Crafting Survival
Conquering Cancer: Matt's Ten Year Victory
What would you do if a simple mole turned into a life-threatening crisis? This week on Crafting Survival, we bring you Matt’s gripping story of resilience and triumph over stage four melanoma. Alongside his wife, Matt opens up about the rollercoaster journey from an alarming diagnosis to celebrating nine years cancer-free. We dig into the modern medical interventions, personal experiences, and the unpredictable nature of melanoma that shaped his battle and recovery, offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.
We also feature the incredible transformation of a former Division I football player who radically changed his lifestyle in the face of cancer. From swapping an unhealthy diet for a paleo one to finding strength and community in CrossFit, his story serves as an inspiring blueprint for anyone looking to build a "full tank of health." The emotional and physical challenges he faced, coupled with heartfelt conversations with his children about his illness, underscore the vital role of a supportive environment in navigating a cancer diagnosis.
Finally, we explore the harrowing journey through medical crises and the evolving landscape of cancer treatment. Matt recounts the mental and physical toll of confronting a life-threatening diagnosis, the discovery of a large tumor, and the swift medical interventions that followed. We delve into the cutting-edge treatments like targeted therapies and immunotherapy that were pivotal in his recovery. Wrapping up, we reflect on the importance of resilience and the power of personal motivation, from intense workouts to engaging in challenging activities, providing valuable insights into crafting survival amid adversity.
What would you do if a simple mole turned into a life-threatening crisis? This week on Crafting Survival, we bring you Matt’s gripping story of resilience and triumph over stage four melanoma. Alongside his wife, Matt opens up about the rollercoaster journey from an alarming diagnosis to celebrating nine years cancer-free. We dig into the modern medical interventions, personal experiences, and the unpredictable nature of melanoma that shaped his battle and recovery, offering a powerful testament to the human spirit.
We also feature the incredible transformation of a former Division I football player who radically changed his lifestyle in the face of cancer. From swapping an unhealthy diet for a paleo one to finding strength and community in CrossFit, his story serves as an inspiring blueprint for anyone looking to build a "full tank of health." The emotional and physical challenges he faced, coupled with heartfelt conversations with his children about his illness, underscore the vital role of a supportive environment in navigating a cancer diagnosis.
Finally, we explore the harrowing journey through medical crises and the evolving landscape of cancer treatment. Matt recounts the mental and physical toll of confronting a life-threatening diagnosis, the discovery of a large tumor, and the swift medical interventions that followed. We delve into the cutting-edge treatments like targeted therapies and immunotherapy that were pivotal in his recovery. Wrapping up, we reflect on the importance of resilience and the power of personal motivation, from intense workouts to engaging in challenging activities, providing valuable insights into crafting survival amid adversity.
I will be your shield in the fiercest battle. I'll defend you from all these arrows and the sword. I will will keep you from danger. Let me be your shield.
Speaker 2:This is crafting survival a podcast that is not just about cancer. It's about the challenges in life. It's about surviving, overcoming, developing plans, speaking with survivors, people who have dealt with cancer, dealt with other challenges, experts in the field of medicine, science, innovation anyone who has dealt with life's challenges. This podcast for you. Sit back and enjoy Crafting Survival. Welcome to our first series in our podcast, Crafting Survival. Today, we are discussing a very important, near and dear topic to us Kicking off this idea of survival. Matt, you have a-.
Speaker 3:Crafting survival.
Speaker 2:Crafting survival right.
Speaker 3:Which means you're building it yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or not yourself, but with a community of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have been thinking about this day for the last month. Maybe I think about it all the time because it's special and unique to me since I get to be your wife. But 10 years ago, today marked a huge milestone in your life and a significant one that many other people go through and thought that it would be a great story to share for our first podcast. So what happened 10 years ago today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so 10 years ago I was diagnosed with stage four melanoma. I'm nine years Ned no evidence of disease.
Speaker 1:It was a year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty exciting. So it was a year exactly. I went into the ER on my birthday and then the following year, on my birthday, I had a PET scan that came back clean.
Speaker 2:What was it? What were you diagnosed with?
Speaker 3:Melanoma Stage four melanoma.
Speaker 2:Just think like how long ago I mean, it wasn't that long ago that melanoma was a death sentence, right? So that's also. You got some pretty interesting little things that went on in there. The modern medicine Mutations. Yeah, we'll talk about those crazy mutations.
Speaker 3:That's more your area, getting scientific and nerdy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, that's more your area. It's getting scientific and nerdy. Yeah, that's right, that's another episode.
Speaker 3:Right yeah. For me it's just things I learned, specific to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:My knowledge on cancer doesn't really expand further than melanoma and what I had. You know my dad. My dad passed melanoma two years ago. His case was different, even though it was the same cancer that showed itself differently. It grew in different areas. You know the blood brain barrier. His cancer went through that and got into his brain. Mine stayed. You know my body and my lungs and my bone marrow.
Speaker 2:So it was everywhere, right, like the melanoma was everywhere. I think like I told you I've been in this business of cancer and testing for 23 years and your case when you shared your records with me, I was blown away. It was one of the worst cases I had seen in my career. So I mean, that's what I think was also pretty profound about your story. So let's go back to a little bit about prior to being diagnosed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when we talk about the stage four that you know, to me it's like the second round or the second fight I had. Uh, nine years prior to that, I had a mole, a mole on my back cut off. Um, didn't know, I couldn't see it.
Speaker 2:So are you 27, 26, something like that, I think 28.
Speaker 3:So maybe eight years prior. And I grew up working with a good family friend, a mentor of mine now, who I truly love and cherish, and a lot of those days working out in the summertime in Southern California with my shirt off and so getting exposed to the sun. You know, yeah, I was 28 years old and I had a melanoma, stage one cut off my back and it was kind of scary, but it didn't really hit home yet, even though they told me oh, it's cancer, it's malignant.
Speaker 2:It's just a mole, like oh well, it's just a mole, I'm cool, I'm invincible, because you know you're like superhero, fit athlete.
Speaker 3:Right At that time, kind of getting steered away from the athletic workout diet, I was more turning into a construction guy. You know I was drinking too many beers, wasn't really watching what I was eating. I was, you know, working outside every day and so not concerned with my diet. I was active, but I wasn't getting into the gym and I wasn't following any program, or it was just kind of willy-nilly getting into the gym and I wasn't following any program or it was just kind of willy-nilly.
Speaker 3:And then I had that mole cut off my back and all I really did after that was dermatology appointments and a chest x-ray once a year for five years. And then the doctor was like, well, no reason, we should keep seeing you, or you know more moles. If anything comes up, you know, come see us again. And so that's when I kind of transitioned my lifestyle and didn't give up drinking beer but cut back and changed the diet and started working out and decided I needed to take my health personally yeah, so you were a Division I football player, right?
Speaker 2:A lot of us athletes we get burnt out and don't work out and do things. So you cleaned it up and you started doing what. What was your?
Speaker 3:CrossFit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he did CrossFit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I drank the Kool-Aid, fell right in, loved it.
Speaker 2:It really reminded me a lot of the weight room with all the college buddies Same for me, crossfit was like the way we used to train as a kid, and all the outdoor, all the things that we did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the group setting. I really like being around the people and pushing each other and talking smack.
Speaker 2:So, would you say, you then were in the best shape of your life, right? You said, even all the things you had done, you were in like the best of like, you felt the best, right.
Speaker 3:I wasn't as strong as I was in college, right, but I felt more fit, more endurance, yeah, leaner. Just overall I felt more healthy and I think it was also because of the diet which in college, you know, you're just trying to get calories, you're trying to put on weight bulk drinking milk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember my brother drinking two gallons of milk Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, which it's not that healthy for you, right.
Speaker 2:Long term, right yeah, it's not that healthy for you, right Long?
Speaker 3:term. Right, yeah. So when I was diagnosed I was five years of crossfitting and eating paleo, really taking care of myself, and I didn't realize how important that was until my nurse the oncology nurse told me that I've really set myself up to succeed. I came into the doctor with a full tank of health.
Speaker 2:Yeah, full tank of gas.
Speaker 3:I had a long way to go before I was out, but here you were.
Speaker 2:You're like yeah, I'm fit, but I've got this. So talk about that day. What happened? How did it come about?
Speaker 3:Were you just not feeling well, so it was like the month of January and it came smashing down. In one day we were at a baseball tournament for my son down at the beach in San Clemente, and it was a Saturday evening game, and so a bunch of the parents had hotel rooms and families were staying down there. And after the game we went down to the lounge and we were having a drink and immediately I felt like something wasn't right. Um started to get cold and you know, for a second I thought, well, yeah, we're january at the beach and of course you're going to be cold. But then I started to shiver and, um, I couldn't sit and hang out any longer. I had to get up and move or walk.
Speaker 2:That's not like you. You're like the hangout guy you hang out until the lights go down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so I excused myself, told my ex-wife I don't feel right. I got to go and left half a beer on the bar and by the time I got back to the hotel room where the kids were, I was shaking violently and I walk in and the kids were even like Dad what's the matter? What's going on? How old were the kids at that time? My baby was almost four, lennox, and then Landon is a year and a half older than her, so Layton would have been 14. Lawson was nine and yeah, so they're all still young and didn't understand what was going on. And you know they just knew this bad word cancer but didn't quite understand what it was. So it affected them pretty hard watching me go through that and lose weight. And you know it was an emotional month dealing with, yeah, telling the kids what was going on. And do we tell the kids what's going on? And do we tell the kids what's going on?
Speaker 3:And do we keep this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's like a whole other podcast right, when you have to talk about, like, dealing with cancer and kids. That's got a whole other like thing around it right.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, the whole thing, not just family and kids, but yeah, do you share publicly, do you keep this to yourself, you know? Is there stigma attached to it? People oftentimes don't want to talk about it because, oh my god, I'm sick, I'm you know.
Speaker 2:Well, there's cultural you know, there's cultural things around it, there's work things that get affected. I mean there's so much around cancer for sure. I think it like cancer is like the true, like enigma, you know. I mean it used to, it used to be AIDS and like, well, we got AIDS kind of under control and nobody really even it's like weird, like nobody really talks about that much anymore, and cancer is this huge?
Speaker 2:like cancer, like word, you know, and when we, when we decided on Cancer Help Desk, we intentionally made cancer and smaller font, like not as bold, as bold as helped us because we don't, we want there to be a solution, right, versus like the solution is bigger than the problem. So, yeah, so, anyway, that's that's interesting too. Like to to have to deal with all of those things and those thoughts. So what was your first thought? Just as pertains to kids, like go to that. But were you like, oh shit, what am I going to tell my kids? Like what I mean, what am I going to do? Like what was your first thought? Just as pertains to kids that go to that. But were you like, oh shit, what am I going to tell my kids? Like what I mean, what am I going to do? Like what was that like first thought when they said you had stage four cancer?
Speaker 3:First thought is not seeing your kids grow up. It's scary. So that was kind of my driver Told myself I'm going to see my girls get married. So that was my survival plan. See my girls get married um, yeah, meet their future husband, pass them on. Let them know that they're ensure myself that they're going to be taken care of. Um, yeah, but didn't have to do that well, yeah, so let's go back to being.
Speaker 2:You had shared something with me that I thought was kind of interesting too, that you're like so you're diagnosed, you know um your first oncology appointment like the first thing they told you do you have a living will and trust yeah, which I?
Speaker 3:I that like kills me big stack of papers and one of the first things on top here. You need to fill this out yeah, like not.
Speaker 2:How are you doing? Like we're gonna get through this, like do you have your will ready? So you're like shit, you just handed me a death sentence yeah, yeah, a. Will for what? A will for what? Why do I need a? Will I don't get that, I don't, I don't, I don't understand, you know, I mean, I'm in health care, been in health care a long time. I just that one just really gets me.
Speaker 3:I think it may have opened up the conversation. Or you know how do you tell somebody oh, you have a 5% chance of living, you're in the three to six month range of survival.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a whole nother thing too, statistics. That also kills me.
Speaker 3:So the paperwork, the will, could be leading into instead of just hey, dropping the bomb.
Speaker 2:Hey bomb.
Speaker 3:Hey, buddy, you got five percent chance of living instead. Hey, fill out a will if you don't have a will. Yes, it's kind of smart.
Speaker 2:Everybody should do it yeah, so anyway, you're like did you tear it up? Were you just like?
Speaker 3:I never, I never, I don't.
Speaker 2:I still, to the day, don't have a will yes, there you go, you're just not gonna expire I'm not gonna die, no, you just keep this forever like survival plan going Right, yeah, All right, so you didn't sign the paperwork. So then what Like? Then what happens?
Speaker 3:So from that appointment, so it's back up that month of January. After that night of the chills, the shakes, wake up the next day, go to a baseball game in the morning and I felt like a cancer patient already, even though I didn't know it. I was tired, wore out, um, the shivers and the chills went away a little bit for the day, but for the next week they would come and go Um. And then about the second week in January, pain in my abdomen started to develop, um, you know. And so I thought maybe my appendix had bursted or you know something more simple, but still I couldn't explain it. Gallbladder, I didn't know. So finally, um, after a week of scarfing down pain meds trying to get through the pain so I could sleep, I went into the er, you know, on my birthday, after a night of going out for a birthday dinner.
Speaker 2:Your ex-wife was a nurse too, right?
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm. Yeah, she's the one that got me the strongest Paying meds. Yeah, and so you know it took a whole month and even living with the nursing, you know medical professional, still never thought for those four weeks to go to the doctor.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, you do that now. I tough through it. It'll go away.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, if it's the man in me or I mean.
Speaker 2:Athlete. In us, we're trained to not succumb to pain.
Speaker 3:Right. Are you hurt? Are you injured?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:I'm hurt, coach. All right, get back in the game.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 3:I'm injured. Pull me out. Yeah, take a break. Get taped up. Go to the doctor. Yeah, we don't want to miss out on the fun, right right also kind of admitting, oh, something's wrong.
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, so, uh, finally, yeah, going to the ER and they keep me in there for a couple days and, uh, check me into the hospital and the main reason was to collect urine, uh, to rule out two specific types of tumors that grow on your adrenal gland that would have affected the anesthesiologist. So they were collecting urine samples to rule out these two specific tumors that would have affected my heart, had they. Um, the initial plan was they were going to cut out this tumor. That brought me into the er. Um, yeah, so I'm in there and they run an ultrasound and they tell me that I have a mass of 500 milliliters either on my adrenal gland or my liver. They couldn't tell from the ultrasound and I was like 500 milliliters. I don't speak that language, what is that? And the nurse pointed to a 16 ounce water bottle and I picked it up and it says, right there, 16 ounces slash 500 milliliters. I was like this size of a water bottle. She says, yeah, you have a water bottle size, mass yeah.
Speaker 3:And so after a CAT scan they confirmed it was on my adrenal gland, and then they also told me that it was necrotic again Again, I don't speak that language and they explained that that means it's dead. I go hold on, that doesn't make sense. So they said that the tumor grew so fast that it outgrew the blood supply. So the blood feeding your adrenal gland isn't a huge vein or artery, it's not a lot of blood flow, and so the thing grew so fast that it was taking up all the food or blood going to my adrenal gland and it couldn't keep up growing and so half of it had died off.
Speaker 2:So when they say cancer grows fast, yeah, that was the CrossFit you were doing in the Paleo diet.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So when they say cancer grows fast, I think it's a relative term. Everybody has a different idea. To me it was like a year, six months or two years is fast. No, I think it's weeks, if not days, judging by how quickly I went downhill from being in great shape and then basically being bedridden.
Speaker 2:So you had stress in your life too, right? Well, that's maybe another topic, another day too, but you had some stress in your life and I'm a huge, huge believer that stress and it's not even just belief it's been proven that stress induces illness, right, not just cancer, but other illnesses, and it just wreaks havoc on our bodies. So you had stress in your life, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, personal and professional Work was stressful. I was in the middle of building a 100-unit assisted living facility and the marriage was on the rocks. We were dealing with some stuff going on which can be another podcast in the future, but there was a lot of, yeah, internal stress that I was internalizing, not talking about, not sharing.
Speaker 2:You know, the hours of work and you're a harboring stuff, right, keeping it all in mm-hmm, and it decided no, we want to get out. So you have this mass, and they were talking about surgery.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was the initial medical response. They were going to cut it out.
Speaker 2:Somebody had some grace. Some thought that they said wait a second.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah. So the surgical oncologist gave me a call a couple days before the surgery was scheduled and said I had a meeting with the tumor team and you're still in the hospital right at this point no, no, no, it was a two-day stay okay yeah, so between getting out of the hospital and the surgery and nothing happened, I didn't have any testing. Or, uh, I did get set up for radiation. They put me in a like a body cast so they could get me in the same position every time.
Speaker 2:So you never had radiation though.
Speaker 3:Never had radiation either.
Speaker 2:I know, I think that's something in the future we talk about as well. You had no radiation and then they evaluated your case at what we call tumor board, but I think they called it something else for you.
Speaker 3:but the doctors got around and evaluated right, he knew what the rest of my body looked like and he didn't. And we told him no, and they said well, I think we should do a PET scan, get a full body picture before we.
Speaker 2:Yeah you're lucky too, because not every case goes to tumor board. Um, some, some smaller facilities will do every case because they have the ability to do that, but not every cancer case goes to tumor board. So you're super lucky that you got all the team members the surgical oncologist, the medical oncologist, the radiation oncologist, that's what it is and they all come together and review it as a consensus of what to do next, right? So you're freaking lucky that that happened for you.
Speaker 2:Right, so that's like that's like grace, number, like two along this journey, right Three.
Speaker 3:Otherwise I would have gotten into surgery and you know it would have been a bandaid on a bigger problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you know let's talk about, you know, cutting open tumors and expelling the cells and how all those cancer cells are going to spread throughout the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're going to get into some nerdy stuff around that, maybe on another podcast too, because that's like a really cool topic in itself yeah, so no surgery.
Speaker 3:They put me into the PET scan. The results came back and they're like yeah, you got tumors everywhere, so it's a good thing we didn't slice you open.
Speaker 2:Everywhere, like where were they?
Speaker 3:Both lobes of your lungs, multiple lesions and the the bone marrow both legs, bone marrow and lungs is enough, yeah, they can't cut off my legs. Yeah, not gonna slice my bones open and eat my marrow, yeah. So then they did a biopsy, shoved this big needle through my back and took a sample from the tumor on my adrenal gland, and the results verified that it was melanoma, but also shed light on a mutation of the melanoma that I have.
Speaker 2:Mutation like the the BRAF, the BRAF.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the BRAF.
Speaker 3:Getting into the nerdy stuff of melanoma.
Speaker 2:BRAF, and then you had another mutation. So you actually had two crazy mutated things going on and you had MEK, BRAF and MEK.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I say that because you had two targeted therapies that targeted those specific mutations. So talk about that a little bit as far as like what your treatment plan in the sense, because I think at that time, 10 years ago, this was not standard um, and it's really not as standard, becoming more standard um to be treating what we call combination therapy. So what did you have? What was it?
Speaker 3:targeted cell therapy. Deprafinib and tramatinib.
Speaker 2:You're talking about the specific drugs, yeah, so Debrafidib went after the BRAF alteration and Trematinib went. It's a mechanistic drug so it went after the MEK alteration. You can't go after. If you've got two right, you can't just go after one. The other one's still going crazy.
Speaker 3:So they used those two drugs to go after the two crazy alterations going on it took several months before I don't know they worked out the dosage or made the drugs available.
Speaker 2:Um then b-ref was just approved, right, I mean, um dibrofenib had just been approved right right like three months prior, so like grace number five yeah, right, right, I don't know what to count. We're on.
Speaker 3:And that my oncologist was up and up on the new testing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, at the time New drugs.
Speaker 2:Well, and the testing, because it wasn't also standard 10 years ago that patients were getting sequencing so that we could look at these alterations in your biology, what's going on with your tumor. We weren't doing that standardly for for cancer and patients um, but we were doing um what we called like single gene, so we could look at b ref by itself. But you were lucky again that you got this like fifth, what we call a 50 gene panel, where we looked at like 50 um. They looked at 50 different cancer known cancer DNA mutations and so they found those two and so happens the drug was approved three months prior yep, yep.
Speaker 3:So once I started taking the drug, my immune system was ready to go, and the way that this drug works, or the way the doctor explained it to me, is it creates a protein that attaches to the cancer cells, and then that protein is basically the telephone between the cancer and your immune system, and so it's a telephone game. Hey, cancer or immune system, here's cancer, come fight it. And my immune system was ready to go and I felt like within a week it was already doing something. Uh, the tumor on my adrenal gland. You could palpate and feel it. It wasn't. You couldn't see it wasn't sticking out that much, but right under the surface of my skin. You could push around and fill it and within about a week of taking the drugs, couldn't feel it anymore. And within about a week of taking the drugs couldn't feel it anymore.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, started Amazing Feeling better.
Speaker 2:So no surgery, no radiation, just medicine.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm, yep. So started taking it and I asked the doctor how long am I going to be on this stuff? And he said indefinitely. I was like that means forever right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've met some people. We've met some people that are still on. I remember the I'm trying to blank on her name.
Speaker 3:I'll think of it during 10 or 12 years she'd been on it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's been on it indefinitely. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, I thought I was going to be taking this drug forever and, three months in, go back for another checkup, and I was going to see the doctor every three weeks and every checkup we were taking blood. And then you know, just, uh, you know, common, how you feeling, what's going on, any of the updates, whatever? And um, he comes into the office and he says, all right, we gotta stop the medication.
Speaker 2:and I was confused, you know, like you just told me, indefinitely yeah, right, sorry, now you can't have it anymore and you're like I'm feeling good and he says uh, about to put you into liver failure.
Speaker 3:Your liver can't process the toxicity anymore. I don't know what happens a lot. Yeah, happens a lot so he said we're gonna take you off and we're gonna give your body a month to rest, recover and come back with the one-two punch and that's going to be the year boy, which is not a targeted cell therapy, but it is Just call it IPI, ipi. The Luma Lab.
Speaker 2:Year boy Yep.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why don't we have a board member who helped bring that to market? Hopefully we'll get him and talk to us too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, straighten me up on my story. Yeah, so it's not as specific as a targeted cell therapy, but it's not as general as immunotherapy.
Speaker 2:It is immunotherapy. Oh, I'm sorry. You're always immunotherapy.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Chemotherapy, chemo yeah.
Speaker 3:Not as general as chemo, so it's not going to affect your entire body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good and bad cells. Right, you're going after the immune system, boosting the immune system to give the body the fighting chance to get rid of whatever's going on. And it's amazing what's going on in the immunotherapy space. So many cancers now are getting immunotherapy like it's candy, so that will be an interesting combo as well. But so you got it.
Speaker 3:you know again, you got it 10 years ago so the ipi, or the urovoi, is a four treatment cycle, uh, spaced out every three weeks, and it didn't negatively affect me um, really at all, and so they kept me on the three-week skin or anything.
Speaker 2:My dad was on your avoid too for melanoma and he got like the itchy skin and no, nothing like no no, it felt great, felt great were you, were you still crossfitting?
Speaker 3:I was a beast the month of january, I took off. We couldn't felt. It felt horrible.
