Hello Mirsin and I am very sorry to hear about your husband's situation, that is incredibly difficult I am sure to take on board. 

As we are not part of his team it is difficult for me to say exactly what is going on. If the doctor has said that your husband has cancer present in both these areas then it will have been seen on a scan and your husband mentioning his brother's diagnosis would not be colouring his diagnosis. It may be that your husband has stomach (gastric) primary cancer with pancreatic secondaries (metastases) or it could be the other way around. Cancer can spread or metastasise anywhere in the body, but there are indeed general trends of where we know it more commonly goes.

With all this in mind, the doctors will have created a treatment plan that they feel will try to gain some control over the cancer. They will be able to say what side effects they think this chemotherapy may give him and how it may effect his overall prognosis.

When given this sort of information it is incredibly overwhelming, and it is easy to come out of an appointment with more questions. Try and write some of these down so that over the next few appointments you can ask them and both understand his diagnosis, treatment options and prognosis better. When you have some more information do come back to us on here or give us a call on the helpline, so we can go through things with you.

Take care both of you and if you want to talk things through with one of the nurses on our helpline the number to call is Freephone 0808 800 4040. The lines are open from 9 am till 5 pm, Monday to Friday.

Sarah.