On July 23 2026, my wife Beverly was two years out from Whipple surgery for pancreatic cancer. And today, as I write this, she is still NED — No Evidence of Disease. Those three letters have become extraordinarily important to us.
Two years.
There were plenty of moments along the way when it was difficult to imagine getting here. There were moments when it was difficult to imagine getting through the next week, much less the next two years.
Pancreatic cancer still casts a long shadow over our lives. I don't know that the shadow ever completely goes away. Every six months there are scans, blood tests and the inevitable "scanxiety" that comes with them. Pancreatic cancer has a nasty habit of returning, often in the liver or lungs, and we're very aware of the statistics.
But we also know this: Beverly is here. She walks more than three miles almost every day. She's happy. We're living our lives again. Our lives are mostly normal. And after everything that happened, "normal" feels pretty damn wonderful.
February 15, 2024
There is a terrible symmetry to the date Beverly was diagnosed. Her father, Paul, died of colon cancer in our home on February 15, 2023. Exactly one year later, on February 15, 2024, Beverly received the phone call telling her that she had pancreatic adenocarcinoma. To the day.
By then, we knew something was very wrong. Beverly had been experiencing abdominal pain since the previous October. During Super Bowl weekend in February, the pain suddenly became much worse and began radiating upward. She became concerned that she might be having a heart attack, so we went to the emergency room.
The attending physician was an older fellow who initially told us something to the effect of, "You basically have to be bleeding out for us to admit you." Then her blood work came back. He admitted her immediately.
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| Bev's mom Jan and step-dad Jim came from Vegas right away. |
The next day became a blur of tests — an ultrasound, CT scan and eventually an endoscopic biopsy. Before we had the biopsy result, we had already seen the words that terrified us: A lesion on the pancreas suspicious for adenocarcinoma.
"Suspicious for" leaves you a tiny crack through which hope can squeeze. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's something else. Maybe there's some benign explanation. But both of us feared the worst.
Beverly was discharged, and on the 15th the gastroenterologist called. It was pancreatic cancer. One year to the day after her father's death.
Welcome to the Whirlwind
Once you hear "pancreatic cancer," life changes immediately. Suddenly you're navigating oncologists, surgeons, hospitals, insurance companies, scans, pathology reports, treatment protocols and statistics you never wanted to know. Fortunately, we had help.
My brother, David Merrill, is a doctor at St. John's in Santa Monica, and he helped us get in front of a world-class surgical oncologist, Dr. Bilchik, within about a week of Beverly's diagnosis. Dr. Bilchik reviewed Beverly's scans and numbers. The tumor appeared to be approximately four centimeters and was adjacent to the portal vein. His assessment was that it was borderline resectable.
That phrase became extremely important. Surgery offers the best chance of long-term survival with pancreatic cancer, but the pancreas sits in an extraordinarily complicated neighborhood of the body. A tumor's relationship to the major blood vessels can determine whether a surgeon believes it can safely be removed.
Meanwhile, something remarkable happened with my employer. He wanted to help us get the best possible medical care, but our existing insurance wasn't ideal for what we suddenly needed. So he essentially "fired" me from one of his companies and hired me through another company he owned in Virginia. That employment change created a qualifying event outside the normal enrollment period and allowed us to obtain a Platinum PPO.
It was brilliant. More importantly, it gave us access.
That allowed us to consult my boss's physician, the renowned oncologist Dr. Lawrence Piro at Cedars-Sinai. By then we had also met with a local oncologist, Dr. Yu at the Institute of Hope in Burbank, who had recommended a treatment plan. Dr. Piro reviewed everything and told us essentially: This is exactly what I would do.
That was enormously reassuring. Beverly didn't want to spend her life driving across Los Angeles for every infusion if she didn't have to. With Dr. Piro confirming that Dr. Yu was recommending the same treatment he would recommend, Beverly chose to receive her chemotherapy locally in Burbank/Glendale.
For surgery, however, we wanted another opinion. My sister-in-law, also a physician, found Dr. Aaron Lewis at City of Hope. That meeting changed the trajectory of everything.
Dr. Lewis looked at the same scans and had a more confident assessment: The tumor was resectable. Dr. Lewis is a Whipple specialist who performs roughly two of these extraordinarily complex operations every week, using robotic surgery and some of the most advanced equipment available. We had found our surgeon.
