SeniorLivingGuide.com Podcast
Join us as we discuss topics related to seniors and their caregivers in an effort to be and provide excellent resources for daily living. We are joined by experts in the medical field who offer their advice and expertise on health and other related issues. Our topics are designed to answer your questions and give you the best tools as a senior resource podcast that you need to provide you and your loved ones with a better understanding to pursue a better quality of life in your senior years.
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SeniorLivingGuide.com Podcast
Humor and Resilience in the Cancer Journey
In this heartfelt episode, we explored the unexpected ally in our battles against life's adversities: humor with Dr Brad Miller, host of the Cancer And Comedy Podcast
We shared moments of levity and deep insight, revealing how laughter — that precious release of endorphins — serves as a counter to the stress-induced cortisol that floods our bodies in times of crisis. We talked about creating a personal coping credo, rooted in action and spiritual grounding, that centers on being present, particularly for the loved ones in our lives.
Inspiration was a heartbeat of today's talk. You heard about Brad Miller's remarkable journey with prostate cancer and his creation of the Cancer And Comedy Podcast to support others in finding hope through humor. We discussed the universality of our message, transcending beyond cancer, applicable to any kind of hardship or grief we may face.
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SeniorLivingGuidecom podcast discusses topics which are relevant to the everyday lives of seniors and their caregivers. We are joined by experts who share their knowledge on a variety of issues. Seniorlivingguidecom podcast offers solutions and resources to create the best quality of life as we age. And now let's welcome your host, Darlene Mahoney.
Dr Brad Miller:Does the idea of searching for senior housing solutions seem overwhelming? Seniorlivingguidecom is your one-stop shop for all things senior housing, memory care, home health, home care and other senior resources. Visit us today at SeniorLivingGuidecom to connect directly and get the information that you need to make the very best decision for you or your loved ones. And I would like to express our gratitude to our podcast sponsor. Transmedcare. Long-distance Medical Transportation when a loved one with a disability or medical condition needs to relocate. Loved one with a disability or medical condition needs to relocate. Transmedcare is here to help with safe and secure nationwide medical transport services, with an emphasis on comfort and care.
Speaker 3:TransMedCare long-distance medical transportation is a business built on care. Another satisfied customer writes.
Speaker 4:My family cannot recommend TransMedCare enough. They made dad comfortable every single step of the way on a very long trip and went above and beyond to take incredible care of him, and he had a great time. Thank you all for getting dad safely to his new home. To learn more about TransMedCare, visit the website at trans-medcarecom.
Dr Brad Miller:If you are facing a cancer diagnosis or any other life-altering changes or diagnosis. Thank you for joining us on this podcast. We are joined by Dr Brad Miller, and he gets it. He's in it. He's in the trenches, brad Miller, and he gets it. He's in it, he's in the trenches. He's joining us to share how to navigate the trenches in a way to still live your best life. Thank you for joining us today and thank you for joining the podcast. Today we are here with Dr Brad Miller. After a month of retiring from a 43-year career as a pastor, he was diagnosed with cancer. His reaction was to laugh to keep from crying. He responded by combining his ministry experience with his doctoral degree in the transformation and his love of comedy to create the Cancer and Comedy podcast, which is designed to help people impacted by cancer to heal with hope and humor. Thank you for joining us today, brad.
Speaker 5:Darlene, what an honor to join you and your community here on the Senior Living Podcast. Love it, let's get started.
Dr Brad Miller:Yeah, absolutely so. Tell us a little bit about you know just a little background for some of our listeners. I met you at a podcast convention and we really hit it off and some of it is. You know, everyone has had someone in their life potentially that's had cancer or suffered from cancer, and we all know cancer is a devastating disease.
Dr Brad Miller:that just doesn't seem to you know, can't seem to find a cure or anything like that for many of the cancers Some of them, thank God, we have been able to to have people go into remission and never have a additional diagnosis of cancer or whatever that is particularly called. But I wanted to ask you, tell me a little bit about your launching and why you launched it and kind of where you're at now.
