For months, Mona Thind had been telling doctors something felt wrong. The 52-year-old was experiencing pain around her ribs and an unsettled stomach — symptoms her doctors attributed to constipation or a poor diet, recommending little more than drinking more fluids. It was only during a holiday to Byron Bay in late 2024 that a routine gastrointestinal scan finally uncovered the truth: she had pancreatic cancer.

A Father's Instinct, a Fateful Scan

As Mona set off for her trip to northern New South Wales, her father stopped her at the door with an unusual request. "My heart tells me we should do a scan ... I feel it in my gut," he told her. She laughed it off, putting it down to a protective parent's worry.

But at the upper gastrointestinal scan in Byron Bay, the sonographer's expression told her everything she needed to know before a word was spoken. "I saw the look on her face," Mona recalled. "I came home, and everything happened."

What followed was an intense 15-month battle: six rounds of chemotherapy and major surgery. Remarkably, Mona says she met her diagnosis without tears. "I wasn't sad every day; I just went, this is what it is," she said. It was only on the day she was told she had beaten the cancer that she "fell apart" for the first time.

Her father, who had urged her to get that scan, kept a promise to be present for every one of her chemotherapy sessions. He died on the day of her final treatment. "He was my pillar of strength," she said.

Why Pancreatic Cancer Is So Hard to Catch Early

Mona's experience is far from unique. Pancreatic cancer is the eighth most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia, with the Cancer Council estimating that one in 70 Australians will receive a diagnosis by the age of 85. It develops when malignant cells form within the pancreas, and its early warning signs are notoriously easy to overlook.

Dr Amelia Parker, a senior researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research's Cox Lab, says the disease remains one of the most complex and under-researched cancers in existence. "Less than 13 per cent of patients will survive at five years," she said, adding that vague early symptoms mean many patients don't seek help until the cancer is already at an advanced stage.

Once pancreatic cancer spreads to other parts of the body, treatment becomes significantly more difficult, driving down survival rates further. "We're working very hard to improve our detection of those cancers so that patients who have that disease are diagnosed earlier and have all of the most effective treatments available to them," Dr Parker said.

A Research Funding Gap With Real Consequences

Dr Parker argues that a chronic shortage of research investment has directly hampered progress in understanding and treating the disease. "There has been less investment in research funding historically. And that's really hampered our efforts to both understand the disease and use that understanding to develop new and better treatments," she said.

She described the funding landscape for cancer research as "highly competitive" and warned that promising work risks going unsupported. "There's more research out there that would make a difference," she said, stressing that genuine innovations in treatment can only come with sustained financial backing.

Her team is making what she described as "real strides" in understanding the biology of pancreatic cancer, but translating laboratory breakthroughs into better patient outcomes requires resources that are currently in short supply.

Calls for Greater Investment in Cancer Research

The push to close the funding gap has drawn the attention of cancer advocacy organisations, with leaders in the sector urging greater commitment to research that could one day shift survival statistics that have remained stubbornly low for decades.

For Mona, the stakes are deeply personal. Her story is a reminder that early detection can be the difference between life and death — and that the symptoms of pancreatic cancer are all too easy to dismiss until it may be too late.