Patrick Swayze is apparently suffering from pancreatic cancer and is currently receiving treatment. According to reports he's been suffering from it for a few months.

The story appeared in tabloids and gossip sites in the latter part of the day, but has only just been confirmed by a more reliable source, The New York Post, closely followed by the actor's publicist.

I caught this story when it first broke on the Internet (see Filmstalker Readers), but I decided to stay away from it for a number of reasons, the first was that it was a complete rumour, coming as it did from The National Enquirer.

The second was that the way the story was written it was sure to cause great distress to family and friends, it seemed overly callous and incredibly final.

The celebrity gossip story was just the same from site to site, Patrick Swayze was incredibly ill they said and that it was set to kill him within months. They would then leap into a retrospective of his career, as though he was already dead.

With someone in my family undergoing similar treatment, I know how I would feel if something like this came out. This is why I loathe celebrity gossip like this and why I like to keep this sort of poor excuse for news off of the site.

However, now that his illness is confirmed by a less gossip type source, The New York Post through Reuters and Yahoo News, who cite a representative of the actor, I feel I have to write something, and not an overly negative and final piece.

Patrick Swayze is an icon of cinema. Sure he may not be in the same class as Robert De Niro or Marlon Brando, but he is undoubtedly an icon none the less.

How could anyone deny the impact and popularity of Dirty Dancing, Roadhouse, Ghost, Point Break, To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, or even Red Dawn.

There's already an update as I've been writing this. A statement has just been made according to UK's television Five news, and it contradicts the overly negative view of the tabloid press who have been claiming he has weeks to live saying that the outlook is much more optimistic. The statement appears to have been made to TMZ by Swayze's doctor, Dr. George Fisher through the actor's publicist:

"Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment thus far. All of the reports stating the timeframe of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue. We are considerably more optimistic."

How terrible it must be to read the previous tabloid reports at a time like this, what can people like that be thinking?

Let me say this, and let me write this as positively as I can, I wish you, your friends and your family the strongest and speediest recovery that I possibly can, and I know that my ill family member would also say the same, she is another Patrick Swayze fan.

I'm sure that all the Filmstalker regulars will also back me on those sentiments too.