A duel

Dear Friends,

We can each look into the same glass sphere at the same moment and see something completely different.

Tonight, I am turning that sphere toward my own journey.

After reviewing the classic steps of a duel, I realized these steps offer more than a historical framework. They offer me a writing device, and maybe more importantly, a way to process what has happened to me this far into my journey. By choosing where I look into the sphere, I am building my own roller coaster. I am taking back some of the agency cancer tried to steal.

Get ready, cancer. The ground you picked is gonna’ shake, rattle, and roll.

In 2024, cancer chose the first field. It chose the high ground. I learned that lesson long ago from my U.S. Marine friends: go high.So maybe one of the tools of recovery is this — changing the ground, changing the angle, changing the story I tell myself about where the fight began and where it leads next.

Earlier today I reviewed the classic rules of a duel:

The insult or offense

One man believes his honor has been injured.

Demand for satisfaction

He asks for an apology, retraction, or other satisfaction.

The challenge

If that fails, a formal challenge is issued.

The seconds are appointed

Each man chooses a trusted representative, called a second.

The seconds negotiate

They first try to prevent the duel by arranging an apology or settlement.

Terms are set

If no settlement is reached, the seconds agree on weapon, place, time, distance, and rules of engagement.

The principals meet on the field

The two duelists arrive, usually with their seconds and sometimes a surgeon.

Final chance for reconciliation

Before violence begins, there is often one last chance to apologize.

The duel begins

With swords or pistols, according to the agreed rules.

Exchange or exchanges

Sometimes one round is enough; sometimes it continues until first blood, incapacitation, missed shots, or satisfaction is judged to have been met.

The duel ends

It ends by wound, death, apology, exhaustion of terms, or the seconds declaring honor satisfied.

Aftermath

The wounded are treated, and the surviving parties leave — often with legal and social consequences.

With the rules reviewed, I can use this structure to look back at my own field.

Your insult and offense

I believe my body, soul, time, privacy, energy, and relationships were threatened, and that personal injury had already begun.

My demand for satisfaction

I asked cancer, in all forms — local or metastasized — to cease and desist.

Doctors wanted you to be something smaller. A rash. A cyst. Something that would yield to creams and ointments. While most had never seen you before, some had at least read about you in the archives of medical school. These doctors, randomly assigned from within my network, became my advisors after weeks and months of waiting just to confer with them.

The challenge

Doctors said, “This could be a cyst or an infection that will clear up.”

But I am the Chief Medical Officer of Me, and I believed your cloak hid carcinogenic roots.

You persisted.

So I challenged you by seeking new health insurance, new advisors, and new, sharper steel to perform a biopsy and limited surgery.

I CHALLENGE YOU TO COME OUT AND BE IDENTIFIED OVER ON STAGE THREE!

Our seconds are appointed

My first second was a urologist who advised me that you were what you claimed to be: a cyst or a rash.

Then my second withdrew and moved to another field.

After many months, and after changing my insurance, I appointed new advisors from UCSD Oncology — randomly selected for me instead of the department head I had tried to get.

Meanwhile, you fortified your ground.

You consumed sugars.

You consumed my time.

You consumed my sanity.

And your pace increased.

Our seconds don’t negotiate

My seconds believed they knew you.

Before taking up sharp steel to unmask your darker identity, they chose to advise me first. They told me, “It is not good,” and that if I did not meet you on the field, I would have less than six months to live.

That was not negotiation.

That was presented to me by my field surgeon, I had no control…

Terms are set

No settlement is reached, except that we will fight.

Our seconds agree on the following:

Weapons

You choose rapid growth and metastasis.

I choose exploratory surgery and lymph node resection.

My field surgeon refused my request for those resections and does his own thing.

You persuaded my field surgeon to select the grounds. His resection decision was made: we will meet in the basement of the KOP building — a field I rejected the day before our duel.

Still, the terms held.

We agreed to duel ASAP.

We agreed to meet in a surgical setting, or so I thought.

I would take a field hospital tent for my quarters before leaving the next day, or so I thought.

The rules of engagement would be provided by my insurance company.

We would arrive on the field, in the KOP basement, with our seconds and the field surgeon.

Final chance for reconciliation

Before violence begins, there is often one last chance to apologize.

You did not apologize.

Our duel begins

The field surgeon begins with “non-invasive” steel weapons and a camera to find you inside me. After 16 “non-invasive incisions I can’t feel my anything below my waste, down to my knees. I think I saw that in a movie about a Python named Monty.

You get first blood.

Exchange or exchanges

You win the first round as the field hospital bandages the half of my private part that you were unable to sever.

F U, my unworthy opponent, F U.

I was told to confer with the field surgeon in two weeks, and you know what that means. You may have gotten a piece of me, but I am free of you and I HAVE WON.

(In a bad French voice: “Two weeks later…”)

It has been two weeks since my partial penile incapacitation...

The duel ends

I am wounded.

I have a free UCSD staph infection in my wound.

But I am not dead. It is only a flesh wound.

You are no more, and I accept that you cannot offer an apology.

We have exhausted our agreed-to terms.

I await the post-op from my seconds—to declare victory.

Aftermath

My wound is open, but I am treating it.

I am the surviving party.

I can settle the legal, social, and financial consequences.

WAIT. WHAT?

For two weeks I thought I was done.

I need another visit to the surgeon’s tent? Then the alchemist is mixing up a three-month supply of chemo-something? Then another surgery? Then rinse and repeat with the spear point in my left lung?

Not the aftermath I was praying for…