I Am the Battlefield

 This thought-provoking and inspiring podcast features Jeff Stewart, a metastatic gastrointestinal adenocarcinoma survivor, discussing his cancer journey, the impact of his diagnosis and facing his mortality, treatment experiences, and insights into living with cancer.  Jeff also talks about his book, "Living Inspiration from a Father with Cancer," which serves as a heartfelt letter to his children, sharing life lessons and his personal experiences.  The conversation covers the importance of understanding and participating in cancer treatments, the value of clinical trials, and the significance of accepting help and generosity from others.       

Here is a link to Jeff's phenomenal book, "Living: Inspiration from a father with cancer" https://www.amazon.com/Living-Inspiration-Father-Jeff-Stewart/dp/B0C48GS3R1/

Transcript

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Hi everybody. I am so happy to tell you that I have Mr. Jeff Stewart here with us, who is an amazing and accomplished individual who is also a gastrointestinal adenocarcinoma survivor and has an amazing journey through his life and since his diagnosis. And I'm so happy that he's here to share his story with us. Jeff has also recently published a book entitled Living Inspiration from a Father with Cancer. There it is. Jeff, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Your name is Jill, right? My chemo brain is forgetting your name already, I hope. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. very welcome. And chemo brain is one of the things you talk about in your book. So could you kind of explain what that is and some of the coping strategies you have come up with for it? Oh, if I tell you what's happening with chemo brain, you'll go, I have that. Chemo brain is like kind of a brain fog, uh, sort of that you get post chemo. Um, I didn't really notice it during chemo, but I noticed it after chemo. Um, and for me, it is not so much just, I can't think it's not like that. It's the sort of thing that you'd expect. And I was already getting for age, you know, just age, forgetting a word here or there having trouble coming up with somebody's name, you know, Oh, is that really? That's what they look like? Huh, I forgot. Completely. I forgot. That sort of effect, except it was accelerated by like three or four years. Like all of a sudden, you know, like what I was noticing gradually, gradually, all of a sudden just took a little jump and it's disturbing. Yeah. I'm sure because you kind of expect things to keep working the way they have been from that perspective. Yeah. Yeah, you're done with treatment, you know, and that's one of the other things about treatment in general. You get treated and you expect treatment side effects to be bad. You know, sometimes they're bad. Sometimes they are. And sometimes they aren't. What you don't expect or what I didn't expect is six weeks after radiation to feel basically the worst. That's you know, those are the times like you start feeling better about them. It's the time. after radiation, you feel worse than you when you're on radiation. And there's a little bit of a Oh, and one more thing. You're like as you're walking in out of a negotiation and they really think that Oh, and one more thing, you're gonna feel the worst, you know, and you know, two weeks, three weeks, probably tops, but that you know, give it six weeks and you'll start feeling you know, more like yourself again, like really? Thanks. don't tell you that beforehand because they're afraid you're not going to consent. I don't know, I don't know, but they do dole out a little bit of information, yo. mean, I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't say it quite that way. I think that nowadays our cancer care providers are very good about informed consent, but they're also learning a lot about survivorship these days and what kind of symptoms you can have and how to best intervene. But there's also a balance with not wanting to scare people away from treatment because it's a life saving. treatment and they are very open when you read through your consent information. They're very open about what can happen as they need to be. But those little things are, you know, it's a one sentence, oh, in six weeks, you probably start feeling better. But that six week point for you was life changing because you didn't for that moment, it was life changing because you did not feel well and you weren't expecting it. Right. Right. So my other question with that is did you find yourself missing your treatment team when you were done because they had become such an important part of your life for that time? Um, they are, I mean, I consider them friends. They were friendly people. I like them. Um, and, uh, some like the radiation oncologist and her minions, I don't, I, I'm not going to see them again, probably. So that, that I do miss them. Uh, it wasn't that I tried to go back, but if I saw them at a party, I would want to talk to them. They were good people. right. They are good people and they're there for a reason. It's because they really care and they want to help people have better outcomes. I have nothing but respect for oncology providers. So anyway, your story about how you were diagnosed is fascinating if you could share that. Sure. So I