all out. In addition, it hurts. You’re just cut open and you have to recover from that as well.”
The survival rates for people with pancreatic cancer are not good. 75 percent of those who are diagnosed die within the first year, 95 percent after five
years. “When I was diagnosed, we were shocked, scared and unbelievably sad,” Nuñez recalled. “We had just gone through this with my brother not two years
ago. We had just gone through him being diagnosed. It was too late for him. He was stage four already by the time he was diagnosed. So it was unbelievably
scary for me to have to go through this. I watched him die. And for my parents, it was the same thing. How can they have two children with the very same
cancer? Our younger brother is being tested as we speak. We’re still on pins and needles about that. He’s going to participate in an early screening genetics
testing piece.”
Perhaps her brother’s last gift to her was that his daughter — Nuñez’s niece — had done a lot of research on trials for experimental drugs to treat pancreatic
cancer that involved a vaccination against pancreatic cancer cells, which could be taken in addition to traditional chemo-radiation therapy. One of the
promising trials was being held at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago. It had a requirement that treatment begin within 28 days after surgery. Time was
running out.
“Through pushing and pushing, she got me an appointment to meet the doctors involved in that trial,” Nuñez said. “When we went down there, it was the
27th day after my surgery. So we met with the doctors on the 27th day, got testing that day, got testing the next day and the company was reviewing all of my
materials a couple of hours before. I got accepted into the trial and was immediately vaccinated at 4:30 p.m. on the very last day before it wouldn’t count.”
When Nuñez learned of the treatment, they had to confront a health care dilemma: what will they do if the treatment isn’t covered by health insurance? “To
me, it was a very touching decision,” Nuñez said. “We were sitting down in Chicago trying to figure out how all of this was going to work. This is where I go back
to being an advocate for yourself. Not many people know about clinical trials and experimental research. When you are facing pancreatic cancer or maybe
some others where there isn’t a whole lot of hope out there, what I wanted was hope. I want something that says ‘Sure, let’s work on something so we have hope
for me and for others who are going to follow.’ But what was touching for me was to have my family and my in-laws and everyone from my niece on up say ‘Do
what you can to get into this trial. We’ll worry about finances later. The important thing is to give you the most aggressive treatment so you can live.’ That was
unbelievable to me. Family was willing to do what they could, sell everything if need be, so that I could get these treatments.”
Over the course of several months, Nuñez would receive 112 vaccinations using the experimental drug in addition to her chemo and radiation therapy.
“Basically what the clinical trial is trying to do is this,” Nuñez said. “Cancer is produced in your body. Your body doesn’t see it as something it has to fight. So this
trial is to inject a synthetic pancreatic cancer cell in a way so that your body fights it. They attach an irritant to it so your immune system starts to say ‘I have to
fight this.’ It’s kind of retraining my body. If my body is going to produce pancreatic cancer cells, we have to retrain it to say ‘Fight this’ when it happens again.”
Nuñez was fortunate to get diagnosed early and undergo an aggressive treatment. “Your best chance for surviving pancreatic cancer is first of all get it out and
make sure it hasn’t spread,” Nuñez observed. “And then bombard your body with chemo, radiation and then more chemo treatment. This is what I did. They call
it the sandwich approach to the treatment. That’s the most aggressive kind of treatment that you can get to kill any kind of rogue cells that might be floating
about. Again I was lucky because I developed symptoms. It was found really early. It had not spread. My lymph nodes were clear. I had a good margin. All of
those things are positive for me and give me hope that I will have a longer survival rate. But pancreatic cancer does come back. That’s a reality.”
It is the trial vaccination that Nuñez received that she hopes will keep her cancer free for many years to come.
Nuñez truly is a fighter and a doer. When she was first diagnosed, she began to react more than fret about herself. She was presented a challenge and she
immediately kicked into a problem-solving mode. In many ways, she was too busy to let the emotional shock come to the surface until she had time to think
about it when she had to stay in Chicago for a week at a time to receive 24/7 chemo-radiation treatment. “It wasn’t until many months later that I suddenly got
depressed, sad and angry,” Nuñez said. “I went through a grieving stage. ‘Why me? How does my mom lose two children to this disease?’ I questioned
everything. What was I exposed to? It almost happened for me later. And I went through two very down periods with that despair. One was when I was in Chicago
receiving daily radiation and 24/7 chemo. And I hit as bottom as much as I have ever felt. And the next period coincided with all my blood work numbers
hitting rock bottom. So there was a physical and a mental piece that went with it. Even going back to the surgery, it was ‘Oh my God, I survived the surgery.’ I
didn’t realize how dangerous the surgery was and how many people have serious lifetime complications from the surgery. I had an unbelievably good surgeon.
