Remembering the Life & Career of Beloved Actor Patrick Swayze
- Actor Patrick Swayze passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2009. But ABC is bringing him back to life tonight as the subject of the network's hit series, Superstar.
- The episode airs tonight (Friday, April 15) at 10 p.m. ET. But don't worry, if you miss the program's live airing, you can watch it tomorrow (Saturday, April 16) on Hulu!
- Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2008, and after fighting the disease for about a year and a half, he later passed away in September 2009 at the too-young age of 57.
According to ABC, the Superstar series has profiled a variety of late celebrities, including Whitney Houston, Robin Williams, George Michael and Richard Pryor. But tonight (Friday, April 15), Superstar will profile Houston, Texas, native Patrick Swayze, taking a look at his life and career that ended way too soon.
Read MorePatrick Swayze's Cancer Battle
Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2008, and after fighting the disease for about a year and a half, he later passed away in September 2009 at the too-young age of 57.
The famous Dirty Dancing star began experiencing symptoms of pancreatic cancer in December 2007, but he didn't realize it at the time. Instead, he thought he was just having digestive issues.
Remembering Iconic '80s and '90s Actor Patrick Swayze Who Passed From Pancreatic Cancer in 2009
In his 2009 memoir entitled The Time of My Life, Swayze wrote about how he thought the bloated feeling would just go away on its own.
"I had been having some digestive trouble," he wrote. "Mostly acid reflux and a kind of bloated feeling, for a few weeks. I've had a sensitive stomach my whole life, so I hadn't thought much of it, but lately, I just couldn't shake the constant discomfort."
Understanding Pancreatic Cancer
Dr. Anirban Maitra, of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, previously told SurvivorNet that because the pancreas is inside the abdomen, "it often doesn't have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas … 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."
And that’s exactly what happened to Patrick Swayze.
The American Cancer Society estimates that about 62,210 people will be diagnosed with this type of cancer in 2022, and about 49,830 people will die from it, which is to Maitra's point that "most people will die from this disease within a few months to a year or so from the diagnosis," he said.
"The reason for that is that most individuals, about 80 percent, will actually present with what we called advanced disease (or metastatic), which means that the cancer has either spread beyond the pancreas or into other organs like the liver, and so you cannot take it out with surgeries," he added.
Dr. Allyson Ocean explains why pancreatic cancer is so hard to treat.
Dr. Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet that pancreatic cancer is soon to be the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States.
"Mortality is rising because it's caught so late," she said, "and we don't have enough effective medications against the cancer."
So, the question in front of oncologists today is: "How can we detect this disease earlier in the process so we can have a better impact on the survival of our patients?" Maitra said.
Contributing: Anne McCarthy
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