Patrick Swayze: "I'm Going Through Hell"

Patrick Swayze, who has been battling pancreatic cancer for a year, sat down with Barbara Walters for an exclusive interview that airs Wednesday night at 10 pm on ABC. Swayze has defied the tabloids that had him at death's door when his diagnosis became public.

Swayze stars in a new show "The Beast," which he filmed while fighting his cancer, which had already spread to his liver before he was even diagnosed.

"You can bet that I'm going through hell," Swayze says to Walters. "And I've only seen the beginning of it."

"There's a lot of fear here," he adds. "There's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, I'm scared. Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, I'm [asking] why me. Yeah, I'm all this stuff."

As for how he figured out something was wrong, it was exactly one year ago while celebrating New Year's:

"I tried to have champagne, and it would be like pouring acid, you know, on an open wound."
Soon he found "my indigestion issues got gigantic and constant. And then I started thinking, I'm getting skinny. I dropped about 20 pounds in the blink of an eye. And then when you see it in the mirror, when all of a sudden, you pull your eyes down and the bottom of your eyes go yellow and jaundice sets in -- then you know something's wrong."

He started filming "The Beast" despite the cancer, and in 5 months of filming missed only a day and a half of work, and he never took medicine for his physical pain.

"When you're shooting, you can't do drugs," Swayze tells Walters. "I can't do Hydrocodone or Vicodin or these kinds of things that take the edge off of it, 'cause it takes the edge off of your brain."

Tune in Wednesday at 10 pm for more of the interview. "The Beast" premieres on A&E on January 15.

Here's the trailer:

Comments

[UltraClassic]

Patrick, we are all headed to the garden's gate, you are just ahead of us in line. But we are going there also. I wish you the best and thank you for all your enjoyable work, and more importantly, your willingness to share your thoughts on your condition.

Rest assured, one of us reading your comments will be in your exact condition a year from now. Your comments and directness may help someone else address this illness head on rather than hide from it.

[anthonytaurus]

Take two puffs and call me in the morning... see what that marijuana will do for you Mr. Swayze

[fumes]

my thoughts exactly

[RobHunt]

Oh man are you a jerk!

First, I've never heard of a link between smoking and pancreatic cancer, but even so, are you suggesting he deserves to DIE because he smoked pot?

I KNOW you can't be a Christian, because a Christian would say "let ye who is without sin cast the first stone."

Shame on you (and your little pal "fumes" too.)

[ConfuciusSay-]

I think he's just suggesting a therapeutic use.

[JohnnyL]

God bless you Patrick and good luck in your recovery process.

[VivaZapata]

As a cancer survivor I say that Swayze is doing a service in going public about all of this. The more awareness the better.

[Nebris]

The pain and suffering that he is going through seems to be carving this character on to the screen. In this process Swayze is becoming a transcendent artist. Even if he does not physically survive - and none of us does really - he is becoming immortal. My respect for him is massive.

[AlexNYC]

I'm confident the rise in pancreatic cancer (as well as other types) are the result of toxins and other unnatural ingredients in our foods and environment. While I doubt Patrick Swayze will live to old age, I'm hopeful he can be a long-term survivor. Every new month is a victory for him.

[fumes]

last i read there is a bacteria that starts in our teeth and goes down to the pancreas and is a precursor to that cancer.

[Mort]

I'm not sure I'd call him a hero just because he has cancer or gets on tv and tells people how sick he is. Sure, it's awful. My mother fought it for 12 years before it took her. She wasn't a hero for being sick. But she was for what she did for others in spite of the cancer. And for keeping a positive, loving attitude. Never a complaint, never a cross word. Always trying to lift others without bringing attention to herself. That's character. Cancer doesn't make a person a hero. Character does.

[NeverADullMoment]

Mort, you make a very important point. The incessant need to turn people into heroes is, I believe, predicated on ego. People should receive love, respect, and feeling included among others for simply being the normal people who they are, without the need to prove that one is a hero.

The worship of fame, celebrity, and anything appearing larger-than-life is carried out to the detriment of those who live simple, normal lives. This trend points out the society that we've become which holds isolation as normal.

[Mort]

Thanks. And you're right.
Our 12 year battle taught me that cancer doesn't elevate anyone, it just makes people suffer. Every person in the the world stuggles in way or another. We all have burdens. Nobody is more special or deserving because he has a certain disease. We're all in this together. Each deserves the same love, empathy and care.

I'm sorry Patrick is ill, and certainly wish him well. Instead of whining about it and bringing attention to himself, maybe he could reach beyond himself to help others. Michael Fox, Chris Reeve, Stephen Hawking... Or he could quietly touch the lives of others through service, holding the hands of children undergoing chemo, participating in clinical trials, whatever. Putting the ego away and thinking first of others is what brings out the hero in all of us.

[goodog]

I went back to search the article and the comments.

To be clear, up to this point, no one's called him a hero just because he has cancer and says so on tv.

You've put words in people's mouths if you mean to indicate that someone has.

