At 42, With Three Young Kids, I Got a Diagnosis That Would Have Me Dead in a Year. That Was Somehow Just the Beginning.

"I'd spent much of the summer trying to ignore a bizarre constellation of symptoms: dark pee, constant full-body itching, an odd yellowish cast to my skin that I convinced myself was just a trick of the cheap LED light bulbs we had gotten from Amazon. Then, on the last weekend before Labor Day, the whites of my eyes turned a bright, unsettling yellow, the type of thing it's impossible to rationalize away."

"I was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, or cancer of the bile duct. As far as cancers go, it's an especially brutal one: The five-year survival rate is around 10 percent, and most people diagnosed with it are dead within a year."

"Cholangiocarcinoma is deadly in large part because it is so rare: There are only about 8,000 new cases in the U.S. each year. Cancer treatment advances patient by patient, clinic"

In fall 2022, a 42-year-old man in Minnesota experienced jaundice and other symptoms including dark urine, itching, and yellowing skin. Initial suspicion of gallstones led to hospitalization in Fargo, where an MRI revealed a 9.5-centimeter tumor wrapped around the bile duct and major liver blood vessels. He was diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile duct cancer affecting approximately 8,000 Americans annually. This cancer is particularly deadly, with a five-year survival rate around 10% and most patients dying within one year of diagnosis. The rarity of the disease makes treatment advancement challenging.

Read at Slate Magazine