A grandmother ignored her fatigue — but then her skin turned yellow. Doctors diagnosed her with the "silent killer" of cancers.
When Irene Wells was diagnosed with the "silent killer" of cancers, she asked doctors not to tell her what stage it was.
She already knew plenty about pancreatic cancer. A friend had died of it after years of treatment. Her daughter-in-law works in pancreatic cancer research. The five-year survival rate for the disease, even when caught early, is 12%, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. Most patients are diagnosed late and usually live less than a year after that diagnosis.
Wells, a retired teacher, had been healthy her whole life, she told CBS News, and the diagnosis had been sudden: She had been feeling tired, and one day her husband noticed that her skin was jaundiced. She and her husband flew from their home in Las Vegas to see doctors at Mass General Brigham, where her daughter-in-law works. An MRI conducted at Mass General Brigham found the cancer. Wrapping her head around the diagnosis was enough. She didn't want to know just how poor the odds were.
"It's so surreal because you're feeling really good, you don't have pain or anything like that. It's called the silent killer, as I found out," Wells, 73, said. "I'm always looking at the brighter side, and I wanted to continue that way."
Mass General Brigham surgical oncologist Dr. Motaz Qadan developed an aggressive treatment plan. He was going to start with surgery — but when he opened her abdomen, he found the cancer had metastasized to her liver. That meant it was Stage IV — the latest stage. The team had to close up and come up with a new plan. Wells still didn't want to know the specifics of what was going on, but trusted Qadan when he advised chemotherapy and radiation. If those treatments were successful, he said, they could do a second surgery to resect the cancer.
"I told my doctors 'I want to live. I want to see my grandkids grow up a little more,'" Wells said. "I said 'Give me the hardest stuff you can get. I'll get through this.'"
Treating pancreatic cancer
In April 2023, Wells began chemotherapy, followed by radiation. It was an exhausting experience, she said. In November 2023, Qadan cleared Wells for a Whipple procedure, a surgery where the head of the pancreas, the gallbladder, part of the bile duct and small intestine are removed.
Whipples aren't typically done once cancer has metastasized, Qadan said, because the cancer cells have escaped the organs that the procedure addresses.
"It doesn't help to take out the primary tumor knowing there is cancer elsewhere and cells spreading in between," he said. But in "exceptional cases," chemotherapy, radiation or other surgical options can address the spread, he said.
Wells seemed to be one of those exceptional cases, Qadan said.
"Everything that was there before appeared to be resolving. Everything that we could see in the pancreas appeared to be shrinking and getting smaller," Qadan said.
Inside the operating room in November 2023, Qadan and his team found there was no cancer left on Wells' liver or pancreas. That meant that she had had "a complete pathological response," Qadan said, which is considered the best-case scenario for cancer treatment. After the Whipple was completed, pathologists examined the pancreas and found that there was no trace of cancer.
"As I was coming out of the anesthesia, (Dr. Qadan), he goes, 'You're my miracle girl,'" Wells remembered.
Becoming a "long-term" pancreatic cancer survivor
An outcome like Wells' is extremely unusual, said Dr. Ryan Sugarman, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who focuses on gastrointestinal cancers, including pancreatic cancer. Sugarman was not involved in Wells' care. Pancreatic cancer is a "really resistant" disease, he said, but there have been cases of a person responding incredibly well to the treatment.
"I think there's a variety of ways a patient's tumor may respond to chemo that we don't fully understand," Sugarman explained.
Qadan estimated he has seen complete pathological response in 5% to 8% of patients, but those patients' cancers usually have not metastasized, he said.
"I think that (Wells) might be the only patient who I've ever taken, who had a metastatic lesion and then went on to have complete pathologic response everywhere," he said.
Long-term survivors of pancreatic cancer are the focus of plenty of research, surgical oncologist Dr. Vinod Balachandran told CBS News in February 2025. Such studies inspired research Balachandran has been doing into an mRNA vaccine that shows promise in treating early-stage pancreatic cancer.
Sugarman said he would consider someone who has no evidence of cancer more than five years after diagnosis a long-term survivor. These patients are far more likely to be those whose cancer was found at an early stage, he said. Long-term Stage IV survivors are "exceedingly rare," he said.
"I try to stay positive"
Wells had no trace of cancer after surgery, but she still had a long road to recovery. It took about a year for her energy and stamina to return to where they had once been. After the surgery, she had digestive issues and lost nearly 65 pounds. She also was diagnosed with diabetes, which she manages with an endocrinologist.
After the treatment, she learned just how advanced her cancer had been. There is about a 60% chance of recurrence for pancreatic cancer patients, even after surgery and chemotherapy, Sugarman said. The odds are worse for someone who had later-stage disease. Wells undergoes tests every three months to make sure the cancer hasn't reoccurred and says it's something she tries not to think about.
"Every time I talk to somebody, they have a story about a friend who had pancreatic cancer who died," Wells said. "I try not to go down that dark road. I try to stay positive."
Wells, a mother of three and grandmother to six, instead focuses on time with her loved ones. She babysits her youngest grandson, 1, twice a week. She has planned trips to see old friends. Wells and her husband didn't celebrate their 50th anniversary because she was in treatment, so they're taking the entire family on a week-long Disney cruise this summer.
"I want to live as long as I can, and be healthy, of course. I feel good now. It's a miracle," Wells said. "I've done a lot in my life, but I would like to do a little bit more."
