A FAMILY which has twice suffered the devastating consequences of a deadly and hard to spot disease has joined a campaign to fight it.

Art teacher Claire Gillen, 37, who used to teach at Chase High School in Prittlewell Chase, Westcliff, was told her mother had pancreatic cancer in January.

The news came 20 years after her grandfather died from the same condition, and the family were shocked at how little progress had been made in its treatment since.

In fact, there are 8,000 families in the UK who are affected by the condition every year.

Now the family have joined a campaign launched by the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK to improve knowledge of the disease and raise much-needed funds for research. Currently, the poorly-understood illness is usually spotted too late, resulting in just a three per cent survival rate.

Mrs Gillen said: “We knew my mum had it before the doctors did, because we recognised the symptoms, but she was repeatedly misdiagnosed.

“One of my students said to me, ‘It’s not a trendy cancer is it?’ That sums it up really. You don’t get people wearing pink T-shirts and running around for pancreatic cancer.

“It is almost like it is accepted that it is aggressive and hard to diagnose. There is no sense of urgency to get anything done.”

Her mother, Brenda Fulcher, 64, is one of the ten per cent of sufferers who are able to have a potentially lifesaving operation to remove the cancer, and this christmas is set to be a tense one for the family who are expecting to find out if the surgery has been successful in the new year. Claire, who grew up in Beech Avenue, Rayleigh, said: “I am trying to raise awareness so when my four year-old daughter is older she won’t have to go through what we are going through.

“People keep saying that my mum is one of the lucky ones, but it’s hard to see it like that after everything she’s had to cope with.”

For more information about Pancreatic Cancer UK and to find out how you can help the charity reach its goal of doubling survival rates within the next five years, visit www.

pancreaticcancer.org.uk