Pants Off Racing

Pancreatic Cancer…our cause.

Following Nancy Pants and get educated about the difficulties of pancreatic cancer… Nancy Pants Blog

Got that? Okay…good! The point is we want to support some thing, some cause that could use our help. Pants Off Racing is not only a great way to get together with our friends, but its also a chance for us to help others at the same time. Ya, its nice to get in shape, run a race for our own gratification, but i think we are all at some point in our lives where it would make our races even more satisfying if we were able to support a cause that clearly needs some support. Our hope is to give some monetary support to pancreatic research and traditional funding; but we are only a small group and can only give so much of our lunch money away at this point. BUT! Our plan is to do what we can with what we already have. What we can do is get out there and support pancreatic awareness in the triathlon and marathon community. We strive for modesty in setting our goals, so our plan is not to change the world, but to make a small difference in whatever way we can.

Nearly 42,470 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this year, and over 34,000 will die from the disease. Some whom we may now, but most we will have no contact with our entire lives.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the few cancers for which survival has not improved substantially over the past 30 years.

Seventy-five percent of pancreatic cancer patients die within the first 12 months of the diagnosis. The 5-year survival rate is 5 percent. Not good.

Scientific understanding of pancreatic cancer–its etiology, pathogenesis, detection, and treatment–lags far behind that of most other forms of cancer. In fact, pancreatic cancer research is where breast cancer research was in the 1930s–little understanding of the causes, no early detection, few effective treatments, and single-digit survival rates.

In 2001, the National Cancer Institute developed `Pancreatic Cancer: An Agenda for Action’. Seven years later, only five of the report’s 39 recommendations have been implemented because of a lack of funding, focus, and commitment (this is where POR comes in). In the meantime, pancreatic cancer death rates have continued to increase.

Pancreatic cancer research constitutes less than 2 percent of the National Cancer Institute’s Federal research funding, a figure far too low given the severity of the disease, its mortality rate, and how little is known about how to arrest the disease.
According to the American Cancer Society, for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined, the one-year relative survival rate is 20%, and the five-year rate is 4%. These low survival rates are attributable to the fact that fewer than 10% of patients’ tumors are confined to the pancreas at the time of diagnosis; in most cases, the malignancy has already progressed to the point where surgical removal is impossible.

In those cases where resection can be performed, the average survival rate is 18 to 20 months. The overall five-year survival rate is about 10%, although this can rise as high as 20% to 25% if the tumor is removed completely and when cancer has not spread to lymph nodes.