Speaker 5:Well, I'd be glad to. I have, as you mentioned in the intro, I was in ministry for 43 years, so I love that Retired a couple of years ago in 2022. Not too long after that was flagged for cancer and sent me on the trail of all the tests and rigmarole you go through. And then I got my final diagnosis two days after christmas 2022 and said the doctor called, said hey, you got it, you got cancer. And I just kind of burst out laughing and my wife was crying and stuff like this. That's kind of laugh to keep from crying, because I have some bit of a bit of you know. I was kind of like the clear Patrick. I was the queen of denial, because that was kind of my thing, you know. I was just kind of like, oh, I didn't want to deal with this, and so that was where I was at. I was like what am I going to do about this?
Speaker 5:A couple of days later, spent some time with our two granddaughters, who were five and two at the time, and we just had a great time with him. They didn't care I had cancer, nothing like that. We did, you know, kind of the arcade, did Christmas stuff and bowling and we did the happy meals at McDonald's. They were laughing and giggling and everything, and I saw that they I could just envision them. I was literally at a McDonald's restaurant, darlene, with my wife and my two granddaughters, and they were five and two and they're laughing and giggling. I wanted to envision them at ages 21 and 18, when they're young women, doing whatever they're doing. Then I knew I want to be there, be a part of their life, and if I want to be a part of their life, I cannot be dissolved into depression all the time, and I got to do whatever actions I need to do to deal with this cancer and to live a full life and see them when they're young women. So that's what got me motivated.
Speaker 5:I have a background in radio and podcasting been podcasting since 2012 and decided let's make a podcast out of this, and so I got together with some other people. We came up with the idea to kind of combine therapeutic humor which is an approach I've always had some affinity to, which is just approaching bad things in life, with a little bit of humor, a dose of humor that helps and decided to lean into that and create cancer and comedy. Cancer is a bit of a metaphor for anything bad that happens to you, to you. And and, of course, comedy is a bit of a metaphor for having a taking a take on life that is uplifting, to approach it. So that's what I'm all about. Been doing it for a while now, love it, love talking to people like you who are encouraging to me, and I like to be an encourager to other people.
Dr Brad Miller:Absolutely, and I appreciate it. I know that you and I talked a little bit because my mom had ovarian cancer. She fought for eight years. The first few years after her initial remission she was in remission for a while and then the last few years I mean, it continued to pop up and the reality is is when she was initially diagnosed, she was diagnosed with five years. So for her to live eight years, she really beat the odds. So I'm really proud of her for that.
Dr Brad Miller:And she did a lot of trials because she wanted to find a cure for this cancer. First of all, her cancer is hereditary, so she's thinking about, you know, her grandchildren and her children. You know she wants to find something that if they have the gene and they don't do all the stuff that you have to do to avoid getting ovarian cancer, which is very significant in any woman's life, she wanted to make sure that she was a part of maybe finding a solution. I don't know that she was, because I don't know that any of the trials that she did were productive, but the fact that she was so passionate about it was really important to me and so you know we talked a little bit about the comedy side, and that's I know in previous podcasts I've talked about I deal with stress and anxiety a lot of times with humor.
Speaker 5:Yes, well, you know stress and anxiety is there's a bit of a chemical element to that. You know cortisol pumps out, that's our fight or flight type of thing, and cortisol pumps in through us and the you know kind of the alternative to that is endorphins, and so that's kind of thing when we get that good, exhilarating feeling and humor is one of those things that can kind of mediate that you know kind of be an approach, almost a therapeutic approach to that. So that's what we need to do. You know, like you mentioned your mother having cancer and you know my dad had cancer. I have had cancer. I have members of my family with cancer. No-transcript.
Dr Brad Miller:Right, right, and she did her initial diagnosis. She didn't even want to do any treatment, she just wanted to basically die. To be frank with you, because when she went in she wasn't diagnosed. They were going to remove some kind of a cyst and it wasn't even surgical.
Dr Brad Miller:It was not a surgical procedure. But when they got in there she's clearly not awake and it's a massive surgery because they did find it. So she woke up three days later going what's going on. Find it. So she woke up three days later going what's going on. But you're right in the fact that with her we did the same thing. My nephew was like not even a year old and we used him as leverage for her to fight. And then I use comedy to keep it from getting so heavy in the hospital room as she's recovering, because it's the only thing that I feel like she could really just escape from. It was her escape is my entertaining horrible dad jokes.
Speaker 5:Yeah Well, hey, there's certainly a place for horrible bad jokes. I'm kind of known for some of those and I always throw those into my podcast episodes just to break things. As you know, I've taught a number of people who've had some really bad things happen to them and not only cancer but people involved with other diseases, and a woman who's involved with one of the people I know you've talked to, sarah M, who was involved with some pretty bad situations in life. But yeah, bad things happen to all of us but we don't have to go bad with it. Things that we can be kind of proactively do either by physically laughing on purpose or watching a funny movie or reading the you know joke book or an online thing Just you know, we can do that or have people like a Darlene in our life who can help lighten the load for us.
Dr Brad Miller:Oh Boise, absolutely no, I agree. I feel like it relieves a lot of the tension because it's having the tension, the anxiety and the stress and the heaviness of it isn't going to change it and actually I think it probably makes it worse, because I know that if you have a healthier attitude towards certain diseases, diagnoses, that actually you live longer and do better than if you get Well, there's studies, yeah, yeah. And wallowing in it. I don't know if that's the right term but I love it.
Speaker 5:I love it your misery, that's why I'm in your misery.
Dr Brad Miller:But it's so easy to wallow in your own misery because you it's. It just takes you away from you, know being out there in the world.
Speaker 5:But you think people sometimes get stuck in those places. They get stuck in a bad place, they get stuck in misery, they get stuck in a disease or depression or divorce or something else bad happened. They can get stuck there. In order to get out of it, you've got to be pretty intentional to break out of it, and one of the things that you can do, you know but we're talking about mindset here, we're talking to emotions, we're talking about relationships, all these things. One of these things you can't you can't do is interject some humor into your life, even if you don't feel like it. Maybe go see a funny movie or something like that to interject something in your life that can help break a pattern.
Dr Brad Miller:Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes even with, like my mom and different situations, telling family stories, the relatable stuff that you did as a kid I mean my son, oh my gosh, I have stories of the yin yang about him, because he was just such a quirky kid. So it's you know, sometimes just talking about those memories that are funny memories that can be a great diversion to what's happening.
Speaker 5:One of the things I like to do. For instance, I'm a retired pastor and so I've done a lot of funerals several hundred in my life, really About. Just a couple months ago I had to funeral for my own uncle and one of the things that's cool to do in those kind of settings is to tell those great stories and often funny stories about your loved one. But you don't have to wait until somebody dies to do that. You can tell funny stories you know right now, or those stories that just put a smile on your face. They're not always, you know, ha-ha, gut-laughing type of things. Sometimes they're just ones that give you a good feeling. It fires up those emotions, those good memories, those pleasant memories, and those are all good things to help you with your life right now. It reduces stress, it helps you with your mental health, it helps you in your relationships and I like to call it cope with hope and humor. That's what I like to do Coping mechanisms.
Dr Brad Miller:Exactly, and one of the things that you are passionate about and is your mission, to be honest with you, is cancer coping credo. So that's kind of what you're going with, and you actually have a few bullet points that maybe people would like to keep in mind as they're going through tough times not just cancer, any diagnosis, anything like that. So I think that that's a great share as well. So do you have a few points on that?
Speaker 5:Sure, I do. I just love to be trying to be helpful to people and I was just when I went through this whole process on my own, I thought, ok, what am I living for? What's my purpose here? What is this about? It's a it's goal setting. It's a little bit more than that. It's a little bit. It's more of a vision of where you want to go and then how you're going to get there.
Speaker 5:You know, I wanted to have this vision, to be with my granddaughters when they're 21 and 18 and celebrate their life. But I said, how am I going to do that? Because it's so easy to get lost in your wallowing, your misery, as you said. So I developed the process and I believe it's helpful to people to help you develop what I call your cancer coping credo. But you can take the word cancer, you can put in there, you know, some of the disease, a divorce or anything else. You put in there a coping credo. And so I, if I'm going to start, if it's okay, I'm going to share my credo and then I'll tell you how I got there. Is that okay if I do that?
Dr Brad Miller:Hit me up.
Speaker 5:Here's my cancer coping credo, which is a written statement of what I want to be about in my life. So my credo is this statement I will not let cancer define me. I will leverage cancer to refine my life to the better in my relationships and to drive me forward in my remaining days, to fulfill the mission of sharing a message of healing through hope and humor and teaching the biblical message that a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries out the bones. So I keep that statement and my synopsis of that is I will not let cancer define me, I'll let it refine me. And I have that version of this right by my desk. You know those who maybe see it right by my desk every day carry that with me. So I try to state that to myself at least once a day. I read it right in front of my desk and to be part of what I'm all about. But in order to get there, I think people can have a process. I call the ACTS process or the ACTS path A-C-T-S. I don't know if I've outlined it for you briefly and I go in this in depth in some of the teaching that I do. The four points of it are to get your credo here.
Speaker 5:The A in the word acts is to take action. So you just got to basically get off your rear end and do something. You got to move. That's the physical part of this. In my case, it was to create a podcast and to start the process of doing that. To think of the C in the word acts is to connect with a higher power. That's the spiritual element of this. That's getting connected. If you're a follower of Christ, like I am, to get back into the Bible and to do devotions For other people it might be meditation, but it's understanding. There's something bigger than self here that's involved in connecting with that through some intentional process prayer, meditation, silence, any number of things that you can do. So that's the A is action. The C is connect with a higher power. The T is to think strategically.
Speaker 5:That's the cognitive piece, which is what are you doing kind of in your day to day processes? For me, that had to do a lot with my health. That meant getting my medical stuff together. It meant getting my diet together, it meant exercising more. I lost some weight, all kinds of things like that. And there are other aspects of life that may be more intentional about connecting with family members and all kinds of stuff like that. But being intentional about it, that is your cognitive habits, processes, things like that that you got to do. And so that's the A is action, the C connect with higher power. The T to think with discipline and strategy strategically.
Speaker 5:And the S is to serve others with love. That's the emotional piece of it. That's what I like to do to give back when actually producing my podcast and doing the keynote speeches and the teaching that I do about this here process. To give back and to do it with love, because that's as a part of the healing process. To be helpful to others is healing for me and out of that the process I use, you get those elements, those four elements together, and you can write your own statement. It doesn't have to be three or four sentences like mine. It could be three or four words, you know, or something like that, to help you then to focus each day on doing that. So that's what I like to do. That's what I like to teach the ax path in order to develop your cancer coping credo. Does that help you?
Dr Brad Miller:Oh, a hundred percent, yeah, and I absolutely agree with everything that you just talked about. You know, one of the things that I think you have to, and I think a lot of people that get diagnosed with cancer, whether it's a terminal cancer or whether it's something that you know you can do chemo, and or it can be room, or whatever the treatment options are, where your chances of cancer cure, I should say, I guess I would say is high, I think you start reevaluating your life.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Dr Brad Miller:I think you start having, because it's always somebody else that has cancer, but when it's you, it's somewhat shocking because the C word is just a horrible cancer. Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody ever wants to hear that, and so I do think that you do start reevaluating your life and you, you make changes to move forward, hopefully in a better way. Um, just based on the reality that you do have, or you've been diagnosed with, something that could potentially be devastating.
Speaker 5:We go through those natural progressions. You know depression and shock are absolutely a part of this process. You really can't go to the recovery until you go through the initial shock that you deal with and it's natural to have some depression and some bargaining and some other stages of grief and stages of grief and going down, that we go through.
