Jim Edwards hated the thought of going to see a doctor for a “check-up” when he felt fine. His wife, Mary Jayne, persisted, and Edwards went for the check-up that ultimately saved his life.

The routine physical turned up something far from routine. The blood work wasn’t quite right. More blood tests and then a CAT scan revealed the cause -- a tumor about the size of a golf ball in his pancreas.

“It was pressing against the artery that goes to your liver and that's the only way they found it,” Jim Edwards said. “If it had been a little farther over they may not have found it until it was too late.”

Jim was referred to OU Physicians cancer specialists. Three days later, Dr. Russell Postier operated to remove the tumor.

More than 32 thousand people in the United States are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer every year. It was once almost always a fatal diagnosis and pancreatic cancer is still the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in the country, according to the National Institutes of Health. Postier said that’s because the cancer often is not diagnosed until after it has spread.

The National Pancreas Foundation, a nonprofit research organization, reports that pancreatic cancer usually does not cause symptoms early on. The cancer might grow for some time before it causes pressure in the abdomen, pain or other problems. When symptoms appear, they depend on the location and size of the tumor.

Postier said early diagnosis is critical with pancreatic cancer, but difficult because of the few symptoms in the early stages. Even when symptoms are present, they can be subtle or mistaken for other illnesses, he said.

“It tends not to cause symptoms until the pancreatic duct or the bile duct is blocked and then the symptoms, if it's only the pancreatic duct and not the bile duct, symptoms are vague -- upper abdominal pains that radiate to the back, “Postier said.

If the tumor blocks the common bile duct so that bile cannot pass into the intestines, the skin and whites of the eyes might become yellow, and urine might become dark. This condition is called jaundice.

Cancer of the pancreas can also cause nausea, loss of appetite, depression, weight loss, and weakness. These symptoms may be caused by cancer or by other, less serious problems. Only a doctor can correctly diagnose the cause of the symptoms.

Without early diagnosis, the prognosis can be bleak… and there is currently no blood test to help screen for this potentially deadly cancer. However, Postier said researchers at the OU Health Sciences Center could be close to remedying that with a test that looks at patterns of protein in the blood.

“The hope is that there are patterns in protein in the serum in patients with pancreatic cancer that are different than in people of the same age and sex who don't have pancreatic cancer,” Postier explained.

Researchers are hoping for a breakthrough in the tests in about a year, he said, adding that the ability to screen for this cancer early is critical because survival depends on when the cancer is detected.

Jim Edwards credits his family physician for being persistent and not brushing off a stomach ache as nothing more than indigestion.

“If I had not taken a yearly physical I would have just thought that it was stomach problem and waited two or three months and it would have been too late,” Jim Edwards said. “The yearly physicals are so important.”

Pancreatic cancer is becoming more prevalent. Both new cases and deaths have increased by more than 3,000 over the last three years.

Risk factors for developing pancreatic cancer include:

● Cigarette smoking
● Long-standing diabetes
● Aging
● Family history
● Chronic pancreatitis
● Hereditary pancreatitis

As many as 10 percent of pancreatic cancers diagnosed each year result from inherited factors, according to the American Cancer Society. These are transmitted by genes that have not yet been discovered. Because familial pancreatic cancer is sometimes associated with other cancers, determining whether a patient's relatives are at increased risk is not simple. Consultation with a genetic counselor or an oncologist with experience in hereditary cancer syndromes is often helpful.

“I always thought that everybody else gets cancer – I’ll never get it,” Jim Edwards said. “My dad died from cancer, but I never dreamed that I would have cancer.

That's for other people not for me. And even now I still can't believe we've been through all this. It just seems like a dream.”

It’s been a long eight months for the Duncan couple, but Jim Edwards’ cancer was detected early, and his prognosis is good.

“We've never asked, we've never asked God why did this happen to us…” Jim Edwards said. “We think there's a reason for it. If we can just emphasis how important a yearly physical is for both men and women and if it saves some lives then maybe that's why we are still here.”

Postier and other researchers at OU Physicians say they will keep working on finding a method for early detection.

"The earlier you can catch it, the greater your chance for a more positive outcome,” Postier said.