My name is Bill and I have had the Whipple procedure because of pancreatic cancer. It was complicated by the need to resection a vein, a complication that had rendered me inoperable and hence terminal for eleven months. The critical event in that chain of circumstances was the day my oncologist and I had a conversation about how long I would be on chemotherapy for the cancer. He said simply that I would be on chemo until I died because I was inoperable and he had never heard of anyone surviving pancreatic cancer without the Whipple procedure being performed on them to remove the caner and rearrange their innards. I already knew what the Whipple procedure was, it is roughly a name for an array of operations that start with removing the head of the pancreas and then removing or resectioning other organs to minimize the recurrence of cancer. I decided to verify his medical opinion and see what I found in the process.
I went home and went to work on the web and on the phone. I called the National cancer Society and asked for stats on pancreatic patients who had survived without surgery, the answer was based on a medical textbook and was zero. So I continued searching for mortality rates and the various ways they might be stated. amongst the thousands of pages mentioned was one that said something about “offering hope to those 35% of pancreatic cancer patients who are considered inoperable”. Since it did not go to my search purpose I made a mental note, checked out the site and moved on. That site jumped to the fore a week later and I talked to my wife about it. I asked if I should call, she emphasized that I should. So I did. With some interchanges I eventually got a consult and then the operation was scheduled for late February. In between were a lot of emotional events that took me from the highest to the lowest points of my life.
I am now a pancreatic cancer survivor and a Whipplet and a miracle. I will tell my story on these electronic pages, what has already happened and the rest of my story as it happens. I will neither varnish it nor make any attempt to serve any other purpose than to tell my story. It is my story, what I lived and what I am going through. If you are facing the Whipple procedure or know someone who is, I hope you find my experience and observations useful, even possibly informative. I might refer to some medical writings occasionally when I need to make a point but mostly I will tell you what happened to me. I will not write a typical story, but I will tell my story, and be brutally honest about it. Neither will I read my previous posts prior to posting. If I say the same thing three days in a row, that is what I am thinking three days in a row. If you want to see where this all began, go to http://viewingreality.blogspot.com and see what I wrote there about my pancreatic cancer adventure, from diagnosis to the Whipple procedure and getting my life back. I may write more there, but I will write here as well, just different stuff. Now to wrest that life from the ravages of the Whipple procedure and write about it as I do so.
