My surgeon told me the tumor made a sound when he pulled it out.
Not a big dramatic moment. Just a casual comment during my follow-up appointment a week after surgery. I asked him how the operation went. He said it went well. The tumor was “in retreat.”
Then he made a gesture with his hands, like pulling apart velcro, and said, “Loudest separation noise I’ve heard in a while.”
I sat there in the exam room trying to process that. My tumor made a noise. A velcro noise. When he ripped it away from my organs.
That image has lived in my head for 14 years.
The Follow-Up Appointment
I was still pretty messed up a week after surgery. Moving slowly. Still on pain meds. My abdomen looked like someone had gone at me with a machete.
But I wanted to know what the surgery had been like. What Dr. Poultsides had found when he opened me up. Whether it was as bad as the scans suggested.
He sat down with my pathology report and started going through the details. Half my stomach, gone. Half my pancreas, gone. Part of my liver, gone. Spleen, gone. Fourteen inches of intestines, gone. Twenty-nine lymph nodes removed and tested.
The tumor itself was about the size of a baseball. Acinar Cell Carcinoma. Same type that killed Steve Jobs. Aggressive. But contained.
“The good news,” Dr. Poultsides said, “is that the tumor was in retreat when I got to it.”
I asked what that meant.
“In Retreat”
He explained that sometimes tumors are actively invading surrounding tissue. Growing. Spreading. Wrapping around blood vessels and organs like they own the place.
My tumor wasn’t doing that. It had grown to about 8 centimeters, but it was pulling back. Separating from the surrounding organs instead of invading deeper.
He said it might have been the vitamin protocol I’d started with Dr. Kunin before surgery. High-dose vitamin C. Vitamin D. The orthomolecular approach. Something was slowing the tumor’s growth. Maybe even reversing it slightly.
Or maybe it was just the tumor’s natural progression. Some tumors grow fast and then plateau. Nobody knows for sure.
But whatever the reason, when Dr. Poultsides went to remove it, the tumor came away relatively cleanly.
That’s when he made the velcro gesture.
The Velcro Sound
“It made a noise,” he said. “When I separated it from the pancreas and liver. Like pulling apart velcro. Loudest one I’ve heard in a while.”
He said it matter-of-factly. Like this was a normal thing surgeons talked about. The sounds tumors make when you remove them.
I didn’t know what to say. So I just nodded.
He continued. The separation was clean. Good margins. No obvious invasion into the major blood vessels. The tumor had been pressing on things, displacing organs, but not infiltrating the way aggressive tumors usually do.
He removed everything with clear margins. Sent twenty-nine lymph nodes for testing. All came back negative. No cancer spread.
“You got lucky,” he said. “This could have been much worse.”
I asked him what would have happened if the tumor hadn’t been in retreat. If it had been actively invading.
He said the surgery would have been more complicated. Maybe impossible. Some tumors wrap around the portal vein or superior mesenteric artery. Once they do that, you can’t remove them without killing the patient.
My tumor hadn’t done that. It was sitting there, growing but not spreading, waiting to be removed.
The velcro sound was proof. A clean separation. Tissue that pulled apart instead of ripping and bleeding and tearing.
I Asked If He’d Saved It
This is going to sound weird, but I asked Dr. Poultsides if he’d saved the tumor.
I wanted to see it. The thing that had been growing inside me for who knows how long. The thing that had tried to kill me. The thing that made a velcro sound when he ripped it out.
He laughed. Said no, they don’t save tumors. Everything gets sent to pathology, tested, then disposed of as medical waste.
But he understood why I wanted to see it. A lot of patients ask. It’s this thing that’s been living inside you, destroying your life, and you never get to actually look at it.
It’s abstract. Invisible. You see scans and images but you never see the actual physical mass.
I think I wanted to see it so I could know it was really gone. So I could have visual confirmation that the thing wasn’t inside me anymore.
But all I got was Dr. Poultsides’ description. Baseball-sized. Encapsulated. In retreat. Made a velcro sound.
