trust not the eye; make of your meat an imaging device

“Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza; epic poems to typhoid; odes to pneumonia, lyrics to toothache. But no; with a few exceptions… literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear. On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day, all night the body intervenes… But of all this daily drama of the body there is no record… To look at these things squarely in the fact would need the courage of a lion tamer; a robust philosophy; a reason rooted in the bowels of the earth.”

Woolf, On Being Ill

Author’s note: I wrote this because a lot of people reach out to me on social media to ask about my experience having a Whipple. They are either getting one or supporting a loved one who needs to undergo the procedure. Despite this procedure being pretty rare, this request for information happens fairly frequently. I wanted to share my experience and give people an in-depth view of having this procedure and the recovery process while also offering some encouragement. If you’re wondering why this is in second person, its because I initially started writing this in response to someone asking what they could expect with the Whipple. But then I started talking to my past self, a different self than the one writing this paragraph. I hope you find it helpful, whoever you are, and good luck.