Family call for better pancreatic cancer treatment after dad's death

A family in Fife say they hope that by sharing their grief they can help another family avoid pancreatic cancer.

Isla Gear’s brother Tam Barker died just weeks after being diagnosed with the disease late last year.

Tam and his GP had spent months trying to work out the cause of his stomach pains and constipation before a hospital scan showed he had pancreatic cancer.

A week after his diagnosis he was went into hospital where he wanted to use his experience to help other people.

His younger sister Isla told STV News: “He always had a dream up his sleeve, he just enjoyed everything he did. He is a very likeable…he was a very likeable guy.

“We were sitting in the hospital having the conversation about how he wanted to fight for everyone else and to make sure this didn’t happen to any other family and how his death was a legacy.”

“We had the conversation and the fight was meant to be together but that never happened.”

Tam died aged 47 just a few weeks after his diagnosis.

A petition started by Tam and his family calling for more research and a screening programme for pancreatic cancer has more than 170,000 signatures.

Figures published by Public Health Scotland last year found pancreatic cancer was in the top ten most common cancers in Scotland with 866 receiving a diagnosis in 2022.

More than half of those people didn’t know they had the cancer until it had progressed to Stage Four.

Dawn Crosby from the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK says it’s a difficult disease to detect.

She said: “There is no screening programme for pancreatic cancer and that is the challenge. We need more people to be detected earlier.

“But the challenge we have is there’s no test or process we can had to a GP and enable a GP to tell if someone has backpain or tell if they need to be referred for an urgent scan. So pancreatic cancer are investing in research.”

Charities say there is hope and they are are working on new treatments and ways of detecting the disease.

But Tam’s family hope they can help another family by sharing their story.

Help and support about pancreatic cancer can be found here.