KENNY RELIVES PANCREATIC CANCER FIGHT
WHEN Kenny Forbes handed a football back to neighbour Euan Dickson after it landed in his garden, little did he know that the young boy would one day save his life.
Kenny and Euan’s paths didn’t cross again until almost 40 years later, when Euan performed life-saving surgery to rid Kenny of pancreatic cancer.
“The wee boy from across the fence saved my life,” said Kenny. “We had both grown up in East Kilbride and our families were friends. I can’t believe he was the one to perform the surgery.”
Kenny, 62, is one of the few survivors of pancreatic cancer. Of all the major cancers, it has the lowest survival rate with eight in 10 people diagnosed not surviving the year.
Symptoms including weight loss, back pain, a change of bowel habits and jaundice can often be dismissed as a less serious illness which is why the mortality rate is so high.
Luckily for Kenny, his partner, Margaret Mary, noticed that something wasn’t right when he first became ill in 2014.
“My skin had slowly started turning yellow but it happened so gradually, I didn’t notice,” he said.
“I was living with my daughters at the time and since they saw me every day, they hadn’t noticed, either, and I was feeling well.
“It was only when Margaret Mary said I was looking a bit jaundiced that I saw it myself. Then a neighbour asked if I had been on holiday because I looked tanned. That’s when I decided to go to my GP.”
The doctor immediately sent Kenny for a scan and X-Ray which confirmed his worst fears.
“The scan had showed a blockage in my bile duct and the problem was pancreatic cancer. I lost my wife to cancer two years before, so it was a huge shock and I really felt for my two daughters, Nikki and Lorraine. I also had Margaret Mary to think of.
“We had only been seeing each other for about a year at that stage but I told her she could walk away if she
It was a really testing time but I got through it and I’m so grateful. Not everyone is as fortunate CANCER SURVIVOR KENNY FORBES
wanted. She didn’t, of course, and she’s been taking care of me ever since.”
Things moved quickly for Kenny after his diagnosis and he was put forward for a course of chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy in advance of the surgery.