British actor Hugh Grant has called his mother, “the most important woman in the world to me.” A school teacher, Finvola Gran was 66 when she died, just weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2001.
“I was sitting with her in the hospital and the doctors came in and said, ‘It’s not good,’ and really she had about two or three weeks left at that point,” the actor, whose best known films are “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually,” told the Evening Standard. “That was pretty bleak.”
Read MoreView this post on Instagram
A Gentleman never goes outta style. We comin to your town on January 24th. Lookin forward to it.
“Would your 87-year-old [single] mom like a nice 91-year-old Englishman?” he asked McConaughey, in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. A deal was struck and James Grant (Hugh’s dad) and Mary Kathlene McCabe (Matthew’s mom; his father died of a heart attack in 1992) and have set a date, according to the website.
“We probably won’t see them for the rest of the night.” Grant deadpanned.
Hugh Grant’s Advocacy for Pancreatic Cancer Awareness
Grant is now a passionate advocate for pancreatic cancer awareness and early detection. He at first avoided speaking publicly about his family’s cancer journey. But in 2011 he decided to lend his support to Pancreatic Cancer Action, a U.K. nonprofit, according to the website.
On the site, Grant says the charity is “determined to improve the statistics of this deadly disease by focusing on early diagnosis and by making more people, including medical professionals, aware of the symptoms and risks of pancreatic cancer.”
He told the Evening Standard that his mother’s first symptom was jaundice, which can be a sign that the disease is progressing. “‘They did more tests and … the cancer had in fact spread,” he said.
Related: Rep. John Lewis and Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer The Incredible Advances in Treatment
Why Is Pancreatic Cancer So Difficult to Treat?
It's estimated that pancreatic cancer will take 45,750 lives in the U.S. this year alone. It took the life of actors Patrick Swayze and Alan Rickman, and currently, beloved "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek is undergoing treatment for the disease.
One reason why pancreatic cancer has such a notoriously challenging prognosis is that the disease is rarely detected in its early stages, before it has spread beyond the pancreas. Early-stage pancreatic cancer (which, in most cases, is much easier to treat, since the tumor is confined to the pancreas alone) rarely causes symptoms.
Dr. Anirban Maitra, co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the challenges to screening for pancreatic cancer.
"By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain, or diabetes, it's often very late in the stage of the disease," Dr. Anirban Maitra, co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at the MD Anderson Cancer Center told SurvivorNet in a previous conversation.
RELATED: How Do PARP Inhibitors Work for Pancreatic Cancer?
"And of course, this has an impact on the prognosis of the disease, because patients who have advanced disease, the treatments we have available for them, they work somewhat, but they don't really do as well as we would like for them to have an impact."
According to Dr. Maitra, roughly 80% of patients present with advanced disease, and only about 20% of patients with pancreatic cancer are candidates for surgery.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.