Patrick Robert Adkisson

[The following is the information provided on Caring Bridge and was written by Patrick himself]It started out innocently. I was having a lot of upset stomachs and some lower back pain. I thought maybe I had intestinal flu. I knew something was not right with my body. January 2012 I went to the doctor over the course of several months starting with the basic tests. We kept ruling out the obvious. We then did a colonoscopy and an endoscopy, just to check ‘both-ends’ and it all looked clear. We then decided to do a CT scan. April 2012 We found a small 8mm spot,about the size of the tip of a pen, on the head my pancreas. We weren’t too concerned because of its size and with today’s technology they find all kinds of little spots these days that turn out to be nothing. We decided to be safe and check it out anyway. We did another endoscopy with ultrasound but they were not able to get any tissue from the spot because it was so small. It was decided that it was probably some fatty tissue and we would have another look in about 6 months. I was a little depressed after these test all came back as normal because I was still not feeling well. I knew something wasn’t right. Several more weeks passed while we tried different medications and diet changes; I was still feeling like something was not right. We then decided to do an abdominal ultra sound to make sure everything was working as it should. July 2012 The ultra sound came back with a 2.6cm lesion on pancreas and with 4 small lesions in my liver. We ordered a new CT scan. After only 4 month that spot grew from 8 mm to 2.6cm and now I have lesions in both lobes of my liver. We did a biopsy of the pancreases and it confirmed I have adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. We also found during the biopsy that I have low blood platelets so we’ll need to take that into account when planning treatment options. We are going into this eyes wide open. We’ll always assume best case but we’ll be educated about worse case. July 2012