[Mort]

Maybe you missed these...
"You're a real hero"
"Patrick is an American and in particularly a Texas hero to many of us."
"Patrick, you are a hero"

It's not just that word, though. When you mention cancer, people immediately associate you with brave, inspiring, etc. Those are character traits, not symptoms. Would you call a leper a hero? Would you say people with ulcerative colitis are inspiring? Do kidney stones make you brave?

[Starryeyesurprise]

Can Patrick get an audience with Carolyn Myss or Mona Lisa Schulz, MD. Erdgeist is not blaming Patrick, but trying to help him understand possible emotional patterns that could be changed. Every cancer has people who recovered spontaneously. The Institute of Noetic Sciences has a published collection of research of these case histories.

http://www.noetic.org/research/sr/r_biblio.html

Here is another article in the New York Times a couple weeks ago where they talked of cancers going away on their own.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/health/25breast.html?em

It is clear that scientists know this is happening but aren't sure how or how often or why. There was a time when scientists said this didn't happen at all.

Patrick, get around people who will believe with you who aren't invested in a predetermined outcome.

There is one person who has posted here who is a survivor and there are more. This information isn't tracked very well. Google pancreatic spontaneous remissions. I found a couple in a few mins. I am sure there are more.

[Tulka2]

Any person facing the abyss could use the company of a kindly Buddhist monk. Swayze is rich and powerful. He could easily find such a simple person.

[MissKaren]

I lost two cousins to pancreatic cancer and I can really appreciate the misery he's experiencing. It's a horrid disease and the treatment for it is also horrid. My prayers are with him.

[glesslib]

Some of the comments on this subject are a bit uninformed. My sister-in-law died of pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago. She hadn't smoked since she was a young woman, drank very little, had no bad habits that I can remember. She DID have a family history that included lots of folks with stomach ulcers and other digestive problems. She had also suffered from them several times over her lifetime. There is probably a genetic predisposition for many of the cancers we see today. Blaming folks for their health problems when we have no idea what sort of lifestyles they are leading seems harsh and judgemental. I hope the man beats this disease. It's really a nasty one.

[omaro]

An excellent point. Also, there's the increasing evidence that viruses may play a part or be the cause of some of these cancers. One of the things I've been convinced of, after years of working with people with various physical disabilities and illnesses, is that the tendency of others to try to figure out the cause of various catastrophic health problems and to assign blame is really just an attempt to fight the fear of loss of control, illness and death, i.e., "I'll find a way to understand this that assigns blame to the victim and leaves me in the clear." Not kind, but human.

[Aabby]

So very true.

[JoandeV]

Well said. It was like that during the plague epidemic that scoured Europe. People started blaming the victims for various sins in an effort to distance themselves from the disease by convincing themselves that they were more pious.

[glesslib]

Fear is a very real thing. You are correct that blaming others for their own misfortune is just whistling in the dark, refined.

[Y2KCockroach]

(Sigh). There really is no clear indication (at this point) as to what "causes" pancreatic cancer (ask the people who know, at Sloan Kettering (NY), Johns Hopkins Baltimore), and Swedish Medical (Seattle). It "might" be caused from any combination of various factors, including genetic, environmental, viral, etc. but nobody really knows, and anybody who suggests that they do is reaching beyond the science. Both my mother and my mother-in-law died of pancreatic cancer. Our families researched the whole thing carefully, both times. My mother ate low-fat, vegetarian meals; she exercised, was fit, and did not drink or smoke. Her family had no history of cancer. My mother-in-law smoked, drank lightly, and ate generally healthy meals. She was thin but did not exercise, and had a family with a history of cancers. However, what is certain is that they both contracted PC, and they both died from it (my mother lived nine months after diagnosis, and my mother-in-law lived two weeks after diagnosis). It is a relatively rare form of cancer, but one of the fastest growing types of cancer. It is almost always fatal. What we need at this point is good research; what we don't need (to beat this disease) are casual observers who pre-judge, pop theorists, or those who prefer to leave it to gawd.

[motherforpeace]

Great post. It's so true. Sometimes people are too quick to judge, to package everything up into a neat little box so they don't have to think about it anymore even if it is at the expense of the person who is suffering.

My best wishes to him and his family.

[SKonnery]

It is also common among people who use alcohol.

[BelGazou]

Yeah, it's also common among smokers and people who are obese but so are so very many other cancers, that doesn't explain why a good many other people who neither smoke, nor drink nor are obese, get these cancers too.

It seems to be more common these days or it may just be that we are hearing about it more. Several celebrities including Pavarotti and Steve Jobs, who has had it for 4 years, have been in the news.

[hollybork]

Patrick, you are a trooper! Such courage and spirit will carry you through this. Good luck and God bless you. CB

[clearvoyant]

Get Well, "Timex" . My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family and friends. Remember the 880 you just have to gut it out.

[sunny555]

Good luck Patrick, keep fighting.

For those reading who smoke, please quit!