Scary stuff, taken from DailyMail. Being fit may lower our odds but some of us just have inherently higher probabilities.
A father-of-two who put the 'dull ache' in his lower abdomen down to stress levels was eventually diagnosed with ultra-deadly pancreatic cancer — and has warned others not to dismiss warning signs.
Lee Rawlinson, 51, from Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, has been told he has months to live, after doctors spotted the disease that is 'inoperable', and has spread to his liver.
The 'brutal' diagnosis came as a total shock — not only because he is a fit and healthy marathon runner, but due to his normal blood and urine tests.
Mr Rawlinson first visited his GP in January this year after he began experiencing a 'dull' pain in his lower abdomen.
But when tests came back as normal, he put the sensation down to being under an unusual amount of stress and relied on painkillers to get him through the day.
''I was taking painkillers every day, and co-codamol, and it wasn’t touching the sides,' he said.
Then, in September, the pain became unbearable.
'If you can imagine a scaffolding pole and someone slowly pushing it through you, right through to your back, it was like that.'
After bending over in severe pain at his son’s football training, he went to the A&E department at Southend University Hospital and had a CT scan four days later.
On October 31 he was invited back to the hospital where he was given the devastating news: He had pancreatic cancer — and it was terminal.
'I said, "Have I done anything wrong to get this?" And the consultant said, "It was your destiny",' said the medical devices salesman.
'It sounded brutal, but looking back on it, what he meant was, there was nothing you could do. This was always going to happen.'
Mr Rawlinson, who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes a decade ago — a condition which causes the level of glucose in the blood to become too high — learned that his grandfather had pancreatic cancer.
Doctors informed him that his disease likely lay in a 'dodgy gene'.
He said: 'If there are people who have got relatives with pancreatic cancer, then they are at high risk.'
Because the cancer had spread to his liver, he was told the cancer could not be treated with surgery — the only current treatment that can potentially cure the disease.
