Published May 12, 2024

35-Year-Old Pregnant Woman’s Extreme Back Pain Turned Out To Be Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer: ‘You Have To Advocate For Yourself In These Situations. You Just Have To’

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Understanding Pancreatic Cancer & Facing Cancer As a Parent

Jacklyn Lin, 35, was pregnant with her second daughter when she noticed extreme back pain, fevers, and chills, along with feeling her baby kicking more than usual—all which her doctors likened as normal pregnancy symptoms. However, it turned out to be stage 4 pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer is a type of cancer that forms in the pancreas. It is more challenging to treat because symptoms usually don’t present themselves until the cancer has spread or metastasized. Symptoms may include weight gain, back pain, and jaundice.
Early-stage pancreatic cancer tumors don’t appear on imaging scans, and people typically don’t experience symptoms until the disease has progressed. The pancreas’ location in the abdomen makes it harder to find tumors.
Treatment options for pancreatic cancer may include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy.
Facing cancer as a parent can be an incredibly difficult task. But having children who depend on you can also provide another reason to fight the disease with everything you’ve got.

Jacklyn Lin was seven months pregnant with her second daughter when she noticed extreme back pain, fevers, and chills, along with feeling her baby kicking more than usual—all which her doctors dismissed as normal pregnancy symptoms. However, what she was experiencing was ultimately due to a mass on her pancreas and lesions on her liver, as she was battling stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

The Bergen Country, New Jersey resident, who learned she had cancer at age 35, has since recounted her cancer diagnosis in a recent interview with NorthJersey.com in hopes she can inspire others to pay attention to symptoms and be your own advocate when something seems off.

Although her doctors suspected the symptoms to be related to her pregnancy as her ultrasounds kept showing the baby to be healthy and everything as normal, following a month of discomfort, Lin pushed her medical team to more testing, revealing her abdomen had been inflamed due to a tumor growing on her pancreas and lesions on her liver.

Lin, who has been praised by her stepsister Angela Lee as “the role model, the big sister” of their combined family of five siblings, married her loving husband in 2020, and gave birth to her first daughter just one year later, and a pregnancy which went well with no issues.

As for her second pregnancy, which took place in 2023, Lin recalled feeling “40 weeks pregnant at 20 weeks,” noting how she began feeling intense back pain just three months prior to giving birth, and her baby wouldn’t stop kicking.

Lin told the news outlet, “I didn’t know it then, but my liver was half the size of my abdomen. She had no space. She was kicking because she had no room.”

After getting checked at a hospital in June 2023, she was given antibiotics for a suspected urinary tract infection, as she was also experiencing fever and chills. However, as the end of July neared, her symptoms, which seemed to go away with the antibiotics, returned.

When she returned to the hospital, an ultrasound once again revealed her baby to be health, but doctors suspected her high liver enzymes to be due to something called HELLP syndrome, a rare pregnancy complication that affects the blood and liver.

Lin explained, “They kept telling me the baby was fine, which was a relief, but I didn’t think anything was fine with me. I don’t really blame anyone for concentrating on the pregnancy. I’m in my 30s. I’m pregnant. The last thing anyone would suspect is pancreatic cancer. But you have to advocate for yourself in these situations. You just have to.”

An MRI was ultimately taken a week later, as Lin pushed for answered, revealing she had a tumor on her pancreas.

Her doctors agreed that she would have to have her pregnancy induced to deliver her baby early and do a biopsy.

She gave birth to her daughter five weeks early on August 21, 2023. Four days later she had sever abdominal pain at home and returned to the hospital, only to learn her liver had dramatically enlarged.

Her biopsy then revealed she had pancreatic adenocarcinoma, prompting the mom of two to begin an aggressive chemo treatment.

“You Are Your Own Best Advocate”

Thankfully, the treatment caused her tumors to decrease in size and her body felt close to normal about three months after treatment ended.

As she continues to battle the disease, Lin is continuing chemotherapy treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering’s offices near her hometown.

Despite the future of her health remaining unknown, Lin courageously takes every day with gratitude and a positive outlook.

“There was a time when I couldn’t even lift a diaper bag. Now I can take my daughter to the doctor by myself, and it feels great,” she added.

Pancreatic Cancer and Its Ability to Go Unnoticed

Pancreatic cancer begins in the pancreas and is known as the “silent disease.”

Symptoms of the disease rarely show up until it has advanced and metastasized (spread) to other parts of the body.

Although pancreatic cancer survival rates have been improving, it’s still considered to be largely incurable. An exception to this is if the tumor is still small enough and localized enough to be operated on.

WATCH: Pancreatic cancer and early detection.

The National Cancer Institute identifies pancreatic cancer symptoms to include:

Dark urine
Pain in the abdomen
Unexplained weight loss
Light-colored stools
Loss of appetite and fatigue

WATCH: Why Pancreatic Cancer is Hard to Treat

“Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen often doesn’t have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas,” Dr. Anirban Maitra, the co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, previously told SurvivorNet.

“By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain or diabetes, it’s often very late in the stage of the disease.”