Speaker 5:But if you stay stuck there, that's when you're in real trouble. I've seen that in my ministry and you've probably seen it working with seniors. There are some people who get stuck in a depressed state and that's not where you want to be. You want to be out of that and so you can live a full life. You know, one of the things I said to myself is you know, I am not going to start stop living. Even at my initial prognosis was not good. They said you know, if you don't do anything about this, cancer, uh, uh. You know, I had, uh, prostate cancer. If you don't think about this, you got three years maybe. So I did some things about it surgery and so on that we did. But if you don't do anything about it, then you're going to just continue dissolving down to a bad pathway. So you got to do something about it. Humor is one thing to do about it.
Speaker 6:The ax path, whatever it is. Do something to break those patterns. Hi, this is Andrew Brainerd, owner of TransMedCare Long Distance Medical Transportation. When the time comes to relocate a loved one under medical care, transmedcare is here to help. We offer nationwide medical transport services with fully customized vans providing all the comforts of home and licensed medical professionals to accompany your loved one along every mile. At TransMedCare, nothing is more important than bringing your loved one home safely. Visit our website at trans-medcarecom.
Dr Brad Miller:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. So you mentioned. So do you mind if I ask are you in remission or how are you doing with your? You know?
Speaker 5:I want to thank you for asking that question, darlene, because just a couple weeks ago, uh, I I had my surgery, uh, prostate surgery, april 4th of last year, 23 we're. And then, just right around, right near that same time, right around, uh, first of april of this year, I went back to the doc and they said, uh, you know, things are looking, looking good. There was no sign of the cancer anymore. It doesn't mean it can't come back, but I'm in a good place, feeling good and kind of good to go. So, yay, god for that.
Speaker 5:But I also know that, you know, even if it had been the other way, you know, even though they said, okay, answer's back, we got to do that with radiation, whatever it is I feel like I was still going to be okay. I'd prepare myself mentally, spiritually, physically to try to deal with it, you know. Either way, but, yeah, I appreciate you asking. I'm good to go right now, which also means, darlene, I'm really good to go to serve people in every way I can, because I am just committed. My mission now is to offer this sense of healing, with hope and humor, to everybody that I can. I do the podcast, where I love to talk to people like you who are doing the similar thing. I love to talk to seniors and groups like that to help them to heal with hope and humor. That's my mission.
Dr Brad Miller:No, I love that. I really appreciate that. That's a great mission and it's so interesting how something that is devastating and a disease can actually turn around for the better and it touches more people's lives. It's just kind of like a web where you're starting to reach more people and be a comfort to those that need it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I believe in transformation. In fact, I got a doctoral degree in life transformation thinking and you start in a bad place but you get to go to a good place. You got to go through those various processes here, but the transformation when it happens is a wonderful thing. If you witness that, if you're a part of that at all with other people, then you have personal transformation as well and I love it. That's what I'm all about, that transformation.
Dr Brad Miller:Yeah, no, I love that as well, so I did want to ask you so is there a way that people can connect more with your ACTS, your ath, and get more information on it, learn about it, be inspired by it?
Speaker 5:Absolutely. In fact, I got a free gift for your audience here that will help them do just that and that is a mini course of what I basically just outlined there. And people can go to cancerandcomedycom slash free and they get an audio, a five-day audio course, 10-15 minutes a day, which basically outlines a little more detail what I just spoke about there and that gets you connected to my world and get you connected to the cancer and comedy podcast. Lots of great resources there at our website. But basically the free gift for you, for your audience cancer and comedycom slash free and I'm always loving to hear from people. We have a place on our website as well where people can leave me an audio message about whatever's going on in your life, especially something fun or good, but whatever's going on, we want to be helpful. We're developing a community. That's what we're doing here Develop a community of people who just really are focused on hope and humor as a part of healing.
Dr Brad Miller:I think that's so important. I know that one of the things we talk about on this podcast are different support groups for dementia or caregiving support groups for folks that are actually caring for seniors out of their homes or even not out of their homes, but really just dealing with the past. Sometimes seniors make and it's this is another great resource and it's very specific because it's got the comedy and really the very specific way to navigate through really a cancer diagnosis, but I think it would fit with really any, any diagnosis or any anyone, even in a bad place.
