u/Square_Intention_794

For most of my life, caretaking meant showing up for someone else. I solved problems, carried responsibility, supported teams, protected family, and found another gear when everyone else was running out of energy.

Cancer has forced me to confront a harder version of that responsibility because now the person I need to take care of is… me.

After twenty-two chemotherapy infusions, my body cannot always keep pace with my ambition.

I have had to look at myself in the mirror and acknowledge something painful as a Founder:

“My cancer is slowing my company down.”

There are days when chemo wins the calendar, recovery takes priority over revenue, and appointments, blood counts, neuropathy, scans, and treatment decisions consume energy I would otherwise pour into the company.

That frustrates me because I can see so clearly what I want Respiris to become.

I am not interested in building another outplacement company that collects money, outsources the resume build, gives impacted employees a login, checks the box, and moves on.

I am building a better mousetrap for outplacement, one that asks a much more important question:

Did we actually reinspire the person whose life just changed?

Did they feel seen?

Did they regain confidence?

Did they develop a strategy, find community, and build momentum toward whatever comes next?

Is their swagger visible to me and others?

Respiris will sit in the middle of the HR ecosystem, much like communities and platforms such as Transform, Sequoia, and Rippling connect different parts of the people function.

For us, that connective tissue is career transition: companies, HR leaders, coaches, candidates, AI, community, and the resources that help someone move from disruption toward possibility.

That mission also gives me another reason to fight this cancer with fierceness.

I am not fighting simply because I want more time.

I know what I want to do with that time.

I want to be here to raise Iris.

I want to help thousands of people navigate career transitions with greater dignity and possibility.

I want to write my book about adversity, fatherhood, cancer, leadership, and reinvention.

I want to write the movie script about my experience navigating Washington State’s family-court system, how I believe Dad can be minimized within it, and how I fought through that experience rather than allowing it to define me.

There are sstories I want to tell, people I want to help, and a little girl I want to watch become a woman.

So taking care of myself has become part of taking care of Respiris.

I need to protect my energy, build systems, transfer relationships, empower other people to lead, and make sure the company does not have to move at the speed of my cancer.

I want Respiris to grow aggressively, but I want that growth to have intention, purpose, resilience, and a mission that can survive beyond its Founder.

It is Day 294 living with cancer and my body feels like it got hit by a Mack truck after months of asking it to absorb chemo, recover, and prepare itself to fight again.

There is a strange duality because I can spend one day working, thinking, laughing, being a Dad, building Respiris, and almost forgetting what is happening inside my body, while the following day reminds me exactly how demanding this fight has become.

I started with NALIRIFOX, eventually transitioned to Gemcitabine and Abraxane, and every treatment represents an attempt to control the disease while preserving enough strength for whatever upside comes next.

Right now, chemo has suppressed my white blood cells, so I am using Zarxio to stimulate their recovery.

That next line of therapy matters because my cancer carries a KRAS G12V mutation, which gives my oncology team another biological characteristic that we may be able to target rather than relying exclusively on conventional chemo.

My team at City of Hope is now working toward an Expanded Access Program (EAP) for daraxonrasib, a RAS-targeting therapy that could represent a fundamentally different way of attacking the molecular machinery helping drive my cancer.

I cannot predict whether daraxonrasib will work for me, how deeply I might respond, or how long any benefit might last.

I must know that living with metastatic cancer has taught me to respect that uncertainty.

In my control is how aggressively I prepare myself for the next opportunity.

I can understand my molecular profile, follow emerging research, seek opinions from physicians working at the frontier, monitor what my disease is doing, and keep asking questions when the answers could influence my next treatment decision.

I can also recognize that physical recovery represents part of the strategy because the strongest treatment option in the world matters considerably less if my body cannot tolerate it.

That means today requires me to accept that resting, eating, hydrating, rebuilding blood counts, and recovering from chemotherapy are not interruptions to the fight because they are necessary components of continuing it.

Throughout these 294 days, I have learned that hope by itself is not a strategy, but a thoughtful strategy can create legitimate reasons to hope.

