If you're diagnosed with leukemia, you may have a 65% survival rate in the US; provided with early detection and competent treatment.

This is from the LDS News room about a young sister missionary who recently passed away. -It is with sadness that we share the news of the death of a young missionary assigned to the Honduras San Pedro Sula West Mission. Sister Maria Jose Chavez Garcia, age 20, passed away on the evening of Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Sister Chavez began feeling ill a few days ago and was admitted to the hospital where she was diagnosed with leukemia. Doctors began emergency treatment, but she suffered complications and passed away.

I continue to advocate that missionaries need routine health screenings while serving to assure that they are indeed in good health to do the church's work. I lost a missionary companion 30 years ago to pancreatic cancer and it still bothers me that it was too late to help him. Heaven doesn't need any more young people who were "needed on the other side."

checks on their health.

I'm not 100% certain about this, but I think pancreatic cancer is pretty much terminal. There may be other things they can do to extend their life, but it is a horrible cancer.

I was my aunt's [my mother's sister] primary caregiver as she went through the extended death process (several months) of pancreatic cancer. (Basically: I moved to Escondido, where my aunt lived, for the duration.)

Despite excellent medical care, it was a very, VERY bad process.

As medically sound, scientific knowledge continues to be discovered about this horrible disease, I urge anyone here to please change your lifestyle in whatever ways appear to fend off pancreatic cancer from occurring in the first place.

There are countless ways to die, but pancreatic cancer would not be one that anyone would want to happen to them.

It distresses me when young missionaries are made to feel that they must put off needed medical or dental care. If I had to give a missionary some advice before they depart from their mission, that would be at the top of the list: Look out for your own health, because there is no guarantee that anyone else will. Insist on seeing a qualified doctor promptly to get a proper diagnosis. And call home if anyone attempts to interfere with your getting needed treatment.

It might be that nothing could be done for this particular sister missionary, but other missionaries could benefit from this advice.