Interview with Christina Gerde
Patient Advocate, PALEMA Cancer Association, Sweden
SHIELD interviewed Christina Gerde, patient advocate and member of the SHIELD consortium through the PALEMA association. She was kind enough to share her journey with us. Christina is a pancreatic cancer survivor, and this is her story.
“My story shows just how critical early detection can be. I’m still here today largely because I trusted my own sense that something wasn’t right, even when the healthcare system assured me everything looked fine. Looking back, the cancer could have been detected much earlier with an effective blood test. I was already reporting small symptoms nearly two years before my diagnosis. Despite undergoing numerous examinations, nothing was found. Had a reliable blood test been available at that time, my pancreatic tumour might have been identified in stage 1 or 2, rather than stage 3a. That difference matters. Earlier detection could have spared me from becoming a high-risk patient, facing a 75% chance of relapse even after surgery and chemotherapy. And in pancreatic cancer, a relapse is often a death sentence. This is why early detection tools like those pursued in the SHIELD project are so vital. A meaningful measure of success would be if, thanks to SHIELD, at least 50% of pancreatic cancer cases in Europe are caught in stage 1 or 2. Early detection saves lives.”