And although I have to take enzymes to help my digestive process, I’m actually — knock on wood — doing quite well from that surgery. And that’s not always the
case. I’ve been unbelievably blessed. That kind of despair happened afterwards after I had already started everything.”
Nuñez was also blessed by the level of community support she and her family received during her treatment. “The only way we made it through going
down to Chicago on a weekly basis for treatment, for me to live down in Chicago for five and a half weeks to receive daily radiation and 24/7 chemo was my
neighbors, my friends, my co-workers, this unbelievably generous community in Madison that just came out in droves to help,” Nuñez said with moist eyes. “I had
a different person drive me every week. That’s a huge relief for my family not to have to do that. They brought us meals. They walked out dog. They helped us
with an apartment down in Chicago. There are so many other ways that people have been generous. That got me through.”
Next issue: Positive attitudes and healing
The survival rates for people with pancreatic cancer are not good. 75 percent of those who are diagnosed die within the first year, 95 percent after five
years. “When I was diagnosed, we were shocked, scared and unbelievably sad,” Nuñez recalled. “We had just gone through this with my brother not two years
ago. We had just gone through him being diagnosed. It was too late for him. He was stage four already by the time he was diagnosed. So it was unbelievably
scary for me to have to go through this. I watched him die. And for my parents, it was the same thing. How can they have two children with the very same
cancer? Our younger brother is being tested as we speak. We’re still on pins and needles about that. He’s going to participate in an early screening genetics
testing piece.”
Perhaps her brother’s last gift to her was that his daughter — Nuñez’s niece — had done a lot of research on trials for experimental drugs to treat pancreatic
cancer that involved a vaccination against pancreatic cancer cells, which could be taken in addition to traditional chemo-radiation therapy. One of the
promising trials was being held at Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago. It had a requirement that treatment begin within 28 days after surgery. Time was
running out.
“Through pushing and pushing, she got me an appointment to meet the doctors involved in that trial,” Nuñez said. “When we went down there, it was the
27th day after my surgery. So we met with the doctors on the 27th day, got testing that day, got testing the next day and the company was reviewing all of my
materials a couple of hours before. I got accepted into the trial and was immediately vaccinated at 4:30 p.m. on the very last day before it wouldn’t count.”
When Nuñez learned of the treatment, they had to confront a health care dilemma: what will they do if the treatment isn’t covered by health insurance? “To
me, it was a very touching decision,” Nuñez said. “We were sitting down in Chicago trying to figure out how all of this was going to work. This is where I go back
to being an advocate for yourself. Not many people know about clinical trials and experimental research. When you are facing pancreatic cancer or maybe
some others where there isn’t a whole lot of hope out there, what I wanted was hope. I want something that says ‘Sure, let’s work on something so we have hope
for me and for others who are going to follow.’ But what was touching for me was to have my family and my in-laws and everyone from my niece on up say ‘Do
what you can to get into this trial. We’ll worry about finances later. The important thing is to give you the most aggressive treatment so you can live.’ That was
unbelievable to me. Family was willing to do what they could, sell everything if need be, so that I could get these treatments.”
Over the course of several months, Nuñez would receive 112 vaccinations using the experimental drug in addition to her chemo and radiation therapy.
“Basically what the clinical trial is trying to do is this,” Nuñez said. “Cancer is produced in your body. Your body doesn’t see it as something it has to fight. So this
trial is to inject a synthetic pancreatic cancer cell in a way so that your body fights it. They attach an irritant to it so your immune system starts to say ‘I have to
fight this.’ It’s kind of retraining my body. If my body is going to produce pancreatic cancer cells, we have to retrain it to say ‘Fight this’ when it happens again.”
Nuñez was fortunate to get diagnosed early and undergo an aggressive treatment. “Your best chance for surviving pancreatic cancer is first of all get it out and
make sure it hasn’t spread,” Nuñez observed. “And then bombard your body with chemo, radiation and then more chemo treatment. This is what I did. They call
it the sandwich approach to the treatment. That’s the most aggressive kind of treatment that you can get to kill any kind of rogue cells that might be floating
about. Again I was lucky because I developed symptoms. It was found really early. It had not spread. My lymph nodes were clear. I had a good margin. All of
those things are positive for me and give me hope that I will have a longer survival rate. But pancreatic cancer does come back. That’s a reality.”
It is the trial vaccination that Nuñez received that she hopes will keep her cancer free for many years to come.