had gastric bypass about now it's been about 12 years ago, maybe even 13 as I'm thinking on it as I sit here. But in any case, I had gastric bypass quite a while ago. That's important because I decided it would be a good idea to donate a kidney, not to any one person in particular, but people need kidneys. And honestly, the five year survival of somebody who's on dialysis is like a cancer patient. It's not good. And I had read and done enough background research to know that if you donate a kidney, there is no risk. And I don't mean that like hyperbolically. People that donate a kidney actually live longer. But if you do matching of kidney donors are often more healthy. Even if you fix all of that, at the end of the day, it all washes out. There is no appreciable risk of donating a kidney. It might hurt, expect it to hurt, but I don't expect it to hurt my life or my life expectancy. The other kidney grows like a starfish. It takes over the function. You don't need two kidneys. The other one's really backup for traumatic injury, basically. And if you were going to lose kidney function, you usually lose both of them at the same time, not one at a time. So it's not like you really have a backup. Anyway, not for that, not for the normal things. So for all those reasons, I was just like, it's the right thing to do. I'm going to donate my kidney, which was hard because of the gassy bypass. They lots of places did not want to take me. Vidant went in North Carolina, which is where I live, took quite a while to decide. University of North Carolina said no right off the bat. I tried Georgetown. They said no. Duke said no. And then Duke said, well, maybe lose weight. lose more weight and come back. And then there was the magic of Ozempic. And that I lost weight and it was fantastic. I went in and got, you know, went through all the tests to diagnose kidney until I got to the last one, which is a CT scan, computerized tomography scan where they, you know, one with a big giant donut where they put you in and oars around and around that thing. So that thing when they're like looking at you with x -rays and taking little tiny slices, they're making sure you have two kidneys, that you have a blood supply to two kidneys, that there isn't something messed up inside me that would make it impossible on the donation table for them to say, oh, wait, oh, oh my gosh, that was a bad idea. They don't want any of that. So they look. And in looking, they found a kidney tumor and a tumor around my intestines. And the kidney tumor. ended up being very easily resolvable with surgery. The one that was in my intestines turned out to be a stomach, a gastric adenocarcinoma with a bad mutational type and is quite deadly. And that's where that was two years ago. That was 2022. So, I mean, that's, I'm sorry you're dealing with this. The story of your diagnosis is amazing. And thank, like you talked about in your book, thankfully you found it early because you weren't getting symptoms from it. And it was not too far advanced. So you end up being, after a lot of fine tooth combing through things, I think you end up being diagnosed with stage two, am I correct? At the time, stage 2A, correct, 2A. So, not great, but not the worst. I think part of that, Jill, is that the kidney cancer, no symptoms. The stomach cancer, not only no symptoms, but it was in the bypass part of my anatomy. It was a part that wasn't being used or being scoped. So there was no plausible way to discover this cancer, really either cancer, but that cancer. without it just going too far unless I had done something crazy like try to donate my kidney. And we would be sitting here today, either I still wouldn't know I had cancer or we would be saying, you have months to live and everything would just have come to a halt. And I wouldn't have been able to write. I wouldn't have been able to prepare myself. I wouldn't have been able to prepare my kids like huge. Huge gift that I got that time. Huge. Yeah, I thought of Providence intervening with that. Providence giving you the choice initially to go forward with this and then the, but also the weight loss and everything you did to take better care of yourself helped you do a lot better moving forward. I hadn't thought of that. I guess it would help me do better moving forward too, just by having lower weight and stuff like that. And that's a good point, Jill. I hadn't thought of that, but thank you. you're welcome. But I mean, that's what came to my mind is all the things you did to take better care of yourself helped you tolerate your treatments better are helping you hopefully combat advancement progression of this. You're having surgery this coming week, right? And what is going on with that? If you don't mind sharing. yeah, yeah, last week. So if you read the book, you will not find this out. This is hot off the presses. Last week, we had our every three months. I did. I had scans to see whether or not there was any hint of metastasis. My metastasis is meaning spread of the cancer or stage four, if you've heard that. So. That's what you don't want to happen and is quite deadly in my particular cancer. And we saw our first metastasis. Now it's in a good spot, so to speak. It's on my gallbladder, on the outside of my gallbladder. Well, good spot if it's going to be in that kind of cavity, the peritoneal cavity space. So the thing that kind of surrounds your guts with juice, if it's anywhere... in that space, it's bad, but of the spaces that it's bad, it's in a space that can be cut out. I guess the appendix would have been a better spot, but you know, of all the spots, it's pretty good. So question one, is that the only one? It does seem passing on Jill that it would be the only spot of mold on the loaf of bread, but maybe, maybe it is, or better yet, what if it's a third cancer? That would be great news. I'm not even kidding. That would be great news because it would mean I'm not metastatic. It's not metastatic disease. H4 with the deadly cancer, maybe it's a bile duct cancer or something like that that is bad, but not that bad. So we will have surgery to go in and look. You can see spread of this kind of cancer before you can see it on CT scan. So. maybe 40 % of the time when they go into a laparoscopic and they look in there, so four out of 10 times, and they go in and look at somebody's guts when they are kind of in a similar situation to mind, they back out slowly going, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's everywhere. And they may see that. Another option is they just take out my gallbladder and that's the end. And then the last option, which is maybe the likeliest option is that they take out my gallbladder, but it's still as metastatic and they just don't see it yet. And it's just around. and we shall see at the time. I don't know. I'm going to pray and hope for the best outcome for you. And looking forward to updates on this. So your book is an amazing tapestry of a letter to your kids, life lessons in the letter to your kids and kind of a review of very impactful points in your life. And... your career and then also your story of moving forward through your cancer journey. And I found it so beautifully woven. And I really enjoyed it. It was a very engrossing and quick read, which is great for most people. It doesn't, it's just, it's easy to read. So I congratulate you on a beautiful work. You're welcome. You're welcome. So. You don't you dedicated the book to your family and it's kind of a letter to your children is how I took it. What message do you want to come from your book? So it's a different message for different audiences, but you're welcome to peek into the message that I've left in a bottle for my kids. I have seven children. They range from 31 down to 13. And I worry that if I were to die, that they would go through life without the life lessons or the best possible advice that I either received or that I thought through or learned the hard way. And I didn't want them to have to learn it the hard way. And if I wasn't going to be there to tell it to them, then I wanted them to know it and have it written down so that later when they could look back, they could say, oh, okay, that's what dad said. And I'm happy to pass those on to anyone. I mean, those things go from the mundane on how to drive a car to potentially profound. on how to live through life. That was the main thing I thought about doing, Jill, when I thought about writing things down, getting down a book. But the other thing I found in doing, as I started to prepare for that and doing that and getting those things down, was that my social media posts, primarily on Facebook, were helping people. I work not... not directly with cancer patients, but I'm trained in molecular biology. I work often with pharma companies and often interview oncologists. It's my job. The whole cancer field is scary because it's cancer and it's scary because it's unknown. It's scary in two ways. It feels, I think, to many people who get cancer, that it is not only the worst thing that's ever happened to them, but they don't understand it. It is frightening beyond words. But I do understand it. Or I can. Or I can. Looking up what exactly the molecular mechanism of an FGFR2 mutation, which is my mutation, is a Tuesday for me. It is not. It's just my job. It's what I do. So when I was talking about it and explaining things, what is a CT scan? Really, what is a CT scan? Like, how does it work? Once you understand that the ring is a ring that has an X -ray camera, you're used to X -ray cameras and you're getting X -rays, but it's not X -rays like it's going to burn you. And then you know that whirring sound is the camera spinning around. Well, you know what? You understand a little bit more. And when you understand a little bit more, it's a little bit less scary. And I was getting responses from people that are friends, acquaintances, or people that I didn't know, that would tell me that when they heard my explanations of what was going on with me, without a layer of fear and terror, which is natural, it helped them. It helped them with their own cancer sometimes. It helped them with the cancers of their family members sometimes that couldn't talk about it. They didn't know what to say. They didn't have the words. It helped them when a new family member was diagnosed. And when I realized that my words could be helpful, not just to my kids, but to others, that's when I thought, I can do this. I can write this into a book. I don't know how this is going to end, but I can write this down. And... write it to the absolute best level that I could possibly write something. And that's what I did. Or tried. it was amazing and the way you explained everything was so good. It made it very relatable and and just I'm sorry my son is opening and closing our garage door to go to work if you can hear that but it made it made things explanations of very complex topics understandable it made your experience relatable. And I could see where your social media posts when you're including that type of information and that type of sharing would really make a big difference to people and take some of the mystery away, which, as you said, takes the fear away too. And that's kind of where my approach is coming from with this podcast is it's talking with compelling people such as yourself. And it's also bringing people in who work in cancer care to help. unmask some of that mystery so that people can understand better. One of my future guests is a nuclear engineer who works in radiation oncology, who's going to talk about how it works. And she's behind the scenes, totally behind the scenes. She rarely meets patients, but she does so much that is integral to their treatment. And I can't wait to have her on. I'm really looking forward to it. But anyway, back to your book. completely agree that that unmasking and taking away that veil of mystery is really empowering and helpful to people. So I congratulate you for doing that. You've done it beautifully. And I think the chapter that you put in your book, if you really want to understand something, teach it. That's very true. But the way you've taught through your book and through your posts is incredible. You're welcome. You're welcome. read something. Do you want me to read something? OK. You tell me whether or not this one is, you tell me to read something different. If this one, you go, ooh, that one's not gonna work with the audience. I will try. choose. Your entire book is excellent, so go for it. not even pretending to fight. Okay, I love that chapter and I thought it was a great insight. Oh, thank you. You're gonna fight that cancer. No, I'm really not. I get unreasonably irritated when I hear that I'm going to fight that cancer. What's my weapon? Harsh language? What good would fighting, whatever that means, do? I'm not going to fight cancer. I'm not going to beat cancer. I'm not going to lose my battle with cancer either. I don't even think my good attitude or bad one is going to do much of much. at least as far as fighting cancer goes. The actual cancer fight looks like this. The chemotherapy Aksali Platin is spot welding my DNA to the replicating DNA strands so they snarl in a tangled mess. The oral pro drug of the chemotherapy 5-FU, yes, there's a chemotherapy called FU figures. there is. Oro5fu ProDrug is keeping new DNA pieces from being made and poisoning whatever DNA manages to copy itself despite the Xaliplatin spot welding. My immune system is hunting down stray cancer cells that survive the war chemos waging on my DNA. In three months, chest radiation will blow double -stranded breaks in my DNA, mortal molecular wounds. If the actual fighters kill every last cancer cell, then I live. If even one cancer cell lives, I die. I'm not a fighter. I'm the battle - I thought that was incredibly insightful and it really speaks to, it's beautifully written and so well written. It speaks to why building a great team is so important and why getting a second opinion is so important because you want your best operatives on that battlefield. Yeah, the good thing about it is having, I said I interview oncologists as part of my job, but not just oncologists. I interview basically any specialty type out there, depending on the product that I'm trying to understand how it might be used in a hospital setting or in a clinical setting. So I talked to a lot of doctors or half over the years. Oncologists are smart. You expect, I think that the typical, you think, ah, brain surgeon will be smart. Yeah, they're smart. You think, oh, the cardiologist is gonna be smart. Okay, they're smart, arrogant, but smart. But the oncologists are the complete nerds of the class. They are the ones that aced every test. They are totally into science. It's refreshing. It's really, really nice. Like you have gotten, it's a terrible disease, but the good part of it is that you get the best doctors. Right, right. I agree with you there. I also find that oncologists combine the art and science of practicing extremely well because everybody is different. Everybody's an individual and some people react differently or. have symptoms, different symptoms for the same treatment and they become very good at stepping back and looking at that individual person and working with them, which pulls in the art piece and the critical judgment piece. It's not the same for everyone. So. I'm glad to hear that you think oncologists are some of the smart. I love working with them. I really do. And there's so much discernment that needs to go into it and critical judgment and really talking with their patients and understanding what's happening. And also what their life is like outside of the office, because that's going to impact treatment as well so that they can have the best support. through their treatment and be able to be as compliant with it as possible. You know from your work, your career, that sticking with the protocol that was decided upon as most effective in the clinical trials is really important for the best effectiveness. And someone's lifestyle doesn't always coincide with that. So it's really important to understand what that lifestyle is and work with that person. You were probably one of the, are probably one of the star patients because you understand this and you fall into line to be as close to the clinical trial as possible. I don't think the general public necessarily does understand that. And so, yeah. So it's, um, But the way you describe that is just beautiful and amazing. I'm just flipping through my notes here for a second. So what have you discovered about yourself, Jeff, that has surprised you through this? Hmm, that's a hard question, Jill. What is actually surprising about myself? I've always known that I'm pretty good in an emergency and that I work well towards deadlines and this has certainly brought that to the fore. A lot of deadlines and hard ones and lots of emergencies. I guess the only places where I don't do well in an emergency is when I caused it. If I've caused the emergency, then I'm horrible because I feel bad the whole time. But otherwise, there. I don't, I'm probably also a better person when I'm, when it's bad news. The things that make me a less good person, anything with impatience or anything with, just or are willing to waste time more often, let's go away. Let's go away. So you have a message of understanding what your treatment involves so that you can work with it better and understand what's happening, or advocate for yourself better. What other messages do you want to give to people that are also on a cancer journey? Oh my gosh, so there is one that is hugely important. And if there's only one thing you learn or you remember or anything, it's this. And it's going to be a hard thing for some people to hear. But these are the data. This has been tested. Those people that choose alternative therapies over, not in addition to, but over doing what their doctor said, they go, I'm just, I wash my hands of this. I'm just going to go and I'm going to try something else, some other alternative treatment. Those people who do that sometimes live and sometimes die. They die at twice the rate of patients that just go in to listen to what their oncologist said, not even necessarily compliant, but they just don't reject it. They go in for the oncologist. Maybe they do supplements in addition. Twice is a lot. Twice is a lot. And you will, as a cancer patient, be getting lots and lots and lots of very kind but very wrong advice. Lots of it. Cancer is not an easy field to learn. Remember all those nerds that we talked about? They're there also because everyone else was weeded out. They are at the deep end. of the deep end of the swimming pool, scientifically. We pay experts not because they agree with us, that's just, don't pay experts to agree with us. Follow the doctors. Sure, go and get multiple opinions, make sure you have the best doctor. Of course, of course. But then once you've found the best, trust them, trust them. That's what you are paying them for. Trust them, let them do their jobs, let them fight. for you because at the end of the day, Jill, for all my training, it's not as though I could find or can find anything that's better from what my doctors are telling me to do. I can find other things that tend to be side roads and kind of waste time as I think through them. But at the end of the day, if I had none of that, if I had none of that and just gotten in the back seat of the car and let the NASCAR driver drive around the track, I would have been in just as good of a position, all the decisions would have been the same at the end of the day. So it's not as though we can direct that treatment by looking stuff up or by hearing something from our friend from high school. It doesn't work that way. It's too difficult. And that's okay. That's okay. That's why we hire people. That's why we hire people or hire really smart people. That's it. you. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. I believe that people have, and I'm sure you agree, have a right to make their personal choice and step back and look. But I think your insight of understanding how complex this really is and just, and the way you explain it in your book about how the different treatments are working between the oxyloplatin, the 5 -FU, the radiation shows the complexity of it. And so I think that is excellent, excellent insight. And I so appreciate how passionate you are about it. And that leads me to another question with your background and what you just said. Being in the position you are, can you explain how important clinical trials are? Well, there are two reasons clinical trials are important for cancer patients. One is in the abstract, they're important. I'll talk about that. But they're important now for a cancer patient. So in the abstract, we've got to have true clinical trials. If nobody tests things, then nobody knows. And if nobody knows the difference between something that works and is great and is a Nobel Prize and something that doesn't work and is terrible and is thrown to the side, is less than the difference between the best baseball player and the best batter on the team and the third best. It's just so close. You would never know. You could watch every game, home game in the season, and because you missed the away games, you still, you don't know, you don't know. And you definitely don't know from one person at bat or two or 20. You do not know it. You need lots and lots of people to test something, to know if something works. And people... signed up and did that and did that work. Let them be helpful. Those clinical trials are hugely helpful from the past. And the other place that they matter is for us. Now, when I get more cancer treatment, which is likely not to save my life, which it can't, but to extend my life and to make it less burdensome, when I get that, it will likely be in clinical trial. Why? Because we've used the one agent set that really works well, that we know works well. So now there's nothing really good left. So when you're in that position, then a clinical trial is your best bet. It's not, it's being tested. Let's make no bones about it. It's something that's being tested, but it's being tested in a safe way, as safe as it can't be when it's cancer and chemotherapy. It's being tested where they monitor you and it's being tested in a way that if it works, it will be helpful to the next set of people, the next generation of people, the next cancer patients. And that seems like a good thing. It is a good thing. I love when I read articles about how a phase three clinical trial is released or approved by the FDA and the Fast Track because they've had so many good results from it. I get chills when I read things like that. And I think more people have better operatives, like as you put it on the battlefield. And that's great. A really a chapter that you wrote that really spoke to me from your book, Jeff, is. accepting the generosity of others or accept the generosity of others. That is such an important concept and can you explain from your perspective why? Hmm. Some people have the problem of being stingy and they don't give things to others and that's their problem. And that's the problem most people are aware of. But lots of kind, kind people find it difficult to accept that other people are helping them. With a cancer patient, that's even more important to accept the generosity of others. I mean, not only are you giving a gift to them by letting them be good, because you feel good when you're being nice, don't you? So if we feel good when we're being nice, why not let somebody else feel good when they're being nice? I mean, that's a part of growing up and being a better and more fully adult human being, something that is hard for a lot of us, especially those of us that are strong and capable. And as a cancer patient, you won't always be strong and you won't always be capable. So being able to accept generosity in those cases is maybe a hard thing, maybe a new thing, but an important thing and a good thing. It is an important thing. If you are able to step back and let your sense of personal accountability go for that moment and accept the generosity, you can relieve a mantle of stress for a particular part of your life, whether it's having meals for your family provided if somebody else provides them, having your house cleaned, having someone take you to treatment. If you are not able to drive and your wife has to be with the kids. those pieces help you to do better on the journey. And I think it's, I think what you shared there is invaluable and the way you shared it. And I can't speak enough to how much that really does make a difference for people. I was really touched by the chapter you wrote about the humility of your radiation oncologist and how that bought credibility for you with her. Could you explain a little bit more about that? Sure. My radiation oncologist is smart. Let's just set that as a baseline. She is very smart. Even dumb doctors are really smart. So there's no, I have utmost respect for anybody who has taken the time and perseverance to go through medical school and residency and to work in a field that's extremely difficult. I work with a lot of smart people and I work with a lot of CEOs. And I know the smart ones and I know the ones that really take my breath away. And the ones that really take my breath away, they are willing to be dumb. They are willing to say, wait a second, explain that again. And they seem to get almost excited about something a little bit different from what they had had as a preconceived notion. They're learning in front of your eyes. They're not defending, they're not defensive. They have an essential humility that allows them to learn. And it is beautiful when you see it. And I saw it with my radiation oncologist. Just a particular time when something that she had assumed was right was in fact wrong. But it had to, she had very good reason to assume that it was right and very good reason to assume that I would be hopeful for a different answer, not just pointing out that the different answer was the right answer. And I just saw her do that and it made it much easier when at future times she said, no, Jeff, it's not like that. You don't understand it. That, okay, I probably don't understand it. Let's stop it. You know, because she stopped and was willing to think through something that she had gotten wrong. It's just a sign of somebody who really knew what they were doing. that thank you so much for sharing that that also points to why active listening is so important. Whether you're the physician or the patient or a family member that listening and really thinking about what that person is saying is so important in these relationships. There's something Jill, as a piece of practical advice, and this is gonna be hard advice, I mean, like embarrassing for you advice as a patient, but try it, try it. The very first time your oncologist says a word you don't know, stop them and ask them what that word means. You will do it a lot, a lot, like a lot, a lot. But if you don't do that, then they're just gonna blow by it. and think that you know what something is and you're in the middle of calculus class again and the whole class gets it and you don't. It doesn't have to be that way because the oncologist, they actually want to teach you. They want to teach you this stuff and they forget, they forget because they use it every day all day long. They forget that you don't know what local regional is. They forget that you don't know what neoplasm is. They forget that you don't know what adjuvant therapy is. All of those words. are basic words in oncology to an oncologist. And they forget, they forget. As many times as they do this, they will forget. Just stop them, just stop them and ask them to explain. And then the next time you won't have to stop them that often. And the next time you'll barely have to stop them. Maybe even one visit, you won't have to stop them at all. I've had visits where I haven't had to stop them at all, but it's rare. Usually there's something and that's fine. Oh, of course. you've had visits where you have stopped them a lot, it sounds like. Yeah. And what was their reaction? They just said they're happy to explain. It's like you've just, you know, given them a candy. I mean, oh, good. I get to explain what junction is or something. I'm like, OK, good. And now I know that. Why is that distant? It's only 10 centimeters. Oh, but it's counted as distant metastasis because of blah, blah, blah. There they go. love this. I love this because you for anybody listening, you are taking the fear away of asking a doctor a question. And people are so intimidated by that sometimes. So thank you for that. That's like you're taking a diamond and holding it up and rays are coming from it. That is such a gift. It is so it is. It's so important that people understand. what is happening and what is going to happen and what their treatment is and be able to, or if they have to make a decision, if they're in shared decision making with their oncologist to truly understand what these pieces are and how it's going to affect their life so they can make a good decision. So thank you because that is invaluable. And also they need to feel free to share what is happening with them. And so to be able, thank you so much. I cannot say enough. So. What haven't we covered yet that you really want to share? Um. Sorry, let me just pause and think through these things and you can cut it out on the time if it takes too long for me to think through these things. Ha ha ha. I can do the Jeopardy music in the background while you're thinking. And for our listeners, Jeff has been on Jeopardy several, several times. So that that's a but anyway, go ahead, Jeff, please. it's been many years. It's been 30 years. But I was a college champion in 1994 and got second on the tournament of champions. Good times. So you'll read about that book also. If I had a publicist, then they would get mad at me for not mentioning my book every few seconds. It's living inspiration from a father with cancer. Jeff Stewart, you can get it on Amazon or anywhere. Um, Jill, it was a lovely conversation. My mind couldn't come up with anything else to ask. You did your job in an excellent way. Thank you. Well, it was very lovely having you here with me and I so appreciate you taking the time with everything that you have going on to be here. And again, that is Living Inspiration from a Father with Cancer. It's available on Amazon. I'm going to be posting the link to it on the Everything Cancer website. And your presence has been a gift to me, but a gift to all of our listeners too, Jeff. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And if you have cancer or if you have a loved one with cancer, I'm sorry, first of all, there are people like Jill that will be there to help you. And I can't say this next part enough, though. There will be people that will try to take your money and scam you out and sell you things that won't work and won't help you. And if you think about it for one second, the person that would be willing to do that to a cancer patient, You just don't want anything to do with them. Listen to your doctor. I'm not saying that just because doctors are gods. They are not gods. They get things wrong. They will get things wrong. That's part of the game. That's part of what they have to do to play. But, but it's a safe harbor in a sea that is full of sharks. And you just don't want your loved one or you to get into their, into their maw. Listen to your doctor. Thank you. See, you did think of something. And it was important. It was very important. Thank you so much, Jeff. quite welcome. Thank you. Oh, you're so welcome. I am going, hold on a second.