Asking for a little prayer...

[pll]

nscrbug,

Positive thoughts to you and your family. My mother died of pancreatic cancer -- as people already mentioned, it is hard to diagnose because people have no symptoms or have very generic symptoms. There are two types of it: 95% of the cancers of the pancreas develop in the cells that produce enzymes for digestion and are fast growing. The other 5% are islet cell tumors, that develop in the cells that produce/regulate insuline. Those are slow growing (supposedly what Steve Jobs has).

I trust you have encountered pancan.org already. A couple of years ago, I had a good conversation about this cancer (and its "family" of related cancers related to mutations of genes: Lynch syndrome, Muir-Torre...) with a geneticist at Northshore University Health System, Wendy Rubinstein. She is the principal investigator in a registry of families with a history of pancreatic cancer -- I decided to be part of it. PM me if you are interested in more links or simply to chat.

PS: The Lancet has a May 2011 pre print of a review article on pancreatic cancer.