An Incredible Story About Beating Pancreatic Cancer

Josh Cantwell remembers coming home from work and playing with his two girls, when he noticed a strange feeling in his lower abdomen that was rock-hard.

Josh's wife, Lisa, immediately made an appointment at Cleveland Clinic's Strongsville Family Health & Surgery Center. After they received the results of his CT scan, doctors told Josh that he had pancreatic cancer.

"I remember meeting with Dr. Ali and immediately feeling just how professional he was. But I also remember him getting a piece of paper out, and he wrote across the top of the paper 'Pancreatic Cancer' and then he drew two lines. On the right side he wrote slow-growing and on the left side he put aggressive," says Josh.

Under "slow-growing" Dr. Mir Yousuf Ali, a member of the Hematology Oncology department at Cleveland Clinic, had written "excellent prognosis.” Dr. Ali then advised Josh to have a biopsy that day.

After Josh's biopsy, Dr. Ali referred Josh to the Taussig Cancer Institute at Cleveland Clinic's main campus to meet with Dr. Matthew Walsh, Cleveland Clinic's chair of General Surgery.

"I had my first appointment with Dr. Ali after the whole surgery was over and he said, 'This report is unbelievable, I've never seen anything like this. Ninety-five percent of surgeons would have never been able to pull this off. They would have opened you up, saw how complicated it was and they would have sown you back up and sent you home. They would have said there's nothing they could do.’”

On November 17, 2011 Josh underwent an extremely complicated 10 hour surgery.

"Josh had a huge tumor, the size of a basketball. What we had to do was take out three quarters of his pancreas, his entire stomach, part of his liver, as well as the blood vessels to his liver which we had to reconstruct," says Dr. Walsh.

After 6 weeks of recovery, Josh had the first follow-up appointment with Dr. Ali after being released.

"I had my first appointment with Dr. Ali after the whole surgery was over and he said, 'This report is unbelievable, I've never seen anything like this. Ninety-five percent of surgeons would have never been able to pull this off. They would have opened you up, saw how complicated it was and they would have sown you back up and sent you home. They would have said there's nothing they could do.’”

Josh says he would have been ”36 years old, terminal, just waiting to die.”

A year later Josh and Lisa are cherishing each day and thankful for the care they received at the Cleveland Clinic.

"When people say don't sweat the small stuff, I understand why. Nothing really matters except for your family... and life," Lisa says.