Dr. Lewis and Dr. Yu would work together. First, however, Beverly had to make it through chemotherapy.
FOLFIRINOX
The plan was the standard aggressive treatment for someone in Beverly's situation: FOLFIRINOX every two weeks. FOLFIRINOX is not one drug. It is a combination of powerful chemotherapy drugs, and Beverly's treatments included an infusion at the oncology center followed by a pump she took home with her that continued delivering chemotherapy.
From late February through June, this became the rhythm of our lives. And it was brutal.
The very first infusion caused Beverly to projectile vomit for something like twelve hours. We eventually had to take her back to the oncology office to be rehydrated. After that, Dr. Yu developed a much more aggressive anti-nausea regimen for her, which helped enormously.
But "helped" doesn't mean chemotherapy suddenly became easy. There was still nausea. Exhaustion. Weakness. Food problems. Emotional strain. And side effects that seemed to accumulate rather than diminish because chemotherapy is cumulative — every round piles on top of what came before.
Then her hair started falling out. After her second or third infusion, it began coming out in clumps. Beverly asked me to shave her head. So I did.
Then she got into the shower. While she was in there, I turned the clippers on myself and shaved my own head. When Beverly came out and saw me, I'll never forget the look in her eyes. She cried. I cried. We held each other.
It was one of many times during this experience when there really wasn't anything useful to say. You just hold onto the person you love.
The First Good News
After approximately four rounds — about a month and a half into treatment — we got new scans and blood work. The chemotherapy was working like gangbusters. The tumor had shrunk by more than half. And, critically, there was still no evidence that the cancer had metastasized.
That was huge. We were winning. The problem was that winning felt terrible.
Life in Lockdown
One of the things people don't necessarily understand about chemotherapy is how much it affects everyone around the patient. Beverly's immune system was compromised. That meant we essentially went back into COVID-style lockdown.
I worked from home. Our daughter Natalie was home from college, but she couldn't live with us because her summer job involved working with grade-school children at the YMCA. Anyone who has children knows that kids are adorable little Petri dishes. A routine cold for somebody else could potentially become dangerous for Beverly.
So during the time when Beverly needed her daughter most, we had to keep Natalie at a distance to protect her. That hurt.
Another problem was neuropathy. Beverly began experiencing numbness and nerve problems in her hands and feet. We were warned that chemotherapy-induced neuropathy can sometimes become permanent. That possibility scared us tremendously.
There were also smaller, stranger adjustments. One thing that genuinely helped Beverly were marijuana "knockout" pills. They helped with her discomfort and, especially, helped her sleep.
I have been a lifelong sober person — I don't drink and had never been a recreational drug user — so even walking into a marijuana dispensary felt strange to me. But when somebody you love has pancreatic cancer, your perspective on a lot of things changes.
I went to Swish in North Hollywood expecting God knows what and instead found what looked like an upscale boutique with a kind, knowledgeable young woman behind the counter who couldn't have been more helpful. On my first visit to buy Beverly's pills, she threw in some THC gummies.
And here is my confession: I ate some. They were indica gummies, and they helped me sleep.
For somebody who had spent his entire life avoiding alcohol and drugs, it was bizarre. But during one of the most stressful periods of my life, I was grateful for the mild oblivion and the sleep they gave me.
Because cancer doesn't only happen to the patient. I want to be very careful saying that because nothing I experienced compares to what Beverly physically endured. But caregiving is hard. Watching the person you love suffer is hard. Being the person who has to remain optimistic when you're terrified yourself is hard. Trying to make decisions when the consequences can literally involve life and death is hard.
This entire experience was traumatic for Beverly. It also sucked for me. Both things can be true.
July 25, 2024
Eventually we had done enough chemotherapy. It was time for surgery.
Beverly was admitted to City of Hope in Duarte on July 23. Her sister Renee', who had already been staying with us for weeks at a time — probably a month and a half altogether — came with us for this part of the journey.
On July 23, Dr. Lewis performed Beverly's Whipple procedure.
There are major surgeries, and then there is the Whipple. The formal name is a pancreaticoduodenectomy. In a typical Whipple, the surgeon removes the head of the pancreas, the duodenum — the first section of the small intestine — the gallbladder, part of the bile duct and sometimes a portion of the stomach. Then the digestive system has to be reconstructed, reconnecting the remaining pancreas, bile duct and stomach or intestine so that food, bile and pancreatic enzymes can once again travel through the digestive tract.
It is intricate surgery performed in one of the most anatomically complicated parts of the body. Beverly's operation lasted almost six hours.
I will never forget those hours. We knew we had one of the best surgeons in the world for this operation. We knew Dr. Lewis did Whipples routinely. We knew Beverly had responded spectacularly to chemotherapy. None of that makes it easy to sit there while your wife is undergoing a six-hour operation.
Eventually, Dr. Lewis called and asked me to meet him in the lobby. I remember studying his face. Doctors become very good at controlling their expressions, so I was looking for anything.
He was calm. Composed. But I couldn't help noticing something else. He seemed upbeat.
Everything had gone well. And then he told me something extraordinary. He could feel scar tissue where the tumor had been. But he couldn't actually find the tumor. It appeared to be gone.
The Miracle in the Pathology Report
Beverly sailed through the immediate recovery room period and eventually got into her own room. Renee' and I were there as she woke up, and we stayed with her over the next several days.
They had Beverly walking the hospital corridors remarkably quickly — I remember us getting her up and moving around the ward the very next day and continuing every day afterward. At one point they removed a drain, which was extremely painful for her.
Eventually, we went home.
Two long weeks passed before our follow up appointment with Dr. Lewis. Just before we saw him we finally got the pathology report on the app. We stared at it. Did this mean what I think it did?
Our visit to Dr. Lewis confirmed it.
No adenocarcinoma in the lymph nodes. No adenocarcinoma in the surrounding tissue. No viable tumor.
Complete pathologic response.
Zero percent residual adenocarcinoma.
This was not something we had expected. It is a rare outcome with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The chemotherapy had apparently destroyed every detectable cancer cell in the tissue they removed.
Dr. Lewis also pointed something out that stuck with us: The result was so consequential that two pathologists had to sign off on the final pathology report.
It was real. Beverly had pancreatic cancer. And now, as far as medicine could determine, she didn't.
I was ecstatic. Beverly was miserable. And that became another lesson.
"But You're Cancer-Free"
I wish I could say that after surgery everything steadily got better. It didn't. In many ways, recovery from the Whipple was the hardest part of the entire experience.
Beverly didn't have a major surgical complication. The operation had been an extraordinary success. But she hurt. A lot. Oxycodone was about the only thing that could really dull the pain.
She was weak. She had digestive problems. Nausea. Dumping. Her body had been completely rearranged internally. She had endured months of chemotherapy and then one of the biggest abdominal operations a human being can undergo.
She had lost an enormous amount of weight — 77 pounds! She looked good, but she looked different. And she was sad.
That was difficult for me. In my mind, we had gotten the miracle. The cancer was gone! I wanted us to move immediately into the "we're getting better now!" part of the story.
But Beverly wasn't living in my mind. She was living in a body that hurt every minute of the day.
It was particularly difficult after Renee' had to return to her husband and family in San Jose. Renee' and I had been able to boost one another. When one of us was tired or discouraged, the other could keep the pressure on — keep Beverly moving, keep her eating, keep her looking forward.
Now it was mostly me.
Beverly and I tried to walk every day. Some days she could only make it half a block before she had to turn around. I'd find myself thinking: You're free of a cancer with terrible survival statistics. Why can't you be happier?
That wasn't fair. I knew it wasn't fair even while I was feeling it.
Cancer recovery isn't a movie. The music doesn't swell when the pathology report arrives and then everybody walks happily into the sunset. She was alive. She was cancer-free. And she was still suffering.
I had to learn to hold all three truths at the same time.
Getting Knocked Down Again
Little by little, Beverly improved. There were setbacks.
At one point she began vomiting and we ended up back at City of Hope's emergency department. We feared something had gone terribly wrong. It turned out to be residual fluid from the surgery — frightening, unpleasant, but essentially part of the recovery rather than evidence of some catastrophic complication.
Then came another challenge. Chemotherapy wasn't finished.
Beverly had completed seven rounds of FOLFIRINOX before surgery. The goal was twelve total. So after everything her body had just been through, treatment resumed.
Renee' flew back down at one point to help us again. She was invaluable, especially on the walks. She helped keep Beverly's spirits up. She helped keep mine up too.
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| Jan visited as well... |
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| Bev's first trip out of the house (besides the walks) - Costco! |
But when chemotherapy returned, so did the neuropathy. And this time Dr. Yu became seriously concerned.
Oxaliplatin — the "OX" in FOLFIRINOX — is an important component of the regimen, but it is also notorious for causing peripheral neuropathy. For round 8 Dr. Yu reduced the OX by 70%. After bad bloodwork after that round, for rounds nine and ten, Dr. Yu eliminated the oxaliplatin altogether.
That was another frightening tradeoff. We didn't want Beverly to receive less of a drug that might help keep pancreatic cancer away. But we also didn't want to cure the cancer only to leave her permanently disabled.
After round ten, Beverly had had enough. Dr. Lewis would have preferred that she complete all twelve rounds. But Beverly had reached her limit.
She chose quality over quantity. She wasn't willing to risk permanent, debilitating neuropathy — potentially spending the rest of her life severely disabled — for two additional rounds of chemotherapy whose incremental benefit nobody could quantify.
And Dr. Lewis ultimately acknowledged another important reality: We didn't actually know whether those additional rounds were doing anything. The tumor was already gone. Her pathology was clear. Her blood work was clear. Her scans were clear.
Eventually treatment ended. She had made it through ten rounds. That was enough.
Life Comes Back
Recovery wasn't fast. It happened by inches. Then feet. Then blocks.
The digestive problems gradually improved. The pain subsided. The nausea diminished. The dumping episodes became less of an issue. By early 2025, Beverly was dramatically better.
And she just kept getting better.
Today she routinely walks more than three miles. Think about that for a moment. This is the same woman who, after surgery, sometimes couldn't make it half a block.
She laughs again. She plans for the future. She lives her life. Our lives are mostly back to normal.
Her body will probably never be exactly the body she had before pancreatic cancer. She has to be careful with certain foods, particularly fried foods. She has had a couple episodes of pancreatitis, including one that required hospitalization, which was frightening. Thankfully, at least so far, there is no indication that she has developed chronic pancreatitis.
Her gallbladder is gone. Part of her pancreas is gone. Her digestive anatomy has been permanently altered.
But she's here.
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| Surprising her Aunt and Cousin on a trip to visit family in Omaha! |
And so far, every surveillance scan has remained clear. Her CA 19-9 tumor marker has remained very low. At different points we've watched it move from 3 to 5 to 8 back to 6, numbers that would mean nothing to most people but that pancreatic cancer survivors and their families can stare at like stock-market traders watching a ticker.
Every six months we go through it again. Blood work. CT. Waiting. Trying not to interpret every ache. Trying not to read too much into every number. Trying not to let fear steal days from us before we have any reason to be afraid.
The People Who Carried Us
Cancer reveals something else: Nobody gets through something like this alone.
Beverly had an extraordinary team of doctors, nurses and medical professionals. But she also had a team outside the hospital.
Her sister Renee' was incredible. She left her own home and family in San Jose for long stretches to help take care of her sister. She was there during chemotherapy, during surgery, during recovery and again when chemotherapy resumed.
There were times when Renee' wasn't merely helping Beverly. She was helping me help Beverly.
Her best friend Grace came from Georgia to visit and support her. Her cousin Pam became — and remains — one of Beverly's lifelines. To this day, Bev and Pam talk almost every day. Her mom, Jan, was there for her on a regular basis.
And then there is Natalie. Our daughter. Twenty-two years old now and, without question, the best thing that has ever happened to both Beverly and me.
There was a terrible irony in having Natalie home from college during treatment but being unable to have her live with us because her work with children made the infection risk too great. But she was part of this journey too.
Cancer doesn't happen to one person. It happens to a family. And our family showed up.
PurpleStride
In 2025, we participated in our first PanCAN PurpleStride. We did it again in 2026. I suspect we'll do it for the rest of our lives.
