Felixstowe woman loses both parents to pancreatic cancer
Rebecca Bird, a woman from Felixstowe, shares her experience of losing both parents to pancreatic cancer. She highlights the lack of effective treatment options and the emotional toll of the disease on families.
Why it matters
Personal accounts of rare or aggressive diseases often drive public awareness and advocacy for increased medical research funding.
Image source, Supplied Image caption, Rebecca Bird (left) lost her dad, Timothy (middle left), last year to pancreatic cancer, just years after losing her mum to the same disease
When Rebecca Bird's dad died of pancreatic cancer, just years after her mum died of the same disease, she was left scared for her future.
She had noticed her dad suffering from similar symptoms to her mum, but by the time he was diagnosed, it was too late for him to receive treatment.
According to Pancreatic Cancer UK, seven in 10 people with the disease receive no treatment while existing treatment options are often too intensive for patients to tolerate.
Bird, 43, from Felixstowe in Suffolk, feared she might similarly develop this cancer and had been left frustrated at the lack of treatment options available to patients.
Bird's mum, Beverley, had been living in Australia when she was diagnosed in 2016.
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