Francine Gauthier, 54, a second-grade teacher, is used to feeling a little tired and occasionally sore.
But Gauthier, who is from Lafayette, Louisiana, started noticing other strange symptoms.
Starting around April 2025, she began to feel full quickly after meals and developed nausea and heartburn. However, because she had just started using GLP-1 medication to lose weight, she thought her symptoms were side effects.
Soon, she also began to feel visibly tired. Gauthier told TODAY.com that her fatigue was “extremely severe. (I was) very, very tired. I could sleep 10 to 12 hours and still wake up tired.”
At her age, Gauthier thought her tiredness might be due to hormonal changes after menopause. When the school year starts again in the fall, she thinks it might make her tired, too.
Gauthier’s son died on Sept. 29, shortly after she developed back pain, a loss that was heartbreaking. She had already lost another son a few years ago and was now raising two grandchildren, ages 11 and 9.
Francine Gauthier experienced symptoms including fatigue, weight loss and back pain, which she attributed to hormonal changes and life stress. (Courtesy Francine Gauthier) (Courtesy Francine Gauthier)
“I blamed the fatigue, exhaustion and nausea on being sick. Like, my son passed away,” she said. “I don’t know how to explain it, but all the different things happening to my body were overwhelming.”
She started seeing a chiropractor to treat her back pain, which helped a little, “but I was living on heating pads, painkillers and massages,” Gauthier said. Meanwhile, her fatigue was getting worse and she found she needed caffeine earlier and earlier in the day.
“I started drinking more energy drinks and Diet Coke just so I could get through the day,” she said. “By 10 or 10:30 a.m. I’m exhausted and I open a Diet Coke. Before, it was a cup of coffee and water all day long.”
Gauthier also began to notice changes in her weight after her son’s death. In October, she started taking GLP-1 injections every other week, but she’s still losing weight.
“I didn’t have my shot all December and I was still losing weight,” she said. “I probably lost 10 pounds in three to four weeks.”
In December, her pain was so unbearable that she was unable to do any of her favorite holiday activities—her Christmas tree was undecorated, she couldn’t cook, and she had to buy all her gifts online. “These are completely out of character for me,” she said.
By January, Gauthier noticed her urine was getting darker.
Finally, on February 10, 2026, “When I woke up, my urine was chocolate brown,” she said. She also had jaundice (yellow color) on her skin and eyes, so she and her husband rushed to the emergency room.
Test results show advanced pancreatic cancer
At the hospital, Gauthier’s lab tests showed her bilirubin levels were “off the charts,” which she said could indicate a problem with her bile ducts or liver.
An ultrasound and subsequent CT scan revealed a mass measuring about 4.7 centimeters on her pancreas.
Francine Gauthier and her husband, Richie, went to MD Anderson Cancer Center for treatment. (Courtesy Francine Gauthier) (Courtesy Francine Gauthier)
“From that point on, everything started moving very quickly,” said Gauthier, who began seeing multiple doctors to learn more about her tumor.
The tumor was growing around a large artery and other nearby veins, and had begun pushing against one of her bile ducts, which carry bile in the body. This is what caused her bilirubin levels to spike and her jaundice.
So doctors’ first step was to place a temporary stent to open her bile duct. During the process, her medical team also performed a thorough biopsy of the tumor, but the results were inconclusive.
At this point, Gauthier and her husband decided to seek more specialized care at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Dr. Matthew Katz, Gauthier’s oncologist at MD Anderson, told TODAY.com that Gauthier’s stage 3 pancreatic cancer is a type of adenocarcinoma, the most common type.
But he explained that the way her tumor had grown made surgery nearly impossible.
“She has a disease of multiple blood vessels that supply blood to her small intestine, liver, stomach, spleen and basically her entire midgut and foregut,” Katz said.
He explained that with so many organs affected, it wasn’t really a question of whether the surgery was too challenging, “it was just whether it could be done and the anatomy reconstructed to (give her) a reasonable quality of life.”
Gauthier currently undergoes chemotherapy every two weeks for the next four to six months. In four months, she will have imaging tests and “maybe something positive will happen,” she said.
Still hopeful when treatment begins
Gauthier said her “world stopped” when she received the diagnosis.
Her symptoms made her wonder “in the back of my mind” whether cancer was a possibility. But since there was no genetic risk for pancreatic cancer and no obvious lifestyle risk factors, it was still shocking.
In addition to treatment, Gauthier worked on improving her diet to stay as healthy as possible during chemotherapy. She will have imaging done at the end of the month to check on the progress of her treatment and will meet with Katz in April to discuss her next steps.
Looking back, Gauthier realizes that each of her symptoms could easily be explained by something other than cancer. But taken together, her fatigue, back pain, weight loss and other problems added up to a shocking combination.
She hopes her story will serve as an example for others to take their symptoms seriously. “My message is don’t ignore your body,” she said. “When it’s unbearable and it affects your quality of life and you just want to cry, that’s when you hold it in your hand and go for the scan.”
Francine Gauthier takes to her social media pages to share real-life updates, including her chemo port placement. (Courtesy Francine Gauthier) (Courtesy Francine Gauthier)
Of course, not everyone with back or stomach pain should rush to see a doctor, Katz said. But symptoms that don’t go away or get worse — even if they appear “relatively harmless or benign” — should be evaluated, he said.
Katz said unexplained weight loss, increased fatigue and persistent back pain are not always symptoms of pancreatic cancer, but they are concerning.
Because so many patients now take GLP-1 drugs, weight loss is particularly difficult to parse, he said. As in the case of Gauthier, they may gloss over or provide false explanations for weight loss that might otherwise be concerning.
Now, Gauthier is going through the ups and downs of treatment and learning how to make chemotherapy more comfortable (eye patches, for example, help increase light sensitivity).
She relies on her strong community to share regular updates on life with cancer on her social media pages. An online fundraiser to help pay her medical bills has raised nearly $54,000.
“The support our community has given us has been amazing,” she said. “I can’t even put into words what it did because I was so scared and all I could do was lift me and hold me.”
But with a plan, she said, “I have more knowledge, I have more power.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
