“There are angels with us walking on this earth.”
Tonya Brooks takes long walks in the park these days to reminisce about the journey she began three years ago, when flu-like symptoms held her back from enjoying life.
When the 45-year-old Tampa resident’s symptoms began, Brooks believed her nausea, weakness and pain were caused by pancreatitis, an inflammation of the pancreas. But in reality these were pancreatic cancer symptoms and a dangerous tumor was taking over her body, growing and spreading inside, undetected. “I thought I had a stomach virus,” Brooks says, “but it was cancer.”
Brooks was referred to a team of specialists at Moffitt led by Pamela J. Hodul, MD, a surgical oncologist in Moffitt’s Gastrointestinal Cancer Program. The team ran tests to evaluate Brooks’ tumor and when the results came in, she was floored— she had a rare neuroendocrine tumor of the pancreas. “I felt lost, mixed up and confused,” she says. Brooks was about to begin pancreatic cancer treatment - the fight of her life.
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