Ian Mackenzie

This wasn’t to say he ignored the seriousness of pancreatic cancer. Instead, Ian and his wife, Rose, faced the possibility that he might not survive it. As a result, they made some lifestyle changes, including downsizing their home to make life easier for Rose.

“We tackled this thing head-on as a family and were realistic about it,” Ian said. “We downsized our home to make it easier on Rose in the event she was left alone. We’d had plans to downsize anyway; this just brought the process forward.”

Still, Ian made a point of not letting uncertainty consume him.

“Most of the time, I didn’t feel ill,” he said. “I actually felt relatively normal.”

Ian had been active for decades before his diagnosis. For 35 years, he had spent an hour at the gym most weekday mornings, and he continued to exercise throughout his treatment. He also worked with a dietitian to overhaul his diet, placing a strong emphasis on protein foods such as chicken, eggs, fish, cottage cheese, nuts, avocado and leafy vegetables, (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and spinach). He was advised to eliminate all starchy foods, including potatoes, rice and pasta, while caffeine and sugar were firmly placed on the “banned” list. Foods high in saturated fat, including red meat, were also given a red flag. “I was absolutely ruthless with myself when it came to my diet,” Ian explains.

“It’s entirely possible the fact I’d been getting up every morning and going to the gym might have given me a head start,” Ian said.

He also made other dietary changes and began taking moringa powder after hearing about it from his longtime housekeeper in South Africa and then doing some additional research himself. He’s careful, however, not to attribute his progress to diet, exercise, supplements or any single decision or change, nor does he encourage anyone to follow his lead without doing their own in-depth research through reliable channels.

What staying fit, eating well and otherwise maintaining a healthy lifestyle did do, though, was give him a sense that not everything involving his cancer experience was beyond his control.

Meanwhile, the chemotherapy started working as intended.

The tumor shrank dramatically during Ian’s first three months of treatment and continued getting smaller. After 12 cycles of FOLFIRINOX, imaging showed the mass that once measured 56 by 54 millimeters had shrunk to about 11 millimeters.

Doctors still saw a remaining lesion near the splenic vein, though, and had to figure out what to do about it. Ian began meeting with a radiation oncologist as an option to complete reduction, and his care team ordered new scans to determine exactly where to direct the radiation.

Yet when Ian returned for the results, his radiation oncologist told him there was no visible evidence of a tumor to treat.

Ian’s medical team expressed shock, and while the news brought Ian relief, he wasn’t yet ready to declare victory.

“It was kind of like winning a fight,” Ian said. “But have I really won it? The oncologist seemed a lot more excited about it than I was.”

Since imaging alone can’t rule out all potential issues, Ian continues to undergo regular surveillance.

However, more than a year after learning that his doctors could no longer detect his tumor, he’s starting to feel much more comfortable with where things stand.

This is especially true given that his latest scan from earlier this summer came back clear, and because he continues to regain the weight he lost during treatment. Now, at age 77, Ian says he feels closer to 50.

He does, however, still face reminders of what his body went through. While Ian stopped drinking alcohol decades ago, he describes some of the lingering after-effects of chemotherapy as “chemo hangovers.”

Still, the future looks very different from the one he faced at diagnosis. And while he’s seen considerable success, he doesn’t share his experiences as a “blueprint” for surviving pancreatic cancer. Instead, when speaking with others facing similar health hurdles, he emphasizes the part of the experience he believes people can influence most: how they respond to it.

“Try to get your mindset right,” Ian said. “Don’t think of it as a tragedy; think of it as a challenge. It’s something that can be dealt with. Don’t wrap your mind around statistics. Those are depressing; get those thoughts out of your mind completely.”

This is particularly true of the numbers Ian heard when doctors first diagnosed him. And when asked what he would tell the 75-year-old version of himself who’d just heard he might have, at most, five years with treatment, the answer is simple.

“Statistics deal with populations, not individuals,” he said.

And five years, Ian points out, isn’t necessarily the fixed window it might sound like in the frightening first days after a cancer diagnosis.

“Five years is a long time,” Ian said. “In those five years, a lot of things can change.”

While Ian recognizes that a scan showing no detectable disease isn’t a promise that pancreatic cancer will never return, he knows there was also a time when doctors saw a large tumor on his pancreas and predicted he had a few years, if not months, to live. Today, they can’t see his tumor at all.

Ian’s military experience also taught him long ago that recognizing danger and surrendering to fear are two very different things. Pancreatic cancer brought that lesson back decades later.

“We did some stupid things in those days, but we always knew we had to keep our wits about us,” Ian said. “In military ops, you know damn well the chances of coming back in a box are there, but you don’t really think about that. You’d scare yourself. Whether that provided some sort of psychological foundation to this, I don’t know, but for reasons I can’t really explain, I was never really afraid of my cancer. I was aware but didn’t allow myself the luxury of self-pity.”

It’s a distinction that still defines how Ian handles uncertainty.

“Sooner or later, we’re all going to die,” Ian said. “So, let’s not get panicky about it. Let’s do what we can and be as confident as we can about living.”

Ian has shown no evidence of disease since July 2025.