Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, World Pancreatic Cancer Day, Kranky Panky and World Diabetes Day, and why each one matters after pancreatitis
Last November I spent 12 days in a hospital bed. A week of spiced restaurant food on a business trip to the Netherlands, then I sat at home far too long before I went in. Severe necrotizing pancreatitis, my second attack in two and a half years. The doctors told me off for waiting, and they were right.
So November means something to me now. It means something to a lot of other people too, because this is the month the pancreas gets more attention than at any other time of the year. Four dates sit in it, and they overlap more than most people realise.
Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, all of November
November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. You’ll see purple everywhere: ribbons, profile pictures, buildings and bridges lit up at night. In the US the big name behind it is PanCAN. In the UK it’s Pancreatic Cancer UK. Charities in many other countries do the same.
The reason for the noise is the numbers. About half a million people worldwide are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer every year, and almost as many die from it each year. In the US, the American Cancer Society expects about 67,500 new diagnoses and about 52,700 deaths in 2026. It’s the third biggest cause of cancer death there, after lung and bowel cancer.
The figure that stays with me is this one. Five years after diagnosis, 13 out of every 100 people are still alive. That number has sat at 13% three years in a row, while survival across all cancers combined has reached 70%.
World Pancreatic Cancer Day, Thursday 19 November
The month has one day for the whole world. World Pancreatic Cancer Day falls on the third Thursday of November, so this year it’s Thursday 19 November. It’s coordinated by the World Pancreatic Cancer Coalition, more than 110 organisations in 39 countries, and its message is simple: know the symptoms, because catching this cancer early is what gives people options.
Kranky Panky, the pancreatitis month (UK)
Pancreatitis has its own November campaign, smaller, with a cheekier name. Guts UK, the British charity for the digestive system, has run Kranky Panky every November since 2018. It started with two patients working with the charity, and the community chose the name. The month shares real stories from people with acute and chronic pancreatitis, alongside information and research funding.
One honest note, because I see it mixed up online: there’s no official pancreatitis awareness month in the US. Kranky Panky is a UK campaign. Anyone can share the stories and use #KrankyPanky, wherever they live, but the charity and the campaign are British.
Guts UK puts acute pancreatitis at about 34 people in every 100,000 each year in the UK, close to the worldwide rate. Across the world that adds up to nearly 3 million new cases a year.
World Diabetes Day, Saturday 14 November
Five days before the cancer day comes World Diabetes Day. It belongs on this list for a reason that surprised me. After my second attack I needed insulin in hospital.
Pancreatitis can damage the cells that make insulin. The diabetes that can follow has its own name, type 3c. A review of the published studies in the journal Gut found that about a third of people develop prediabetes or diabetes after a first attack of acute pancreatitis, and the risk keeps climbing over the following five years. Since November 2025 I check my own blood sugar.
If you’ve had an attack and nobody has checked your blood sugar since, ask for it at your next appointment.
Why one month covers both
Pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer are different diseases. Most people with pancreatitis never get pancreatic cancer. I want to say that plainly, because reading cancer statistics after an attack is frightening.
They are linked, though. Long-standing chronic pancreatitis raises the risk. A large international study followed more than 2,000 people with chronic pancreatitis in six countries. Twenty years after diagnosis, about 4 in 100 had developed pancreatic cancer. That’s many times the rate in people without pancreatitis.
So November’s cancer message is ours too. Know the signs, and keep going to your follow-up appointments.
The signs worth knowing
The UK cancer charities, Cancer Research UK and Pancreatic Cancer Action among them, list these as the main signs of pancreatic cancer:
- Yellow skin or yellow whites of the eyes (jaundice)
- Pain in the upper tummy, or in the middle of the back just below the shoulder blades
- Weight loss you can’t explain
- Changes in your poo: pale, large, smelly or floating stools, diarrhoea or constipation
- Indigestion that doesn’t settle with treatment
- Loss of appetite, feeling sick, tiredness
- New diabetes, especially when your weight is falling instead of rising
Here’s the hard part for us. Many of these overlap with pancreatitis itself and with life after an attack: pain, loose fatty stools, weight loss, blood sugar going up. That’s exactly why the advice is the same either way. Something new, something that won’t go away, or several of these together: see your doctor and mention your pancreatitis history. Yellow skin or eyes needs a doctor the same day.
And if it’s the pain of an attack, severe and constant, going through to your back, with vomiting, go in now. Call 911 in the US, 112 in Europe, 999 in the UK, or your local emergency number elsewhere. I waited in 2025 and it cost me 12 days in hospital.
What you can do this month
You don’t need to run a marathon. Small things count.
Learn the signs above and send them to one person you care about. If you’ve had pancreatitis, book the follow-up you’ve been putting off and ask about your blood sugar while you’re there. Wear purple on 19 November for the people living with pancreatic cancer and the families who lost someone to it. If you’re in the UK, read the Kranky Panky stories on the Guts UK site and pass one on.
And if you can give, give to the people doing the work where you live: PanCAN or the Lustgarten Foundation in the US, Pancreatic Cancer UK or Guts UK in Britain, the National Pancreas Foundation or Mission: Cure for pancreatitis in the US.
As for me, this November is a quiet one. Five small meals a day, forest walks with Pasha, my blood sugar checks, and one weekend of salsa with my dance teacher and a group of 20 or 30 people. A year ago I was on a drip. This year I’m dancing. That’s the difference I want for everyone reading this.
I’m a patient, not a doctor. Everything here is what I’ve lived and what the sources below say. Check anything about your own body with your own team.
Sources
I checked every claim against 2 sources or more.
- PanCAN: Pancreatic cancer deaths continue to rise, five-year survival rate remains stalled at 13%, 2026 (citing ACS Cancer Statistics, 2026). pancan.org
- Lustgarten Foundation: ACS Cancer Facts & Figures 2026, five-year survival remains at 13%. lustgarten.org
- PanCAN: 5 ways to take action on World Pancreatic Cancer Day. www.pancan.org
- Pancreatic Cancer UK: World Pancreatic Cancer Day. www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk
- National Today: World Pancreatic Cancer Day, 19 November 2026. nationaltoday.com
- IARC/WHO GLOBOCAN 2022: pancreas fact sheet. gco.iarc.who.int
- World Cancer Research Fund: Pancreatic cancer statistics. www.wcrf.org
- Guts UK: Kranky Panky, Pancreatitis Awareness Month. gutscharity.org.uk
- Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: Kranky Panky. psgbi.org
- Das SL et al. New-onset diabetes after acute pancreatitis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Gut, 2014. gut.bmj.com
- Risk factors for diabetes mellitus after acute pancreatitis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Medicine, 2023. www.frontiersin.org
- Lowenfels AB et al. Pancreatitis and the risk of pancreatic cancer. NEJM, 1993. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Cancer Research UK: Symptoms of pancreatic cancer. www.cancerresearchuk.org
- Pancreatic Cancer Action: Pancreatic cancer symptoms. pancreaticcanceraction.org
- ASCO Post: Recent-onset diabetes with unintentional weight loss linked to increased risk of pancreatic cancer, 2020. ascopost.com
- Acute pancreatitis incidence: GBD 2019 estimates (BMC Gastroenterology, 2021) and Xiao AY et al., Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, 2016.
If you’re recovering from an attack and want to talk to people who get it, the PancreasZen community is free.