Dire-gnosis

Well, this happened to my dad: misdiagnosis of pancreatic cancer. How can anyone get it so wrong? All you have to do is have a biopsy before you tell people that they have an incurable and rapidly terminal condition.
A word to the wise: if ever you're in hospital for abdominal pain and they tell you it's a cancer, ask them how they know. If they tell you it's shown up on CT or ultrasound, ask them how they know it's not gall stones causing pancreatitis. If you continue to eat, the head of the pancreas will be so inflamed that it'll look like there's tumour there. The only way to confirm the tumour is to go nil by mouth (this may be for several weeks) until any swelling disappears, and then do a needle biopsy. It ain't pleasant, but it's accurate.
By the way, this is a particular problem for men over 50. I don't know the situation behind this particular case, but doctors may put abdominal pain and an elevated PSA count together and call it pancreatic cancer: 2 + 2 = 5. Now it may be that these are indications of malignant tumour, but you need to wonder where the other 1 in that equation is coming from. In this case, the diagnosis was clearly incomplete.