That had to be enough.
What “In Retreat” Actually Meant
Later, after I’d recovered and started doing my own research, I learned more about what “in retreat” actually means.
Some tumors grow aggressively and then stabilize. The body’s immune system starts fighting back. Or some intervention, like vitamin therapy or diet changes, starts slowing the growth.
The tumor doesn’t shrink necessarily. But it stops actively invading. It becomes more contained. Easier to remove surgically.
Dr. Kunin’s vitamin protocol had started about six weeks before my surgery. High-dose vitamin C. Vitamin D3 at 10,000 IU per day. Other supplements designed to support immune function and slow cancer growth.
Did that put my tumor in retreat? Maybe. Dr. Poultsides thought it was possible.
Or maybe the tumor had naturally reached a plateau. Maybe my body’s immune system was finally mounting an effective defense.
Nobody knows for sure. But something changed between the initial scans and the surgery. The tumor went from actively threatening my life to sitting there waiting to be removed.
And when Dr. Poultsides pulled it out, it came away clean. With a velcro sound.
The Sound I’ll Never Hear
I’ve tried to imagine what it sounded like. The velcro separation. Tissue pulling apart. My tumor detaching from my pancreas and liver.
I’ve pulled apart actual velcro trying to recreate it in my head. The ripping sound. The resistance. The final separation.
But I’ll never really know what it sounded like. I was unconscious. Intubated. Cut open on an operating table.
Dr. Poultsides heard it. The surgical team heard it. But I didn’t.
All I got was the description. And the aftermath. The proof that the tumor was gone.
Sometimes I wonder if other surgeons comment on the sounds tumors make. If it’s a common thing in operating rooms. Or if Dr. Poultsides just happened to mention it because it was particularly loud.
Either way, it’s become part of my story. The tumor that made a velcro sound. The tumor that was in retreat. The tumor that came out clean.
Fourteen Years Later
I haven’t had a recurrence in 14 years. The margins were clear. The lymph nodes were negative. The tumor came out in one piece with a velcro sound.
Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I’d waited longer to get surgery. If the tumor had kept growing instead of retreating. If it had wrapped around blood vessels or invaded deeper into my liver.
Dr. Poultsides might not have been able to remove it. Or the surgery would have been so extensive I wouldn’t have survived recovery.
But none of that happened. The timing was right. The tumor was in retreat. And when he pulled it out, it made a sound that told him everything was going to be okay.
I never heard the velcro sound. But I’m alive because of what that sound meant.
Clean separation. Good margins. Successful surgery.
What This Means for You
If you’re about to have a Whipple, or any major cancer surgery, ask your surgeon afterward what they found.
Not just the pathology results. Not just the clinical details. Ask them what the surgery was actually like. What they saw. What surprised them. What went well.
Surgeons see things in the operating room that patients never know about. They have insights into your specific case that don’t always make it into the medical records.
Dr. Poultsides telling me about the velcro sound and the tumor being in retreat gave me confidence that the surgery had been successful. That everything that needed to come out had come out cleanly.
It’s a small detail. But it mattered. It gave me a mental image of the tumor separating from my body. A clean break. A fresh start.
Your surgeon might have similar details about your surgery. Small observations that can give you peace of mind.
Ask. Listen. And trust that when they say it went well, they mean it.
The Tumor That Made a Sound
I tell people sometimes that my tumor made a velcro sound when my surgeon removed it. They usually laugh or look confused.
But to me, it’s proof. Proof that the tumor wasn’t invincible. Proof that it could be separated from my body. Proof that I was going to live.
Dr. Poultsides could have just said the surgery went well. That the margins were clear. That everything looked good.
But he gave me the detail about the sound. And that detail has stayed with me for 14 years.
Because it wasn’t just a tumor being removed. It was the sound of my life being saved.
A velcro sound. Loud. Clean. Final.
The sound of separation. The sound of survival.
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