Flavor of the Week: Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer

I'm extremely reluctant to jinx our pleasant call by writing about it, but I don't have anything else to do, so here goes.

One admission thus far today...this makes now THREE patients over the past THREE days that have been admitted to our service with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer is one of those aggressive bullies of the oncologic community which once it starts metastasizing to your liver, lung, and other areas there's just not a heck of a lot that you can do about it. It's painful and my sympathy goes out to anybody with the misfortune to get this terrible disease. The plan for each of these three patients (which has been entirely appropriate, in my opinion) can be boiled down to one key intervention: a morphine drip.

I actually had the chance to catch the tail ends of both the Steelers-Colts games as well as the Panthers-Bears game. My picks (Colts, Bears) won neither. From this point on I will be rooting for the Steelers to win the Super Bowl--for sports in general, I tend to root for the teams containing a veteran who has yet to win a major championship before they retire. In this case it's Jerome "the Bus" Bettis, though I'm certain the Panthers, Broncos, and Seahawks all have vets worthy of a Super Bowl on them...