Dad living with cancer urges people to get checked

A father-of-three who thought he would be dead within weeks after finding out he had advanced pancreatic cancer is urging people to check symptoms early.

James Tyne was diagnosed with stage four of the disease in May after he admitted he hoped he would be told it had been caught early.

"Unfortunately I was at the other end of the diagnostic spectrum," the 52-year-old, from Stone, Staffordshire, said.

Since he found out, his family have been sharing his experiences on social media with Tyne urging people to be aware of the symptoms and what it is like living with the cancer.

Tyne went to his GP for a blood test after his eyes turned yellow and he was itching the skin on the back of his hands and around his ankles.

He described the moment he was told of the diagnosis.

"Just like the loudest noise possible in your head going off and literally my life just flew through my brain in a second - my family, friends, dogs, holidays, just everything had downloaded into my head in like a split-second."

Pancreatic cancer can be found anywhere in the pancreas, and may not have any symptoms, according to the NHS.

It most commonly affects people who are over the age of 65, those who have medical conditions like chronic pancreatitis and those with a family history of pancreatic cancer.

Symptoms can include:

• the whites of your eyes or your skin turn yellow

• itchy skin, darker pee and paler poo than usual

• loss of appetite or losing weight

• feeling tired or having no energy

• a high temperature, or feeling hot, cold or shivery

After the diagnosis, Tyne's wife, Sarah, set up social media accounts to share his story.

"I can talk about his journey, he doesn't want to do that he needs to focus on staying well, he doesn't like being the centre of attention," she said.

"I use social media quite a lot for what I do, so for me I suppose it's easy to go and do that and talk about James, but it's so important because we didn't know anything about pancreatic cancer."

She said the only celebrity she could think of that had had the disease was Patrick Swayze.

"All you think of is: 'That's the bad cancer'."

"For me, personally, it's just been all about channelling all those emotions, all those feelings into something really proactive and positive, through raising awareness and fundraising.

"Obviously it's been exhausting, it's been scary, emotional, it's like every sort of possible emotion you can think of and then triple it, by a million."

Tyne is now having his second round of chemotherapy.

"My biopsy is in America at the moment being genetically profiled, so hopefully that might come back in detail of what my cancer's doing."

He said, in a way, he felt "lucky" that he had had symptoms. This was due to his tumour pressing on his bile duct.

"It's a big, big percentage who have it who have their tumours elsewhere that present no symptoms - so when they find out they've got it, they're told they've got four to six weeks to live which is an absolute tragedy," he said.

"We have heard it all being promoted but with [this] cancer, get yourself checked out, if you've got any doubts just get down to your GP."

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