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In July 2022, Noelle Gatlin’s life seemed ordinary—busy with work and family, preparing for the upcoming school year as a special education teacher. When she first began feeling sick, she brushed it off as food poisoning. The symptoms came and went, but soon they grew worse. Her gut became distended, and by the following Wednesday, she felt awful. She tried urgent care, where they suggested it was reflux. But within days, the discomfort returned, and she couldn’t lie down at night. Finally, her husband made the decision to take her to the ER—a decision that ultimately saved her life.
An X-ray revealed that her stomach was oversized, and a CT scan discovered a mass had closed Noelle’s small intestine so nothing could pass. “My whole gastric system had basically shut down,” she remembers. Noelle was diagnosed with stage 2 pancreatic cancer. The news was surreal.
“That was a real bummer,” she recalls with a smile. “But then I thought of my children. I knew I had a choice: I could allow this to break me or fight with everything I had. Pardon the pun, but in my gut, I felt that I would be okay.”
A Family’s Strength
The hardest part for Noelle came when she had to tell her parents. “I had never seen my father cry like that before, and witnessing his pain was devastating.” Noelle’s husband stayed strong, but her children amazed her with their strength.
Her oldest, just 20, stepped up to drive her to appointments. Jesse, her 16-year-old, learned how to de-access her port at school. “I would pull him out of class before lunch and he would wash up and help me,” she says. Noelle’s youngest, only 10, declared that one day he wanted to be a biochemist, determined to create chemotherapy drugs that could help others. “My family was my reason to keep going,” she recalls.
Noelle began a grueling chemotherapy schedule, which brought its own challenges. “I had neuropathy in my hands, feet, throat, so some simple tasks were more difficult,” she says. “I had to wear gloves if I got anything out of the freezer and so my kids had to get stuff and thaw it. I felt funny when I would ask for warm water whenever we went out to eat. By the middle of my treatment, I was also dealing with a blood clot in my left lung. Everything in life has challenges—all we can control is our attitude about how we handle them.”
“Everything in life has challenges—all we can control is our attitude about how we handle them.”
—Noelle Gatlin
There were also moments that felt like minor miracles. “The tumor could have been anywhere, but it made itself known,” she says. “Waiting to see if it had spread to my lymph nodes was the most trying time, but luckily, they turned out to be benign.”
Through it all, Noelle remained resilient. After all, she believed she had a choice: cry or laugh, and she chose to laugh. She also had her work to keep her grounded.
As a teacher for over 25 years, Noelle returned to her job just a week after her diagnosis, finding comfort in a small amount of normalcy. “When I have a child overcome a problem, it’s like unwrapping a present on Christmas Day,” she says. “Their breakthroughs reminded me of my own journey—persistence is everything.”
Pushing Through Physical Challenges
In April 2023, Noelle was scheduled for a Whipple procedure with Courtney Scaife, MD, which would hopefully remove all the cancerous cells and prevent it from spreading to other organs. Prior to the procedure, she was told to gain 30 pounds as a precaution. “Joan Elizondo, one of the dietitians at Huntsman Cancer Institute, has been a godsend. I had to put on all this weight but do it in a healthy way since I had a duodenal stent. Her help through the entire process was vital.”
Gatlin remembers walking into the operating room on that snowy day, calm as ever. “I woke up six hours later, and I remember my heart racing with joy just to see the clock.” The surgery had taken a toll—20% of her pancreas was removed, along with her gallbladder and part of her small intestine—but she had made it through. She returned home just before Easter, surrounded by her family, grateful that the hardest part seemed to be over.
Noelle kept going and found more support from her “survival sisters,” six women bonded by their shared experiences with cancer. Together, they walked in PurpleStride—a fundraising event aimed at ending pancreatic cancer, honoring those who have passed, and celebrating survivors. Life had become a gift, and Noelle was embracing it fully, living each day as if it were entirely new.
Another constant in Noelle’s life has been music. A bass player herself, she adopted Muse’s “Won’t Stand Down” as her anthem. “Its defiant lyrics echoed my own determination. I’m owned no longer. I’m growing stronger,” she says. Noelle found power in every note, letting music push her forward through the hardest days.
By November 2023, Noelle’s scans were clear, and in June 2024, her port was finally removed. The journey has been long, but words from her medical oncologist, Ignacio Garrido-Laguna, MD, PhD, rang in her head. “I remember in one of my darkest moments, I asked, ‘What happens next?’ and he said, ‘You walk away from this.’ Now, I have the chance to watch my children grow up, to witness the beauty in each new day. It’s hard to have a bad day when every morning feels like a miracle.”
![[field.image-button-alternative-text]](/huntsmancancerinstitute/sites/g/files/zrelqx336/files/media/images/2024/noelle-beach-wide.jpg "“I have the chance to watch my children grow up, to witness the beauty in each new day. It’s hard to have a bad day when every morning feels like a miracle.” —Noelle Gatlin")