to the doctor.”
Diagnosis and treatment
The pancreas, a gland located in the back of the abdomen, helps with digestion and blood sugar regulation. Most tumors arise in the head of the pancreas, on the right side, said Dr. Donahue. In those cases, the cancer is usually diagnosed earlier than other parts of the organ because the tumors obstruct the bile duct causing patients to develop jaundice, a yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes.
Read More: Why doctors struggle to diagnose pancreatic cancer early
Diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is divided into three categories: a small tumor confined to the pancreas (stage 1); a tumor that has grown outside the pancreas and involves blood vessels (stage 2 or 3); and a cancer that has spread to other organs, in most cases the liver (stage 4), Dr. Donahue said.
“When Wendy was first diagnosed, her tumor was partially involving some of the essential blood vessels around the pancreas. She was probably in the stage 2-3 range, a relatively early stage where it hadn’t spread to other organs,” Dr. Donahue said.
”In cases like that, we try to shrink the tumor with chemotherapy before pancreatic surgery, so hopefully we won’t have to do any major vascular work and reconstruction. We only have to remove the part of the pancreas with the tumor,” he said. “Her treatment was some chemotherapy first, then surgery, then a little more chemo to complete her course of therapy.”
Humor and positivity
Hammers recalled that when she received her diagnosis, instead of asking “Why me?” she thought, “How am I going to manage this?”
Her optimistic approach remained constant as treatment progressed. During her six-day post-surgery hospital stay, friends decorated her room with cards and flowers, they played music. She had an essential oil diffuser filled with lavender to relax her and the staff and she inhaled orange oil to mask the medicinal smell of rubbing alcohol during chemotherapy sessions.
She had mood lighting brought in to help take the focus away from the medical machinery.
“There’s no question that a positive outlook and optimism – and our partnership with patients as they try to maintain hope and an outlook that they’re going to beat this thing – certainly helps their survival and helps them tolerate their treatments better,” said Dr. Donahue. “For those who are less fortunate than Wendy, who don’t wind up beating it, a positive outlook improves their quality of life, of the time they have left.”
Dr. Donahue said he encourages his patients to think positively, despite the challenging circumstances. Hammers said she benefited directly from his coaching.
He said, “You have cancer. You’re going to be fine. I’ll be with you the whole time,” she recalled.
Hammers’ advice to others with cancer is to build a similar network of supporters.
“Choose doctors that you feel are team members,” she said. “And express yourself – that will lead to less tension, better sleep and elevation of the immune system.”
And if you can, incorporate some humor into the cancer treatment plan.
“It’s so absurd, with things hanging out of your body,” Hammers said. “You need a way to laugh at it.”
