My mother told me that when my grandma got it in the beginning she called my mom and wanted my mother to come over and rub her back, that is was stiff and sore and the base so my mom went over and did it, and the first signs are that you get a bit anemic, high white blood cell count, which causes you to feel a heavy feeling in that general area where the pancreas is at! Then you start to feel no appetite and sick even though you've not eaten bad stuff or food. Then you start to spit up blood instead of vomit your body starts to cry out "help, help help," and mostly people like Michael Landon, Patrick S. and my grandmother ignored the symptoms and then came the intense stomach cramps, further warning from the body to check yourself out, and by that time the cancer is thriving in the pancreas which is in an area hard to get to, and you just can't remove it, so they chemo you out and hope for the best and while on that chemo you are totally sicker than you first felt and then you go downhill from there. I was 4 years old when I saw my grandma in her bed and she was white as a ghost and puffy looking and skinny at the same time. she opted NOT to use chemo and back then it was much worse effects. but that's the symptoms. The moment I feel anything weird, I am on phone to my gastro doctor, but lately as my symtoms increase, he isn't taking my calls seriously and I think it's because he's been my gastro doc for 20 years now and maybe we are just too close, and I should find another younger gastro doc so that he won't ignore my symtoms and wave them away as I.B.S. It's more than that sometimes…. So if you feel any symptoms, try and connect with a good gastro doc like I did… but don't get so close to him that he secretly doesn't want you to be sick and explains stuff away…
The initial symptoms could be nausea, lack of appetite or stomach ache soon followed by bouts of acute pain. here is a good web page on pancreatic cancer.
nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/…
having had Pancreatitis several time , I would suspect that it is excrutionally painful..
check out this research group….someone one the message board might be able to help boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta