James I bought jeans at Target the day after I finished chemo. Nothing fancy. Just regular jeans that fit my current body. Size 34 waist. Dark blue. On sale for $19.99. I stood in the fitting room staring at myself in the mirror wearing pants that actually fit, and I thought: “Since I’m going to live, … Read more
I haven’t been hospitalized in six months. That might not sound impressive unless you know that before I developed my ChatGPT system, I was ending up in the ER every few months for something. Dehydration. Vitamin deficiency. Electrolyte imbalance. Some new crisis my body decided to throw at me. For 13 years after my Whipple … Read more
My mouth would fill with saliva like someone turned on a faucet. That’s how I knew I had five minutes to get to a bathroom before I’d be vomiting stomach lining. Not food. Not bile. Stomach lining. Actual pieces of my digestive system that my body decided it didn’t need anymore. The saliva was the … Read more
I’m 14 years cancer-free. Physically, I’m doing great. Blood work is optimal. Energy is stable. Body is functional. Mentally? That’s more complicated. Because cancer survival isn’t just a physical battle. It’s a mental game that never ends. Even when you’re cured. Even when scans are clean. Even when doctors say you’re in the clear. The … Read more
Doctors taught me a lot after my Whipple surgery. How the procedure worked. What organs were removed. How to take Creon. When to call if something went wrong. All useful information. All medically accurate. All insufficient. Because doctors can teach you the mechanics. But they can’t teach you how to actually live in a rearranged … Read more
Twenty-two pills. Every single day. For 14 years. That’s over 112,000 pills since my Whipple surgery in 2011. Not an exaggeration. Actual math. People see me taking handfuls of pills and ask what’s wrong with me. “Are you sick?” No. I’m not sick. I’m optimized. Those 22 pills are the reason I’m functional. The reason … Read more
I survived my Whipple surgery. That’s what the first two years were. Pure survival. Waking up every day. Taking my pills. Eating what I could. Resting when exhausted. Repeating. I was alive. That was better than the alternative. But I wasn’t living. I was just existing. Getting through each day. Hoping tomorrow would be slightly … Read more
Six months. That’s what the doctors told me. “Six months and you’ll be back to normal,” they said after my Whipple surgery. “Maybe a year at most. Just give it time.” It took two years before I felt like myself again. Two years before I had consistent energy. Two years before I could work full … Read more
I rang that bell so hard I thought I might break it. Nine months of cisplatin chemo. Twenty-seven infusions. Hundreds of hours sitting in a chair with poison dripping into my veins. And on my last day at UCSF, I got to ring the bell. If you’ve never been through cancer treatment, you might not … Read more
I was disappearing. Six months after my Whipple surgery, I’d lost 45 pounds. I was eating constantly—six small meals a day, protein shakes between meals, forcing myself to eat even when I wasn’t hungry. And I kept losing weight. My doctors said “just eat more calories.” My family said “you need to eat more.” Everyone … Read more