Ron Gibson and his family live in regional Victoria in Ararat.

One morning in 2011, Ron Gibson knew something was not right. He had been experiencing severe abdominal pain, so bad he decided he would sleep in the spare room so his wife Jan could get a good night’s sleep.

Ron stayed awake most of that night thinking he may have had a bad case of gastroenteritis. The pain became so excruciating that Ron drove himself to the Ararat hospital where he was told to go home and sleep it off.

‘When I woke up in the morning and saw Ron in more pain then the night before we headed back to the hospital, we knew it was more than just a virus’, Jan recalls.

Ron spent a week in the Ararat hospital without improvement before Jan demanded that the doctor run some tests to find an answer as to why Ron was becoming more and more unwell.

‘The doctors ran some scans which highlighted that I had a 5cm neuroendocrine tumour in the pancreas,’ Ron said.

The local doctor referred Ron to a surgeon in Ballarat who then referred Ron to a specialist in Melbourne.

‘The doctor told me it wasn’t looking good and there was nothing they could do for me’ Ron said, ‘the doctor said I may have only six to twelve months left of life’.

Ron and Jan drove the two and a half hours back to Ararat in complete silence. Worrying about so much, but mostly how to tell their teenage son. The next day Ron received a call from the surgeon, ‘he said he had a meeting with his team and they were going to operate, we couldn’t believe it’.

Ron and Jan’s life was suddenly turned upside down, with constant trips to Melbourne so Ron could have the surgery and receive the best possible treatment while trying to maintain work and family life balance.

Jan remembers back to a time that she almost thought she would lose her husband, her relief is evident as his health improves.

Ron’s health continues to improve and he values every moment spent with his wife Jan and son, Thomas.

In 2015 Pancare are supporting a range of targeted rural health programs and activities to assist all patients and their families living with pancreatic, liver, biliary and foregut cancers.

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