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| With real life superhero Dr. Lewis |
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| Beverly on the far right on the survivors stage. |
PurpleStride is the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's nationwide walk and fundraising event for people affected by pancreatic cancer — survivors, patients, caregivers, families, friends and those walking in memory of someone they lost. Purple is the color associated with pancreatic cancer awareness.
For us, PurpleStride is more than a charity walk. It's a way of standing among people who understand. Some are survivors. Some are still fighting. Some are caregivers. Some are walking for someone who isn't there to walk beside them.
We know how fortunate we are. And after pancreatic cancer enters your life, I don't think you ever completely leave that community.
Two Years
Which brings me back to today. Two years post-Whipple. NED.
When Beverly was diagnosed, we learned all the horrifying statistics about pancreatic cancer. The overall five-year survival rate is still only in the low teens. Recurrence is frighteningly common, even after successful surgery. We know that. We can't unknow it.
We also know that Beverly's particular story contains some extraordinary reasons for hope. Her cancer was caught before there was evidence of distant metastasis. She responded spectacularly to FOLFIRINOX. Her tumor shrank by more than half after only four rounds. She was able to undergo a successful Whipple performed by an elite specialist. Her lymph nodes were negative. Her margins and surrounding tissue were negative. And most remarkably, the final pathology found no viable adenocarcinoma at all.
A complete pathologic response.
Now we've stacked over two more years on top of that. Two years of clean scans. Two years of negative blood work. Two years of distance from July 23, 2024.
I understand that none of this comes with guarantees. We still get scared. When Beverly has an unexplained pain, there's always a little voice somewhere in the back of my head. When scan time approaches, the volume gets turned up.
I imagine it does for her too. Probably more.
Pancreatic cancer changed us. It changed Beverly physically. It changed our family. It changed the way I think about time. And it changed our marriage.
I learned things about caregiving I never wanted to learn. I learned that sometimes being strong means keeping everybody optimistic. Sometimes it means sitting beside somebody who is miserable and accepting that you cannot make her feel better. Sometimes it means shaving your wife's head. Sometimes it means shaving your own afterward.
Sometimes it means taking a walk around the block. Sometimes half a block. Sometimes it means being terrified and acting like you aren't quite as terrified as you actually are. Sometimes it means allowing other people to carry you because you can't carry everything yourself. And sometimes it means admitting that the caregiver is suffering too.
I am grateful that I was strong enough to stay beside Beverly through all of it. But I'm even more grateful that she was strong enough to endure it.
Once again, she made me a better man.
We Carry On
There is a temptation after something like this to divide your life into "before cancer" and "after cancer." I understand why.
But I don't want pancreatic cancer to own that much territory. It doesn't get to define Beverly. It doesn't get to define our marriage. It doesn't get to define the rest of our lives.
It is something that happened to us. Something enormous. Something terrifying. Something that left scars, visible and invisible. And something we survived.
So far.
I don't say "so far" pessimistically. I say it because I've learned that none of us are promised anything. Not pancreatic cancer patients. Not caregivers. Not anybody.
All we actually get is today. As Bruno Mars says - "Nobody's promised tomorrow..."
And today, Beverly is NED. Today she can walk three miles. Today we have our daughter. We have Renee', Grace, Pam and Jan. We have our family. My brother David and his wife and kids. My mom and her husband. We have our friends. We have doctors who gave Beverly a chance to be here.
We have another PurpleStride ahead of us. We have plans. We have ordinary days. We have arguments and laughs and errands and television and dinners and all of the mundane things that once seemed mundane and now sometimes feel like gifts.
And most importantly, we still have each other.
Pancreatic cancer will probably always cast a shadow somewhere in the background.
Fine. Let it.
We're not going to live in the shadow. We refuse to be cowed by it. We'll keep getting the scans. We'll keep doing the blood work. We'll keep getting nervous every six months. We'll keep walking PurpleStride. We'll keep moving forward.
Whatever comes, we'll face it the same way we faced everything else: Together.
Today, two years after Beverly's Whipple, I am incredibly grateful. Grateful for the doctors. Grateful for our family. Grateful for everyone who showed up. Grateful for western medicine. Grateful for luck. Grateful for Beverly's strength. Grateful for our lives. And profoundly grateful for our love.
Two years.
No evidence of disease.
And we carry on.
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