Patrick Swayze was interviewed by Barbara Walters last night for her Barbara Walters Special. Patrick Swayze, suffering from pancreatic cancer for the past year, told Walters that life has been like hell for the most part of the year since his cancer was discovered, but he is fighting on, fighting to the end. And it looks like he's winning!"I've never been one to run from a challenge," the 56-year-old Swayze admits to Barbara Walters in the interview. "There's a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, I'm scared. Yeah, I'm angry. Yeah, I'm wondering why me. Yeah, I'm all this stuff. You can bet that I'm going through hell... and I've
only seen the beginning of it."The star of the blockbuster movies Ghost (with Demi Moore) and Dirty Dancing said he knew something was wrong when "indigestion issues got gigantic and constant" and drinking champagne felt like "pouring acid on an open wound." Then he started losing weight quite rapidly - something inside him knew his health was in peril. "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."
After several consultations and tests, his fears were confirmed. Doctors discovered a malignant tumor in his midsection and a small mass on his liver. And because his cancer had spread to his liver, having surgery to remove it wasn't an option as it would put his life more at risk. Doctors therefore recommended the best option to fight the disease - traditional chemotherapy along with an experimental drug treatment.
It has been a year since that discovery and diagnosis, and Patrick Swayze told Barbara Walters that he is still fighting the disease. His health has greatly improved over the past months. Swayze has described the improvement in his health as a miracle as he has not only managed to regain strength and weight, but remarkably even continued to work on his series 'The Beast'. But it was not like this at first. "For the first few weeks, it was like being in a nightmare you couldn't wake up from," his wife, Niemi, told Barbara Walters.
"I don't know what's on the other side. It tests everything I believe in... that here is something unique in all of us that does not, does not die. I like to believe that I've got a lot of guardian warriors sitting on my shoulder, including my dad." He adds, "What winning is to me is not giving up, is no matter what's thrown at me, I can take it," Patrick Swayze says. "And I can keep going."
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