Cancer Diaries: Agency In The Face Of The Unthinkable— Negotiating With My Own New Body

One surgeon looked at my scans and said the word you never want to hear: unresectable. She wasn’t unkind; she was honest, brutally. Her advice was simple and devastating: maybe this isn’t something you want to put yourself through. Perhaps I should have thought more about what she said… but I didn’t. The will to survive was strong in me. Later I randomly watched an unlikely Netflix show, The Life List, in which a successful matriarch chose not to fight cancer again and decided to spend her last days on her own terms, without chemo, radiation, the knife… all the indignities that come along with the treatment. There’s a dignity in that choice. I understand it better now.

But something in me refused to surrender. That was months ago— before the chemo, before the radiation, before the endless bloodwork and the constant recalculations of risk and hope. Before I knew that the only way forward would be through an ordeal that would strip me down to nothing… and then demand more.

Doctors call this phase “treatment.” To the medical profession, it’s a protocol, a set of steps to prepare the body for what comes next. But to the patient, it’s something very different. It’s the siege before the storm. It’s waking up every day knowing the medicine meant to save you is also the thing making you too weak to walk across the room. It can be nausea that feels permanent. It’s wondering, as you sit in the chemo chair for the fifth, tenth, twelfth time, whether all this punishment will even buy you the surgery everyone says is the only real chance.

I called it The Ordeal. Because that’s what it was— a battle fought quietly, mostly alone, just to earn a ticket to the operating room.

This may sound a bit dramatic but the day of surgery arrived like a distant thunderclap— impossible to ignore, impossible to prepare for fully. To the surgical team, it was a series of calculated steps: anesthesia, incision, precision, reconstruction. Every move measured, every decision informed by years of experience and expertise. Success, in their eyes, would be clear margins, stable vitals, a patient who made it through the OR alive.

To me, it was a plunge into the unknown. Hours stretched endlessly under bright lights I couldn’t see, my body rearranged while consciousness ebbed in and out. The clock didn’t matter, but the gravity of what was happening pressed down as if time itself were holding me hostage.

Waking up was… disorienting. My body felt alien. Tubes, drains, and monitors reminded me that my anatomy was no longer mine alone. Pain was immediate and sharp, yet somehow muted by the haze of anesthesia. The medical team moved around me with precision and care, their confidence a quiet tether to reality, somewhat reassuring. No one could do this without them.

And yet, even as the surgery was declared a success— the tumor removed, the pathology clear, the vital signs stable— I felt the truth that no chart or note could capture: I was utterly changed. The Reckoning wasn’t over. It had begun. My survival was, more or less, guaranteed, but my life wasn't restored. Every breath, every movement, every swallow of food would now be a negotiation with a body that had been broken and rebuilt.

The Whipple had been won on the table, but the war with my body was only just beginning.

Doctors call it “recovery.” A tidy word, clinical and neat, as if it could capture weeks and months of upheaval in a single phrase. But it doesn’t. Recovery isn’t a return to what was. It’s a new existence, defined, like I said, by limitations and constant negotiation with a body that has been remade. 

Fatigue becomes a constant companion, creeping in unbidden, demanding attention, forcing rest even when the mind refuses. Eating is no longer automatic— it’s a careful choreography, each bite measured, each swallow negotiated. Food that once brought pleasure can bring fear, discomfort, even pain. The rhythms of daily life shift, recalibrated to the needs of a body still healing.

There are moments of quiet triumph: a short walk that once would have been effortless, a meal finished with relative relish, an afternoon or evening of conversation that doesn’t end in collapse. But there are also moments of profound frustration, when my own expectations collide with the reality of new limitations.

My mind-blowing medical team continues to monitor, guide, reassure. Their success is real and necessary, but it cannot alone convey the complexity of what it means to inhabit a body that has been through this. The charts are clean, the labs are stable, the tumor gone, but the patient’s life— my life— is forever changed.

The Return isn’t a finish line as much as a  slow reconstruction of self, a reintroduction to the world through a body and mind that have been tested beyond imagination. And through it all, I’ve carried this meditation sent by a friend— words that became a quiet anchor when much of the rest felt unmoored:

“May Howie find ease in his body and calm in his mind.

May the pain lessen enough for him to breathe, to rest, to regain strength.

May the people who care for him bring skill, patience, and steady hands.

May he feel he is not alone in this— held in the thoughts of those who want him well.

May each day bring him even a small step toward relief and healing.”

It is both prayer and promise, a reminder that while this fight is mine, I am not fighting alone. In the midst of personal struggle, it’s impossible not to notice the broader currents in the world. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat has observed, a diseased or weakened population is easier to control— a lesson history and authoritarian regimes repeatedly teach. Some public figures exploit fear, misinformation, and health crises for power. Surviving this ordeal has reminded me how precious agency is, and how fiercely it must be protected, in our bodies and in our societies alike.