Published in Organic NZ May/June 2018 – 1.5.18, Health & Food Section

Tremane Barr shares his experiences of surviving pancreatic cancer.

“Sorry, but the cancer has spread from the main 12 cm neuroendocrine tumour in the pancreas to throughout your liver and there is nothing we can do. We expect you probably have around 3–6 months left to live.”

These are not the words one wants to hear from one’s doctor at the age of 44. I got this diagnosis in July 2012. For the previous six months I had been feeling unwell with nagging symptoms of bouts of diarrhoea, a sore lower back, sore muscles and feeling increasingly lethargic. I put these down to post-traumatic stress from the then ongoing earthquakes in our hometown of Christchurch, and battling EQC, but finally relented to my wife’s insistence to get a scan done which revealed the awful truth. Knowing we had no conventional options we quickly consulted with alternative health care practitioners, but they all agreed that there was nothing that could be done.

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