"Paranormal State" star Ryan Buell was only 29 years old when he was delivered the shocking news that he had pancreatic cancer. Now the 31-year-old paranormal investigator is opening up to People magazine in a candid first-person essay about his battle with cancer, which also claimed the lives of beloved male celebrities like Patrick Swayze and Steve Jobs.
Buell writes:
"At times, I was experiencing almost like a traffic jam in my body and my kidneys would shut down or I'd be in insane, intense abdominal pain, like I was being stabbed to death. I was throwing up constantly, suffering fever, changing of the skin. It took some time to get things under control. I was grateful for this preventative measure as opposed to breaking out the hacksaw and just going straight in…"
Buell added that his work as a paranormal investigator led to some unusual conclusions about the "demonic" spirits that he said could possibly be trying to kill him:
"There is this belief that once the demonic notice you, they will remember you, they will torment you, punish you. And one person who was allegedly under possession once said, "It knows me. It knows my face, it will never forget, it will always find me." Maybe the demons did give me cancer. Maybe demons give everyone cancer...
And if they can do everything, including deciding when to kill me, which is also beyond my control, I'm not going to stop suddenly doing this work. I have thought about that and people have asked me things like, "Aren't you afraid that demons are going to attack you?" But I just choose not to worry about that. Because then I give them power."
The beloved star of "Ghost" and "Dirty Dancing" died after a battle with pancreatic cancer in September 2009, at the age of 57. "Now, a lot of things go through your head when you get a death sentence handed to you, starting with: 'Why me?'" he said in an audiobook titled "Time of My Life," People.com reported. And though he blamed himself at first for the January 2008 diagnosis, he soon emerged with a new attitude. "I was not ready to go, and I'd be damned if this disease was going to take me before I was good and ready," he said in the tapes. "So I said to my doctor, 'Show me where the enemy is and I'll fight him.'" In fact, he told Barbara Walters in 2009 that he was both optimistic and realistic. "I'd say five years is pretty wishful thinking," he said in the interview, according to a HuffPost report at the time of his death. "Two years seems likely if you're going to believe statistics. I want to last until they find a cure, which means I'd better get a fire under it." In February 2009 he wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post as a plea to Congress to "vote for the maximum funding to let the National Institutes of Health fight cancer and other life threatening illnesses" as part of the stimulus package:
When I was growing up in Texas, my family had a simple response for challenges like this: "Stop talking about it, and do something about it." That's how I feel about finding more money for cancer research. My hope is that some day, the words "a cure" won't be followed by the words "is impossible."
He died 20 months after diagnosis. His wife, Lisa Niemi, has stayed active in raising awareness around pancreatic cancer, signing on as a national spokesperson for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. "My husband Patrick not only touched the lives of millions with his work, but also with the strength and courage he displayed during his fight against pancreatic cancer; he was a hero around the world," she said when announcing a new awareness campaign for the organization. "While it is bittersweet to mark this day, it is imperative that people understand the severity of this disease and the urgent need for increased research funding,"
Steve Jobs
The founder and CEO of Apple may be the most public face of pancreatic cancer in the United States, having battled the disease for an estimated seven years before succumbing to it at the age of 56. For the rare form of pancreatic tumor that Jobs suffered from, a neuroendocrine pancreatic tumor, his survival was not unusual. Jobs was famously tight-lipped about the condition and his treatment protocol, though he did get a liver transplant in 2009, following surgery in 2004 to remove the tumor from his pancreas. As theWall Street Journal reported at the time of Jobs' death, patients usually undergo tumor removal either if the cancer is contained to the pancreas and has not spread -- or if it has spread to the liver. "If you think it is confined to the pancreas, there is quite a good hope that the patient has gotten rid of it once and for all," Michaela Banck, a pancreatic cancer expert at the Mayo Clinic told the Journal, adding that in cases where it has spread to the liver, "you can't ultimately cure it. The more tumor you remove, you buy time for the patient." Though Jobs rarely spoke of his illness, he shared his thoughts on death with some frequency, including during a 2005 Stanford commencement speech:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In truth, it may have been Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 1999 brush with colon cancer that saved her. Because she is a cancer survivor, Ginsburg gets routine CT scans as part of her yearly examinations. And in 2009, one of these scans turned up a small tumor on her pancreas. Unlike most pancreatic cancer patients, Ginsburg was lucky to find the cancer early and, as of this writing, remains cancer free following surgery to remove her spleen and part of her pancreas in 2009. CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this slideshow, Ginsburg was described as "chief justice." She is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Luciano Pavarotti
In July 2006, Pavarotti's manager announced that the famous opera singer had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and underwent surgery for the removal of a malignant mass, the Washington Post reported at the time. "Fortunately, the mass was able to be completely removed at surgery," the manager said in a statement, according to the Post report. "Mr. Pavarotti is recovering well, and his physicians are encouraged by the physical and emotional resilience of their patient." He eventually died in his Northern Italy home in September 2007, The New York Times reported.
Jack Benny
The violin player and vaudeville, radio, TV and movie star Jack Benny (pictured here with Marilyn Monroe) died from pancreatic cancer on December 26, 1974, according to IMDB.com.
Donna Reed
The actress first gained prominence for her award-winning role in From Here to Eternity, though she was perhaps better known for her television roles in "The Donna Reed Show" and "Dallas." Reed was first admitted to the hospital with bleeding ulcers, but screening tests revealed that she was suffering from a tumor in her pancreas. She died of the cancer within six weeks of diagnosis.
Charlie Louvin
The country music star died in January 2011 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 83. Louvin, a Grammy nominee and Country Music Hall of Famer, was diagnosed with stage 2 of the disease in 2010 after visiting his doctor with, what The Tennessean reported was a "minor complaint." He performed all the way up until the December before his death -- at one of those last appearances, People.com reported that he said: "In my world, you are worthless if you can't continue. Show business is all I really know how to do. I would like for that to be the last thing I do."
According to friend Nat Hentoff, as the jazz great Dizzie Gillespie lay dying of pancreatic cancer at New Jersey's Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, he made his doctors promise to help ailing musicians who were less fortunate than he was. That turned into the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund and the Dizzy Gillespie Cancer Institute at Englewood -- an ongoing legacy that doesn't just help those with pancreatic cancer, but any musician who lacks health insurance or resources to help treat an illness.
Fred Gwynne
The actor probably best known as the patriarch on the 1960s television series "The Munsters," Gwynne died from pancreatic cancer at age 66, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. While his other roles included the television series "Car 54 Where Are You" and the play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," he always had a soft spot in his heart for Herman. "And I might as well tell you the truth. I love old Herman Munster. Much as I try not to, I can't stop liking that fellow," the LA Times quotes him as saying. Gwynne acted for 42 years, according to The New York Times, and also once worked as both a writer and illustrator of children's books and as an advertising copywriter.
Landon was famous for his roles in period Western dramas, like" "Bonanza" and "Little House on the Prairie," but the actor was also well-known for his battle with pancreatic cancer. In an interview with LIFE magazine three weeks after diagnosis, he famously said: "If I'm gonna die, death's gonna have to do a lot of fighting to get me." Despite chemotherapy, rest, an all-vegetarian diet and a course of vitamins and supplements, Landon died of the cancer at age 54 at his house in Malibu.
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was a famous bandleader and jazz musician who is considered responsible for much of the "Big Band" sound of the 1930s and 1940s. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1984 at the age of 79.
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