12 weeks. That’s all it took for pancreatic cancer—one of the world’s deadliest cancers—to kill my father. It’s not called a silent killer for nothing: the disease develops silently, with few early symptoms, until treatment options are limited.

A Silent and Aggressive Cancer
Pancreatic cancer receives little media attention compared to lung, breast, or colon cancer. Yet it remains one of the most serious cancers, ranking fourth in cancer deaths.

In France alone, nearly 16,000 new cases are diagnosed each year (Santé Publique France, 2023).
Worldwide, the incidence is increasing by 2 to 3% per year.
The five-year survival rate is still less than 10%.
Diagnosis is generally late: the average age at screening is 71 for men and 74 for women. By this time, more than three-quarters of tumors are already inoperable. Only complete surgical removal offers a chance of long-term survival, hence the importance of early detection.

The Two Symptoms We Missed
Looking back, there were two clear warning signs that we should have taken more seriously.