It’s me, Arek, and I’m still here. Together, let’s make sure cancer doesn’t change that❗️

Hi, I’d like to tell you a bit of my story.

My name is Arek, I’m 42. An ordinary person who - like each of us - is just trying to live his best life, happy. Until recently I thought I am well on my way - enjoying good health, making little dreams come true together with my beloved wife, hopeful and optimistic about the future.

Entering a new decade of my life, I was jokingly referring to it as my „mid-point”. Still remembering our difficult journey of 2019 and 2020, when my wife was going through her cancer treatment, we were doing our best to appreciate and be grateful for each day we got to spend together. We knew how fragile life can be and how it can all the turned upside down in an instant - yet we chose to keep our hearts open and live our lives fully, without the fear of one diagnosis putting it all at risk.

And then exactly that happened, again.

In March 2024 I’ve heard my diagnosis: pancreatic cancer.

Still in shock, we’ve done our research and consultations, and I quickly began radiotherapy. Then, fortunately, the surgeons in Germany were able to conduct a surgery on me. That was followed by post-surgery chemotherapy which lasted from September to January. We were all hoping the disease is in retreat and the periodic scans were showing exactly that. Unfortunately, January 2025 CT scan has shown that the disease has progressed to peritoneum.

What did the doctors say to that?

That in this case all they can offer is palliative chemotherapy with median life expectancy of a year. That curing me is no longer the objective. I can’t put into words how that feels when you hear something like that, when the narrative pivots so brutally. It sounds like sentencing to death. And this I know: it is a death sentence only if I believe that and if I let it.

Next morning I woke up with a clear feeling and a thought: I’m not going in, not giving up on myself. I want to fight this. I want to find solutions. I want to heal from this.

I’ve seen people who’ve overcame the disease when no one was giving them a chance. I’ve supported them, I believed in them. Today I have to be that person - and I have to look for solutions on my own. I’m engaging clinics in Germany, Israel, the USA, India, France, Norway, looking for the best way forward. It is a tremendous amount of work each day, but I’m finding energy as the stakes are clear.

There are options, I am finding out. But they are so, so expensive. Until this point were managing the incoming costs on our own, with kind and wonderful support of a few dear friends and family.

Now it’s quickly become clear that I need to ask you for help - the Big Hearted Strangers who are out there, who will root for me, support me, make themselves part of my story and not give up on me. The cost of treatments are huge and they’re becoming too much for just us already at the diagnostics and consultations phase.

Please, help me in what has become the fight of my life, for my life. I want to live, simple as that.

I want to spend more time with my wife, be there with and for my family, for my dear friends, see my kid enter her adulthood, see my brother’s kids and my Godson grow up. I want to get old, loving and being loved. All of that is worth the effort - even if the road is paved with hardship.

Each donation is a chance at another day of treatment. Sharing my story is a chance of it making its way to someone who will also decide to become a part of it and support me.

I don’t want to say goodbye to life just yet. I want to get better - and I believe together we can create a chance of making that happen. Thank you, from the bottom of my Heart, for your time and for your support.

Arek