My surgeon told me the tumor was “in retreat.”
Not shrinking. Not stable. In retreat. Like it was backing away from my organs instead of invading them.
This was Dr. George Poultsides at Stanford, about a week after my Whipple surgery in March 2011. I asked him how the operation went. He said it went well. The margins were clean. The tumor came out easier than expected.
Then he said something I’ll never forget: “The tumor was in retreat when I got to it.”
I asked what that meant.
He explained that most pancreatic tumors are actively invading when surgeons operate. Growing. Wrapping around blood vessels. Infiltrating neighboring organs. Aggressive.
Mine wasn’t doing that. It had grown to about 8 centimeters—baseball-sized—but it was pulling back from surrounding tissue instead of pushing into it.
“Something slowed it down,” he said. “Maybe stopped it. Hard to say for sure. But it made the surgery much cleaner than I expected.”
I knew what that something was. Dr. Kunin’s vitamins.
Six Weeks Before Surgery
When I was diagnosed in January 2011, my surgery was scheduled for March. Two months away. Dr. Poultsides wanted to do some additional imaging. Make sure the tumor hadn’t spread. Plan the surgical approach.
During those two months, I wasn’t just waiting. I was working with Dr. Richard Kunin.
Dr. Kunin was Linus Pauling’s partner. Orthomolecular medicine specialist. He believed in using high-dose vitamins as treatment for serious diseases, including cancer.
My surgeon had connected me with him. Said, “You need aggressive nutritional support. Dr. Kunin can help.”
So I started the protocol. Six weeks before surgery. High-dose vitamins. Therapeutic doses. Not the RDA amounts on bottles. Ten times higher. Sometimes more.
Vitamin C. Vitamin D. B-complex. Zinc. Selenium. Other supplements I’d never heard of.
I took handfuls of pills every day. Thirty pills. Forty pills. I lost count. Just followed the protocol exactly.
I didn’t know if it was doing anything. I felt slightly better. Slightly more energy. But I still had a tumor. I was still dying.
Then I had surgery. And Dr. Poultsides said the tumor was in retreat.
What “In Retreat” Actually Means
After the surgery, I did more research on what Dr. Poultsides meant.
Pancreatic tumors are aggressive. They grow fast. They invade local tissue. They wrap around major blood vessels. That’s what makes them so deadly and so hard to remove surgically.
When a tumor is “in retreat,” it means it’s pulling back from surrounding structures. The invasion has stopped. Maybe reversed slightly. The tumor is more contained. Easier to remove with clean margins.
Dr. Poultsides said he’d seen this a few times before in patients who’d done aggressive nutritional protocols before surgery. Not common. But not unheard of.
He couldn’t prove the vitamins caused it. Could have been the tumor’s natural progression. Could have been my immune system mounting a defense. Could have been luck.
But the timing was suspicious. Six weeks of high-dose vitamins. Then a tumor that was easier to remove than expected.
The Velcro Sound
Dr. Poultsides also told me the tumor made a sound when he removed it. Like pulling apart velcro.
“Loudest separation noise I’ve heard in a while,” he said.
That sound meant the tumor was separating cleanly from my organs. Not tearing. Not bleeding excessively. Just peeling away.
That’s what you want in cancer surgery. Clean separation. Clear margins. No microscopic cancer cells left behind.
The velcro sound was proof that the tumor had stopped invading. It was sitting there, contained, waiting to be removed.
Was that because of Dr. Kunin’s vitamins? I can’t prove it. But I believe it.
Dr. Kunin’s Theory
I asked Dr. Kunin after surgery what he thought happened.
He said high-dose vitamins, especially vitamin C and D, can slow cancer growth. They support immune function. They create an environment where cancer cells struggle to thrive.
He said six weeks wasn’t enough time to shrink a tumor. But it might be enough time to stop it from growing. To stabilize it. To put it in a defensive posture instead of an offensive one.
“The body wants to heal,” he said. “You just have to give it the tools it needs.”
The vitamins were the tools. My body used them to slow the tumor down. Long enough for surgery to remove it completely.
What the Pathology Report Said
The pathology report after surgery confirmed what Dr. Poultsides observed. Clean margins. No invasion into major blood vessels. Twenty-nine lymph nodes removed and tested. All negative.
The tumor was large. Stage 3-4 Acinar Cell Carcinoma. Aggressive type. Should have been worse than it was.
But it wasn’t. It was contained. Removable. The surgery was successful.
I’m convinced the vitamins played a role. Not the only role. But a role.
Fourteen Years Later
I’ve been cancer-free for 14 years. No recurrence. Clean scans every year.
I still take high-dose vitamins. Every single day. I never stopped after surgery. Dr. Kunin’s protocol became my protocol. For life.
Could I have survived without the vitamins? Maybe. The surgery was excellent. The surgeon was skilled. The chemo worked.
But I think the vitamins gave me an edge. They slowed the tumor before surgery. They supported my body during recovery. They’ve kept me healthy for 14 years.
I can’t prove cause and effect. But I also can’t ignore the results.
What Dr. Poultsides Said
At my last checkup with Dr. Poultsides, I asked him if he still thought the tumor was in retreat when he removed it.
He pulled up my old surgical notes. Read through them. Nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I saw. Tumor was pulling back. Made the surgery cleaner. You got lucky.”
I didn’t feel lucky. I felt like the vitamins worked.
But maybe luck and preparation are the same thing. I prepared my body. The tumor retreated. The surgery succeeded.
Fourteen years later, I’m still here. Still taking vitamins. Still cancer-free.
That’s not luck. That’s strategy.
What This Means for You
If you’re diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and you have time before surgery, consider aggressive nutritional support.
I’m not saying vitamins will cure cancer. They won’t. You still need surgery. You still need chemo. You still need medical treatment.
But vitamins might give you an edge. They might slow the tumor. They might make the surgery cleaner. They might support your body during treatment.
Dr. Kunin is gone. But his protocol lives on. High-dose vitamin C. Vitamin D. B-complex. Zinc. Selenium. Therapeutic doses based on blood work.
It’s not a miracle cure. It’s a tool. One tool in a larger treatment plan.
But it’s a tool that might have saved my life.
The Tumor That Retreated
My tumor was in retreat when Dr. Poultsides removed it. Six weeks after I started Dr. Kunin’s vitamin protocol.
Coincidence? Maybe.
But I don’t think so.
The vitamins gave my body what it needed to fight. To slow the tumor. To contain it long enough for surgery to remove it completely.
Fourteen years later, I’m still taking those vitamins. Still cancer-free. Still believing they made the difference.
My tumor retreated. My surgeon noticed. My life was saved.
That’s the story. That’s what happened. That’s why I’ll never stop taking vitamins.
When you’re ready to implement an aggressive nutritional protocol, the Complete Whipple Survival Guide includes the vitamin strategies I used before and after surgery, based on Dr. Kunin’s orthomolecular approach. $49 PDF.
Ready to track your recovery? I’ve logged 15,000+ meals in spreadsheets for 14 years. WhippleTracker makes it automatic—track Creon, meals, and symptoms in seconds. See patterns that optimize your recovery. Try WhippleTracker (Free Beta) →