A mother, whose inoperable pancreatic cancer was initially mistaken for irritable bowel syndrome, is now raising money to marry her partner of 21 years during the remaining time she has left to live.
At the end of last year, Clair Honeywood, 45, experienced stomach pain and thought it was a flare-up of IBS, a gastrointestinal disorder that causes an irritable bowl and manifests with cramping, bloating and pain.
But when symptoms didn’t subside, the healthcare worker from the English town of King’s Lynn sought medical care. That’s when doctors delivered devastating news. “My poor consultant didn’t want to tell me [the diagnosis], but I begged him to tell me,” Honeywood told South West News Service, via The Daily Mail. “They then told me I had pancreatic cancer.”
“The doctors told me that the cancer had not spread — but then they said it was not operable” because the tumor was wrapped around an artery, Honeywood said. “It was another blow.”
Doctors told her chemotherapy was unlikely to extend her life for more than a year and a half.
“It is not normal for someone my age to get this cancer — it is a silent cancer too,” she added. As Honeywood experienced, pancreatic cancer symptoms are often mistaken for other, less dire disorders, often leading to a diagnosis when it’s too late for effective treatment.
As PanCAN — the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network — explains, even when the cancer is discovered only in the pancreas, the five-year survival rate is 44%. For all types of pancreatic cancer, the five-year survival rate is 13%.
Honeywood has been given a survival rate of 5%. “You just feel like your whole world ended — you just think about your kids,” said Honeywood, who shares two boys with her partner, Danny Burch, 40.
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“The doctors said to just go home and make memories,” she said.
So that’s what she’s trying to do. With the help of a GoFundMe, Honeywood is raising money to marry Burch. Their wedding is scheduled for July once she’s finished with her chemotherapy.
“I feel like I have been given the gift of time. I am spending more time with my boys — I have to look at the positives,” she emphasized.
“We have been together for 21 years and it has been crazy that it took us this long to get married,” she said. “He keeps looking at me and saying, ‘I can’t wait for you to be my wife.’ “
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