Pancreatic cancer treatment options vary based on the specifics of each case. In general, the following types of treatment may be used:

Surgery
Radiation therapy
Chemotherapy
Chemoradiation therapy
Targeted therapy

When it comes to stage four, or metastatic, pancreatic cancer, options are more limited. According to the National Cancer Institute, treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer or pancreatic cancer that has recurred (returned) may include:

Chemotherapy with or without targeted therapy.
Clinical trials of new anticancer agents with or without chemotherapy.

Clinical Trials

“We’re encouraged by the trend toward more innovative clinical trial designs to improve the drug development process and ultimately lead to better patient outcomes,” PanCAN Chief Science Officer Lynn Matrisian said in a 2022 article from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

A clinical trial can be defined as a research study that compares the most effective known treatment for a specific type or stage of a disease with a new approach.

Participating in one does not guarantee you will get the most effective treatment and they are certainly not for everyone, but it does give you the chance to potentially access new, cutting-edge treatments while advancing science.

Before getting involved in a clinical trial, talk with your doctor(s) and consider the following general risks of enrolling:

The risk of harm and/or side effects due to experimental treatments
Researchers may be unaware of some potential side effects for experimental treatments
The treatment may not work for you, even if it has worked for others

“Clinical trials are critical to the development of new therapies, and as we live through this extraordinary revolution in genomics, immunotherapy and targeted therapy, it’s clear that one of the most pressing needs for patients, clinical trials sponsors, and researchers is simply a better way to find patients,” SurvivorNet CEO Steve Alperin said.

“Even one percent more people successfully enrolled in clinical trials can change the world.”

Immunotherapy Offers Hope for Pancreatic Cancer Patients

According to research published in the World Journal of Clinical Cases, pancreatic cancer “has the lowest 5-year survival rate” mainly because of a lack of serological markers for screening, aggressive local invasion, the tendency to spread, resistance to chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, and late diagnosis.

Immunotherapy is the process of activating a patient’s own immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. These treatment options could be advantageous for patients who manage to catch pancreatic cancer in its early stages.

A study funded by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy combined two immunotherapy drugs with chemotherapy — and found some patients experienced either a shrinking of tumors or a slowing of the progression of tumors.

“Until now, immunotherapy hasn’t had a big role,” Dr. Allyson Ocean, Medical Oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, told SurvivorNet. “Now this study combines two immunotherapy drugs with frontline standard chemotherapy, and we’re seeing response rates significantly better than what was published with other chemotherapies alone.”

Researchers Jai Hoon, Ye-Ji Jung, and Sung-Hoon Moon studied immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer. They said despite the hope immunotherapy offers for various cancer types, it is not the standard of care for pancreatic cancer.

“Only anti-PD-1 antibodies have been approved by the United States FDA for patients with pancreatic cancer who have tested positive for microsatellite instability. Combination therapies with other immunotherapeutic agents targeted therapies, stroma-modulating agents, chemotherapy, or multi-way combination therapies may provide treatment opportunities for patients with pancreatic cancer,” Hoon, Jung, and Moon said.

Immunotherapy does not work for all patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Still, the advances presented in this study and others throughout 2019 give those facing this disease much hope.

Questions for Your Doctor

If you are facing a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, you may have questions but are unsure how to get the answers you need. SurvivorNet suggests asking your doctor the following to kickstart your journey to more solid answers.

What type of pancreatic cancer do I have?
Has my cancer spread beyond my pancreas? If so, where has it spread, and what is the stage of the disease?
What is my prognosis?
What are my treatment options?
What side effects should I expect after undergoing treatment?
Will insurance cover my recommended treatment?

Be Pushy, Be Your Own Advocate, Don’t Settle

Battling Cancer as a Parent

Facing cancer while navigating your role as a parent can be incredibly challenging. And fearful thoughts about leaving your children may be harder to handle than the the actual diagnosis itself.

Telling Your Kids You Have Cancer ‘When it Comes to Your Kids, You Want to Protect Them’

Breast cancer survivor Gina de Givenchy previously spoke with SurvivorNet about going through cancer treatment as the mother of a 12-year-old girl.

“I felt it was important to mask it because I really wanted her to know that I was going to be OK,” she said. “I didn’t want her to see me weak and sickly.

“When it comes to your kids, I think you always want to sort of protect them.”

The pressures of parenthood can be daunting during a cancer journey, but having little ones that depend on you can also provide another source of motivation to fight for your life.

Jovannie Lorenzo knows this to be true. When she was diagnosed with colon cancer at 32, she felt an immense amount of fear because she was a single parent of her three kids. Going into her cancer battle, Lorenzo knew she would do everything in her power to be around to raise them.

Facing a Cancer Diagnosis as a Single Parent: “I Knew I Had to Fight for My Life”

“I knew that I had to do everything possible to be here for my children,” Lorenzo told SurvivorNet. “They are my saving grace.

“They are the reason I wake up every morning. They are the reason why I fight every single day and I make a choice to be positive, to be happy, and to move forward.”