Speaker 5:Yeah, just take that. I believe just that adversity and loneliness and pain is a part of people's lives and you know the health aspects is just one of them. You know there's relationship issues people have. There's also depression, mental health issues, financial stuff that people deal with. All these type of things, death, loss of a loved things you know, death loss of a loved one, grief issues uh, are all there. You can kind of substitute. Take that word cancer and substitute whatever adversity you're going through and this is going to be helpful to your life.
Dr Brad Miller:Right, right. I think that sometimes I look at people and I see people that are in a bad state and they can't get past whatever it is, and I know we just did a podcast on navigating the waves of grief feeling after heartache that we did with CJ and it's been a struggle for him.
Dr Brad Miller:It's been something he's really had to work hard on because the grief was just mind numbing. I mean it just literally was just eating ahead of soul. So I think it's important to, whatever you're going through, realize that it's not a permanent situation for most people, and you know this. This one of the things my mom used to say to me all the time as I face just general adversities in my life is and this too shall pass. Just general adversities in my life is, and this too shall pass. So I think sometimes it's keeping that in your mind as you're powering through whatever struggles you're having in your life, whether it's cancer or anything else like that.
Dr Brad Miller:Because I know that with my mom she had a diagnosis that wasn't, there was no cure. There's no cure for ovarian cancer. It's just keeping it at bay for as long as possible. But my mom really did take that opportunity and I'm so proud of her that she did do this, that she really went for it and living her life. She wanted to spend more time with the grandkids, more important time, not just stuff like going to Disney World, but reading and baking with them different things that really connected her with them, and then doing some things for herself, like travel, that she wasn't able to do or didn't find it a priority in life to do. And so she, really until not that long before she passed, she was at the zoo with the kids literally weeks before because she was just not going to have it, and I think she did it in a lot of pain, but I don't think she was going to give up that easily.
Speaker 5:Your mom sounds like an amazing woman and her legacy lives on what you're sharing here right now. That gives us perspective. That is powerful. I love that.
Dr Brad Miller:Yeah, yeah. So I think you have to keep that in mind, that your life isn't over till it's over. And the other thing my mom told me is nobody gets out of here alive. So we all at some point are going to face you know, faced our own demise. It's just, it's the way that it is. But no, I love all that, so I'm going to also include I just want people that are listening to realize that we're also going to put the link to the cancerandcomedycom slash free in the content of the podcast. So definitely check in there, so that'll be a live link and then also to the podcast cancer and comedy itself. Which tell me, Brad, is that available on different?
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's ever. It's on all the different podcast platforms. We have a YouTube channel as well. Cancerandcomedycom is the best place to go. You can go to cancerandcomedycom, slash follow to follow all the various places that you can find it.
Dr Brad Miller:Right, you know what I really appreciate you joining me today and your message of hope and comedy. Do you have a joke? Do you want to tell a joke before we sign off? Oh well, of course I always got a joke.
Speaker 5:I know I put you on the spot. No, that's all right. You know my, my, my medical joke is you know I used to have the hokey pokey but I turned myself around.
Dr Brad Miller:Oh my gosh, I love that.
Speaker 5:That's what it's all about. You know that's what it's all about.
Dr Brad Miller:Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm going to have that stuck in my head all day, so thank you for that.
Speaker 5:Hey, you're one of my favorite Floridians here, darlene, and I love what you're doing on Senior Living. I listened to this last podcast episode about grief, for instance. Awesome stuff you're doing. Thank you for serving this community, which is often underserved and certainly needs resources like this to help people feel connected. Love that. Thank you for doing that.
Dr Brad Miller:No, thank you so much for joining us today, brad. I really, really appreciate it. If you enjoyed this podcast, please feel free to check out our many other podcasts. It's available on Spotify, apple Podcasts and many more at seniorlivingguidecom podcast. Thank you.