While my body may feel like it encountered a Mack truck today, this difficult day does not determine what happens tomorrow.

Zarxio will help my blood counts recover, my medical team will continue preparing the next therapeutic option, and I will keep preparing myself physically and mentally for whatever the next chapter requires.

After 294 days of living with cancer, I understand more clearly than ever that survival sometimes means attacking and sometimes means recovering, while both actions ultimately serve the same objective.

My third line of defense is being prepared, and I intend to arrive ready for it.

Carpe diem.

It is my Day 290 living with cancer, and I apparently speak a new language: Pancreatic Cancer.

I recently spent a few days in Cabo, where I read Lisa Niemi Swayze’s Worth Fighting For, her account of Patrick Swayze’s life with pancreatic cancer.

As I read, I kept comparing parts of his experience with my own and thinking about how much I have learned since the day I was diagnosed.

Nearly 300 days ago, I did not know most of this vocabulary.

Bilirubin. ERCP. Eovist. Metal stent. CA 19-9. CEA. Tissue biopsy. Liquid biopsy. Creon. NALIRIFOX. Gem/Abraxane. Neuropathy. Granix. Hospice.

Then there are the words nobody needs an oncologist to explain, but cancer somehow changes anyway.

Time. Work. Money. Energy. Friendship. Parenting. Autonomy. Fear. Love. Legacy. Living. Dying.

I realized in Cabo that I have spent nearly 300 days building an education I never enrolled in.

So I wrote it down.

My latest article is an attempt to capture the language, lessons and lived experience I have accumulated while navigating Stage IV pancreatic cancer, not as a medical textbook or advice, but as one patient’s evolving playbook.

Some of it is clinical. Some of it is practical. Some of it is deeply personal.

My hope is that someone newly diagnosed, a caregiver sitting beside them, or simply a friend trying to understand what cancer does to a human life might find something useful in what I have learned.

I never wanted to become fluent in pancreatic cancer.

But now that I have learned some of the language, I might as well leave my notes on the table for the person who has to learn it next.

Cancer has a medical lifecycle, but a human life is bigger than one.

Here is what nearly 300 days have taught me.

I’m on Day 234 of living with Stage IV pancreatic cancer.

When I was diagnosed, I quickly discovered that cancer patients often spend hours trying to understand scans, pathology reports, lab work, treatment options, side effects, insurance issues, and clinical trials.

The stakes are high. The decisions are complicated. The clock never seems to stop ticking.

As a founder, I turned to something familiar: technology.

Using ChatGPT and my complete medical record, I built an AI oncologist to help me become a better-informed patient.

It doesn’t replace my doctors. It doesn’t prescribe treatment. It doesn’t make medical decisions.

What it does is help me ask better questions.

Over the past nine months, it has helped me identify the need for pancreatic enzymes (Creon), advocate for a second liver biopsy when important questions remained unanswered, monitor trends in my lab work, discuss the use of Granix to support my white blood cell count, add CA-125 as a tumor marker after CA 19-9 proved to be an unreliable indicator of disease progression for me, and better understand treatment options, including why Nalirifox might be preferable to FOLFIRINOX in my specific situation because of its toxicity profile.

Most importantly, it has helped me organize thousands of pages of medical records into something I can actually understand.

The AI has never been right because it is artificial intelligence.

It has been valuable because it helps me prepare for conversations with the physicians who are experts.

That preparation has given me more confidence in discussions with my oncology teams at City of Hope and Memorial Sloan Kettering.

I have also documented this entire journey publicly.

Every day I write… today is Day 234.

Some days I write about treatment. Some days I write about fear. Some days I write about being a dad to my 11-year-old daughter, Iris, while living with a disease where statistics can feel overwhelming.

The writing has become a record of what it actually looks like to navigate cancer one day at a time.

If you’re curious about how I built and use my AI oncologist, start with Day 7.

If you’re a patient, caregiver, physician, researcher, or simply interested in the future of AI in healthcare, I’d love to hear your perspective.

You can follow the journey here:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/angelcruzado

One day at a time.