​In June 2008, I was diagnosed in Maine with Stage IV pancreatic adenocarcinoma and given six months to live. The cancer had already spread to my liver—so extensively that there were more lesions than liver showing—and I also had a 5.5 cm mass in my pancreas. My first treatment option in Maine was a decades-old regimen with a 2% survival rate, and I was told I wasn’t a surgical candidate. Searching for hope, I went to Boston, expecting answers, only to be told I had the “wrong type” of pancreatic cancer for their clinical trial. Their advice was to go home, get my affairs in order, and begin the same ineffective chemotherapy I was trying to avoid. I left devastated—but not done. I had a list of cancer centers I believed could help me, and Cancer Treatment Centers of America (now City of Hope) was at the top. Getting there meant navigating what felt like impossible insurance barriers, but with help, I found a way. In Illinois, after a week of testing, I was offered an aggressive clinical trial: intra-arterial therapy, a targeted treatment that delivered 40 times the dose of chemotherapy directly to my liver and pancreas. I completed four rounds before toxicity forced me to stop, then continued on FUDR with leucovorin for more than three years. Slowly and consistently, my tumor markers fell, and every scan showed shrinkage. Seventeen years later, I’m still here. Because of the support I received from so many people in my home state of Maine, I founded the Purple Iris Foundation with my family in 2012 to give back and help others facing cancer. My story is proof of why second and third opinions matter — and why you keep looking until you find the team that will work with you and for you. That kind of care, that kind of fight, can make all the difference.