Don’t take this personally, because it doesn’t apply to any of you. But whenever a new research finding for pancreatic cancer comes out, I get at least 15 people telling me I “need” to tell my doctor to look into it. (As if I hadn’t already seen it.) Then I have to explain that clinical trials only include mid- to late-stage disease (which I don’t have yet).

Penn is one of the major cancer research centers in the world, and if one of the trials applied to me, I’m pretty sure my doctor would tell me. There’s a lot of mental labor that goes into me explaining this in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. I realize people just want to help, and I appreciate it, but I’ve been doing research for a living for several decades now.