For Peter Sacoulas and Rob Caruano, enjoying a simple cup of coffee on this November morning was something they weren’t sure they’d ever get to do.

It was right before Christmas in 2021, when Rob woke up in the middle of the night with a really bad pain in what he thought was his stomach, but it was actually his pancreas.

For the couple, married for 11 years, together for over 20, that moment was just the start of the most terrifying journey of their lives.

“We actually went to urgent care, and this was when Omicron variant was at its peak and we were turned away, so we had to come back home and it was very, very scary to not be able to get medical care when you’re in that kind of pain,” Caruano said.

An ultrasound revealed an abnormality in Rob’s pancreas, but his gastroenterologist, convinced it was gallstones, refused to do an MRI, turning Rob from patient to advocate.

The doctor ultimately agreed to prescribe it if Rob agreed to schedule gallbladder surgery, which is what he did.

“It was the MRI that I finally had that showed the mass in my pancreas. And at that point, it took a few more weeks to get an official diagnosis, but that’s when it was pretty clear that it was cancer,” Caruano said.

Not just cancer, pancreatic cancer, a cancer with a tragically low survival rate.

Dr. Allyson J. Ocean, an oncologist & co-founder of Let’s Win Pancreatic Cancer, says that pancreatic cancer is also increasing in frequency and is soon to become the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

“About 60,000 are diagnosed yearly in the United States. Unfortunately, about 55,000 of them will pass away from the disease,” Ocean said.

The diagnosis was devastating for Rob. It was also crushing for his husband.

“For me, that diagnosis wasn’t just a diagnosis. It’s almost as if they said he was dead. I mean, it was like my whole life had to just been turned upside down,” Peter Sacoulas said.

Because the pancreas is situated in the back of the body, many patients see no symptoms until the cancer is advanced.

Others, like Rob, suffer severe abdominal pain, dramatic weight loss, nausea and vomiting.

His cancer was caught early, but doctors still had to determine if it had spread.

Caruano’s cancer had not spread, and doctors were able to operate. After six months of chemotherapy, he’s been cancer-free for a year.

His advice to others facing this grim diagnosis: never stop fighting for yourself, and never give up hope.