Patrick Swayze's Widow Felt 'Like a Nail Was Hammered in My Own Coffin' After His Cancer Diagnosis (Exclusive)
Lisa Niemi Swayze works with leading pancreatic cancer nonprofit PanCAN to help raise awareness of the disease in honor of her late husband
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Lisa Niemi Swayze is turning grief into action.
The classically trained dancer, 67, who was married to Dirty Dancing star Patrick Swayze from 1975 until his death at the age of 57, has teamed up with leading non profit Pancreatic Cancer Action Network to help raise awareness of the disease and increase funding for research.
“My connection with PanCAN is because it's in honor of Patrick, because I want to finish the fight that he fought so hard for, fought so hard to win. And just because he is gone, it doesn't mean it's over, and I want to keep it going for him,” Lisa tells PEOPLE exclusively.
The organization is currently gearing up for their PurpleStride event to end pancreatic cancer on April 27. The walk will take place in over 60 communities nationwide with some 70,000 expected to participate.
Related: Patrick Swayze's Widow on Their Love 14 Years After His Death: It 'Doesn't End Your Relationship'
Lisa will take part in the Los Angeles walk, where she’ll also be speaking. She still remembers the first PanCAN event she attended shortly after Patrick’s death in 2009.
“When I got up to speak, I was like, 'If I start weeping in the middle of this, just know that I need to check out for a moment, and then I'll come back to y'all,' because it was really difficult. I have deep admiration for everybody that shows up on these walks and continues this fight and continues the awareness, because it's not easy," she says. "It brings up all these very painful feelings, like it does for me still. But you know what? We do it because we care about the ones who are in the fight. We care about the ones that we lost.”
In the time since Patrick was diagnosed in 2008, the survival rate has risen from 6% to 13%, but Lisa says “we’ve got to do better than that.”
She adds that the Roadhouse actor "knew" immediately that his odds of survival against stage four pancreatic cancer weren't great, and, even though it's been more than a decade, she'll never forget the moment both of their lives changed forever.
“It was the worst night of my life,” she says. “I know [Patrick] said, ‘I'm a dead man,’ but for me even, that night, I slept in the hospital room with him on the cot. I felt like a nail was being hammered into my own coffin. Your life turns on a dime and there's no escaping the reality of what that diagnosis means. It’s just awful. It's just a dreadful moment.”
Goffredo di Crollalanza/FilmMagic
Patrick Swayze with his wife Lisa Niemi during "Keeping Mum" London PremiereEarly detection is a problem, says Lisa, so for people like Patrick, the cancer is already well advanced by the time doctors find it.
"It was impossible to turn around at that point," she explains, "although he miraculously managed to survive 22 months after that."
Lisa, who married jeweler Albert DePrisco in 2014, says that Patrick is "still with her" today, but the byproduct of such everlasting love was the intense grief she faced in the immediate aftermath of his death.
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“I am amazed how people survive losing someone they love. That's one of the things that got me through. Like, ‘Hey, wait a minute. People do this all the time. If they could do it, so can I,’” Lisa recalls telling herself.
She adds: “And that's as painful as it is because I thought, ‘This is going to kill me. Grief is going to kill me.’ But you know what? It doesn't kill everybody. If they can do it, so can I.”
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