James Two years after my Whipple surgery, I still felt like garbage. I’d survived the cancer. Made it through nine months of chemo. My scans were clean. Doctors said I was doing great. But I had zero energy. I couldn’t work a full day without crashing. I’d sleep ten hours and wake up exhausted. My body … Read more
I have a spreadsheet with 14 years of meals in it. Every breakfast. Every lunch. Every dinner. Every snack. What I ate. How much Creon I took. How I felt afterward. 5,110 days of data. Over 15,000 meals logged. Symptoms tracked. Patterns identified. Everything documented. It’s obsessive. I know. But it’s also the reason I’m … Read more
I thought I was pissing the bed. That’s what it looked like at 3am when I’d wake up soaked. Not damp. Not sweaty. Soaked. Like someone dumped a bucket of water on my chest and stomach while I slept. The first few times it happened, I actually checked to make sure I hadn’t lost control … Read more
I used to drink beer. Not heavily. Just normal social drinking. A few beers on the weekend. Occasional cocktails. Wine with dinner sometimes. Then I had a Whipple surgery. Lost half my pancreas. And alcohol became impossible. I tried drinking again about a year post-surgery. One beer. Felt like absolute garbage for two days afterward. … Read more
I have a scan scheduled for next month. I’ve known about it for three months. It’s marked on my calendar. Annual follow-up. Routine surveillance. Just a check to make sure everything’s still clear. And I’m already nervous. Already playing out scenarios in my head. Already wondering if this is the year they find something. I’ve … Read more
Year 14. You’d think I’d have it all figured out by now. I’ve tracked over 15,000 meals. Run thousands of experiments. Optimized my Creon dosing. Built a vitamin protocol that works. Created systems for everything. Fourteen years of data. Fourteen years of patterns. Fourteen years of learning how my rearranged body functions. And I’m still … Read more
I have half a pancreas. Not metaphorically. Literally. Half. They removed the other half during my Whipple surgery in 2011. The doctors explained what that meant before surgery. “You’ll need to take enzyme pills with every meal. You might develop diabetes. Your digestion will be different.” That’s the sanitized medical version. The brochure explanation. Here’s … Read more
I can eat scrambled eggs. I cannot eat fried eggs. I can eat white rice. I cannot eat brown rice. I can eat chicken breast. I cannot eat chicken thighs. After 14 years post-Whipple, I have a very specific list of foods that work and foods that destroy me. The difference between the two is … Read more
Two years. That’s how long it took before I woke up one morning and felt like myself again. Not 80% myself. Not “pretty good considering.” Actually myself. Everyone told me recovery would take six months. Maybe a year at most. Get through surgery. Get through chemo. Then you’ll bounce back. They were wrong. Or maybe … Read more
The nightmares were worse than the diagnosis. For about eight months before my Whipple surgery, I had the same dream almost every night. I was dying. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes fast. But always dying. I’d wake up at 2am or 4am, heart pounding, drenched in sweat, convinced it was real. Then I’d remember I was in … Read more