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A pancreatic cancer survivor, battling the disease for the second time, has shared the early signs people of all ages should be aware of.
Charles Czajkowski, 63, business development manager at a Surbiton, Kingston geotechnical company, has “declared war on pancreatic cancer” after a five-year ordeal with two bouts of illness – which also caused the death of his mother Romaulda in old age. 78, 1999.
Mr Czajkowski, who is hoping the treatment he received through his wife’s private healthcare package will save his life, will speak to MPs in the House of Commons on Wednesday to urge the Government to allocate more funding to the disease.
He will be speaking with 20 others who either have the disease or have lost someone to it as part of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
After his health began to deteriorate in 2017, Charles faced a series of delays in getting his diagnosis and treatment from the NHS until he was able to access Bupa healthcare through the workplace of his wife, 16, Jackie Czajkowski.
After initial success with treatment, Charles’ cancer returned in May 2022 and private oncologists are now trying to use a range of medicines, some not available in the NHS, to save his life.
Charles is now working to fight the disease and help patients catch it early. He is a pancreatic patient representative and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Pancreatic Cancer UK.
He is also a pancreatic patient representative for NHS Cancer UK as part of the Government’s 10 year plan to improve early diagnosis and treatment plan for people with pancreatic cancer, liver cancer or gallbladder cancer.
“It put me in control,” Charles said.
“Pancreatic cancer declared war on me… Again, I declared war on pancreatic cancer because I could help educate and save other people’s lives.
“It’s an awareness battle because pancreatic cancer Britain didn’t have a lot of airtime and didn’t have the investment.”
(Collect/PA Real Life)
Charles’ ordeal as a cancer patient began in 2017 when he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
In mid-year he had a pancreatic attack – also known as acute pancreatitis – which the NHS says is a sharp pain that starts suddenly in the middle of a patient’s abdomen and can also be accompanied by vomiting and a high temperature.
For the remainder of the year, Charles was observed for repeated pancreatic attacks and rapidly lost weight, dropping from 85kg to around 75kg at a height of 6ft.
“Another sign that things weren’t going right was that my pancreas wasn’t making the enzymes and so I started getting what’s called pancreatic diarrhea, which is a real sign your food isn’t being digested properly,” added Charles added.
As a result, Charles’ primary care physician prescribed Pancreatic Enzyme Replacement Therapy (Pert), which stabilized Charles’ weight as he was now able to absorb nutrients.
From there, Charles was sent to a number of different hospitals for scans and tests.
Finally, at the beginning of March 2019, further examinations discovered a 10 millimeter tumor on Charles’s pancreatic head.
On March 25, 2019, Charles, along with his wife and a nurse from Macmillan, met with the head of Hammersmith Hospital’s surgical team.
“He said to me, Charles, you don’t have chronic pancreatitis, you have pancreatic cancer,” Charles said.
“They had a Macmillan nurse there because obviously people go into shock in general.
“But all of a sudden I was like, ‘Okay, so what do we do with this professor?'”
The NHS doctor explained to Charles that two months later there would be a Whiple procedure to remove the head of the pancreas, the first part of the small intestine, the gallbladder and the bile duct.
After examining the survival rate for pancreatic cancer, Charles feared that waiting time was a risk and decided to privatize the rest of his treatment through his wife’s Bupa health plan.
Just a week later, his surgery was performed at the London Clinic Hospital using a Da Vinci surgical robot.
“I was basically told to say goodbye to my wife because there’s a lot of risk involved with the surgery,” Charles said.
“So it was very difficult when we both went to the prep room because I didn’t know if I was going to wake up from this big operation.
“But luckily for me, just as I said goodbye, they had just injected me with the pre-med and next thing I was out.”
On April 2, the private surgery consisted of drilling five holes in Charles’ abdomen, meaning there are fewer infections, and Charles was discharged from the hospital 13 days later.
A month later, Charles began fortnightly chemotherapy sessions for six months, which resulted in his weight dropping to just around 150 lbs – he weighed around 185 lbs before his diagnosis. “I looked skeletal,” Charles said.
“But I managed to persevere. You have to fight it with a lot of hard work, it’s a fight.”
After chemo, a scan found no cases of new tumors until – in early 2020 – another scan showed spots on his right lung and a swollen lymph node near his aorta.
By August 2020, the dots had grown into 10-millimeter tumors, so Charles had lung ablation — a surgical treatment that involves inserting a probe that uses extreme heat or cold to destroy the tumor.
Lymph node treatment was more complicated because standard radiation would also have touched Charles’s aorta and risked rupturing it.
Instead, in early October, Charles was treated at Genesis Care in Oxford with a new technology, MRIdian Linac – targeted radiation therapy using an MRI system to minimize collateral damage.
After five one-hour sessions over two weeks, the lymph node tumor was gone and there was no damage to Charles’ aorta, meaning Charles’ life was finally able to return to normal alongside the three-month check-ups.
It was at this point that Charles decided to devote his life to the pancreatic cancer campaign alongside his work and family, joining Pancreatic Cancer UK and becoming the pancreatic cancer patient advocate at Genesis Care.
However, in May 2022, a CT scan revealed his pancreatic cancer had returned in a secondary form.
At this point there is no cure for his condition, but Charles’ oncologist has put him back on chemotherapy with two new drugs, one of which is not available on the NHS.
After three months of treatment, the tumors continued to grow, and in September Charles began another round of chemotherapy every two weeks.
He will find out later this month if this treatment has shrunk his tumor.
During his visit to Parliament, he and others will speak individually to between 60 and 80 MEPs who have joined the Pancreatic Cancer UK initiative as part of their ‘No Time to Wait’ campaign.
“Our role is basically to tell our story, to enlighten them so they understand that we need more investment,” he said.
Reflecting on his experience with cancer, Charles said, “Fighting cancer is more than just physical, it’s mental.
“You have to focus on all the positives, you can get out of that.
“I’ve traveled all over the world in my job and been to places people would have dreamed of and it came naturally to me.
“But going through cancer puts your whole life into perspective.”
