INTERVIEW: ‘Star Trek’ actor Kitty Swink on being a pancreatic cancer survivor and advocate

Photo: Kitty Swink, who appeared on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, is now an advocate for the community impacted by pancreatic cancer. Photo courtesy of artist / Provided by Smithhouse Strategy with permission.

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Kitty Swink, the accomplished actor who has performed in a great number of roles over the years, is not performing when she says she’s committed to raising awareness about pancreatic cancer. Swink, an alumna of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where she played multiple characters, is a survivor of pancreatic cancer, and she will appear at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s Voices in Action fundraising event, set for Monday, June 14.

Joining Swink at the virtual event will be her husband, Armin Shimerman, who played Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Jonathan Frakes, known for his role as William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation and the new Star Trek: Picard.

“I think anytime I can tell the story and it can help other people, I’m happy to tell it,” Swink said in a recent phone interview. “I was 49. I was incredibly fit and healthy, but I was under a lot of stress.”

Back then, a personal friend of Swink’s was dying from lung cancer in the hospital, and she was becoming the guardian of her father, who had Alzheimer’s. When she started experiencing some physical discomfort, she thought she might have been burning the candle at both ends, as they say.

“I called my doctor, and they could get me in like two weeks,” she remembers. “But the next morning, they called and said, ‘We had a cancellation. Do you want to come in?’ And I went the next morning, and she said, ‘Well, you probably have acid reflux. You’re under a lot of pressure — blah, blah, blah — but let’s just do some tests.’ Over the weekend my urine turned brown, and on Monday, in the cavalcade of bad stuff, I was at a funeral for a friend of mine’s son. And I went to the wake afterward, and when I got home from the wake, there was a message from my doctor saying, ‘Go to the hospital right now. Your kidneys and your liver are shutting down.’”

Swink began a journey at that moment in her life that had a lot of uncertainty, but she stayed strong and powered through. She took the advice of the doctor and headed to the waiting room, where she actually turned yellow and underwent a battery of tests. The diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, and little more than two weeks later, she left that hospital after having a whipple procedure.

“I was missing half my stomach, my gallbladder, a couple feet of my intestines, a big chunk of my pancreas and 28 lymph nodes,” she said. “But here I am 17 years later, and I’m well and so incredibly lucky to be alive. I have great doctors, a great husband, fabulous friends. I am so clear that I have to do everything I can to help other people because I was given such a gift.”

And that’s exactly what Swink, Shimerman and Frakes will do June 14. Swink will relay this story to her fans and those who are experiencing similar challenges. After the surgery and her release from the hospital, the actor had six months of chemo treatment and radiation. It was a time in her life she won’t soon forget, and she is comfortable talking to others about it because she’s on a mission to raise awareness and save lives.

“For me, early detection is an enormous thing,” Swink said. “I’m not a doctor, but I am a survivor. So many people die of pancreatic cancer because it’s not detected early.”

At the virtual event, she and others from PanCAN will talk about early detection and finding doctors who are “up on pancreatic cancer in a significant way,” as she put it. “So if we can start testing people who have histories of pancreatic cancer in their family, genetic testing, if we can start saying to somebody who gets diabetes all of a sudden in their 50s, maybe we should check to see if they have pancreatic cancer, I think all of those things will make the survival rate much higher,” she said. “I was lucky to be operable at stage two, and I was lucky to survive. And I was lucky to be able to have such aggressive treatment so early because I was younger than most people who get this cancer, and I was fitter than most people who get this cancer. … So there’s so many things we can do to help people, and I think PanCAN has done a beautiful job.”

For Swink, she will not rest until the survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 100 percent. Yes, raising money for research is important, but she’s also interested in building a community and taking this important story to the halls of Congress. She wants both those who support PanCAN and Star Trek fans to write congresspeople and get creative on how to get the word out on this unique form of cancer.

“Every time we reach out into the community and make that connection, we’re helping the next person along the line,” Swink said. “I believe that communication is everything, but I’m an actor for a living.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Kitty Swink, Armin Shimerman and Jonathan Frakes will appear at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s Voices in Action event Monday, June 14 at 5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. EST. Click here to register.