Nuñez truly is a fighter and a doer. When she was first diagnosed, she began to react more than fret about herself. She was presented a challenge and she
immediately kicked into a problem-solving mode. In many ways, she was too busy to let the emotional shock come to the surface until she had time to think
about it when she had to stay in Chicago for a week at a time to receive 24/7 chemo-radiation treatment. “It wasn’t until many months later that I suddenly got
depressed, sad and angry,” Nuñez said. “I went through a grieving stage. ‘Why me? How does my mom lose two children to this disease?’ I questioned
everything. What was I exposed to? It almost happened for me later. And I went through two very down periods with that despair. One was when I was in Chicago
receiving daily radiation and 24/7 chemo. And I hit as bottom as much as I have ever felt. And the next period coincided with all my blood work numbers
hitting rock bottom. So there was a physical and a mental piece that went with it. Even going back to the surgery, it was ‘Oh my God, I survived the surgery.’ I
didn’t realize how dangerous the surgery was and how many people have serious lifetime complications from the surgery. I had an unbelievably good surgeon.
And although I have to take enzymes to help my digestive process, I’m actually — knock on wood — doing quite well from that surgery. And that’s not always the
case. I’ve been unbelievably blessed. That kind of despair happened afterwards after I had already started everything.”
Nuñez was also blessed by the level of community support she and her family received during her treatment. “The only way we made it through going
down to Chicago on a weekly basis for treatment, for me to live down in Chicago for five and a half weeks to receive daily radiation and 24/7 chemo was my
neighbors, my friends, my co-workers, this unbelievably generous community in Madison that just came out in droves to help,” Nuñez said with moist eyes. “I had
a different person drive me every week. That’s a huge relief for my family not to have to do that. They brought us meals. They walked out dog. They helped us
with an apartment down in Chicago. There are so many other ways that people have been generous. That got me through.”
Next issue: Positive attitudes and healing
By Jonathan Gramling
Part 1 of 2
It’s been a difficult few years for Lucia Nuñez, the director of Madison’s Civil Rights Department. She helplessly and
painfully watched her brother in New York die from pancreatic cancer two years ago. And then during the King Holiday
weekend last January, she came down with some flu-like symptoms. When she turned jaundiced near the end of the
holiday, it was time to have it checked at the hospital.
“At first, they thought it was gall stones, which is the typical thing,” Nuñez said during an interview with The Capital
City Hues. “They went in endoscopically to remove the gall stone. But when they went in, they didn’t find a gall stone.
They were very concerned. They put in a stint to allow for drainage. But that didn’t work very well and actually caused an
infection, which hospitalized me on top of the other symptoms. They went in again endoscopically to do an ultrasound of
the area and more needle biopsies to find out what was going on. At that point, they found that one of the needle
biopsies came back positive for cancer. At first, they thought it was ampullary cancer. The ampulla is where the bio duct
from the gall bladder meets the bio duct from the pancreas. So they thought I had cancer there.”
Eventually, the doctors diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer and she underwent ‘whipple’ surgery in February.
“They went in — it changes from person to person depending on the size of the tumor — and took out part of my stomach,
part of my pancreas, all of my gall bladder, the duodenum and some of the bile ducts that were affected and then
reconfigured my digestive system,” Nuñez painfully recalled. “That surgery is hellish to recover from. It’s a very intensive
surgery. And then from digestion to enzymes that are being produced to a number of other things takes a while to figure it
Part 1 of 2
It’s been a difficult few years for Lucia Nuñez, the director of Madison’s Civil Rights Department. She helplessly and
painfully watched her brother in New York die from pancreatic cancer two years ago. And then during the King Holiday
weekend last January, she came down with some flu-like symptoms. When she turned jaundiced near the end of the
holiday, it was time to have it checked at the hospital.
“At first, they thought it was gall stones, which is the typical thing,” Nuñez said during an interview with The Capital
City Hues. “They went in endoscopically to remove the gall stone. But when they went in, they didn’t find a gall stone.
They were very concerned. They put in a stint to allow for drainage. But that didn’t work very well and actually caused an
infection, which hospitalized me on top of the other symptoms. They went in again endoscopically to do an ultrasound of
the area and more needle biopsies to find out what was going on. At that point, they found that one of the needle
biopsies came back positive for cancer. At first, they thought it was ampullary cancer. The ampulla is where the bio duct
from the gall bladder meets the bio duct from the pancreas. So they thought I had cancer there.”
Eventually, the doctors diagnosed her with pancreatic cancer and she underwent ‘whipple’ surgery in February.
“They went in — it changes from person to person depending on the size of the tumor — and took out part of my stomach,
part of my pancreas, all of my gall bladder, the duodenum and some of the bile ducts that were affected and then
reconfigured my digestive system,” Nuñez painfully recalled. “That surgery is hellish to recover from. It’s a very intensive
surgery. And then from digestion to enzymes that are being produced to a number of other things takes a while to figure it
Lucia Nuñez went back to work
recently
recently
| Lucia Nuñez and her fight against pancreatic cancer Winning the Battle |