Speaker 2:No, like you, You'll be like oh, I'm done, I feel good. 24 hours later, you'll be in the freaking gym riding a bike around New York.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm. Right, yeah, so it was January, february, march, no, working out, didn't quite feel up to it yet and we had a vacation plan to Costa Rica and that we're gonna have to cancel that. Luckily, the timing with the drugs and, you know, all the testing, everything worked out where we were able to keep our plans to go to Costa Rica and, I think, being out of my normal everyday environment and changing the scene, you know, and, and yeah, so I did a workout in Costa Rica and that was my first workout getting back to normal and even though I hadn't started taking any medication yet, I had started to feel better. I don't know if it was, you know, being in Costa Rica vacation.
Speaker 2:Well, the drugs probably were still working that you were on.
Speaker 3:I hadn't started any yet.
Speaker 2:No, the others. Oh, you hadn't started.
Speaker 3:You were seeing prior to starting treatment at all. Yeah, got it. Yeah, and so got back from Costa Rica, started medication and started working out again, taking my lunch break going to hit CrossFit gyms wherever I was working and, yeah, never looked back.
Speaker 2:And then I mean so that's it. Like you're just like your voice, so you were on your, so I did that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I did that cycle of your boy and it, just like the doctor predicted, one, two punch, knocked it out. Um, pet scans kept showing tumors, uh, shrinking in size. Um, and so it was October. No more your boy.
Speaker 2:boy finished that did you change like anything in your diet still? Or you still kind of like ate in the same way, like the clean, like, or did it get more clean or did it?
Speaker 2:I mean I know that you were starting to think about too, you, you started doing like more local foods. That was kind of you know, I, I've, we've. We both have that belief, which has been pretty cool, you know, for our relationship is that we believe in buying more local and organic and just good, clean not clean eating, not just like fruits, veggies, but like we get a little bit more specific about local and our surroundings in the year, the season prior to all this happening uh, I met a local uh rancher yeah, raises about 100 head of cattle and so started buying a steer from him every year organic, grass-fed you know all the buzzwords.
Speaker 3:Um, took it to a butcher I had like real, organic, like real, organic it's like yeah right, these cows are out grazing um on indian land, the kawiya indian reservation. Uh, eating natural grass from the rain and sun and living a natural, healthy life. Um, yeah, so I think diet really. Yeah, this helped everything overall yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's like if we were to go, like, talk about a survival plan, like you I use this analogy that you can't come up with a escape plan from your house being on fire when the house is on fire, right, so your full fuel tank, you, you know. The other thing you didn't talk about was, um, you, I thought was interesting, uh, you, I don't know who you were listening to. You were listening to another, I think doctor or somebody, but they were talking about heat shock proteins and and when I met you, or when we connected, um, you were talking about heat shock proteins. I was like, okay, well, maybe you are actually smart and not just a cute stud, so so talk about that. Because you were doing, um, yoga, which I hate yoga.
Speaker 3:I hate yoga hot yoga, ice baths yeah, so you were already like kind of getting into that too yeah, I started bickram when I was diagnosed with cancer yeah um, you know, when you get that horrible news, you immediately start searching and pulling for all the straws of what's gonna fix me, what's gonna help me maybe dr ronda patrick will come on our show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you were like big into following her right and you still listen to her yeah, so she's shed the light on heat shock proteins and yeah, wim hof.
Speaker 3:So what did you?
Speaker 2:what did you understand about heat shock proteins? Like what got you? Like what is that? I don't even know, how you like associate, like this, and how you're gonna go do yoga and how that's gonna help you fight, and you know hot yoga not just any yoga, but right, um, so stimulating the heat shock proteins.
Speaker 3:From what I understand, um, you know, they're gonna uh help your immune system. Uh, they, you know you're gonna get your lymphatic system pumping and moving healthy nutrients throughout your body.
Speaker 2:They got all like sweat lodge right. The Indians had it right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sweat lodge and get it all out and then ice, polar plunges, so extreme heat extreme cold.
Speaker 2:Those have gotten popular. Now All these people are getting into the ice bath.
Speaker 3:For a good reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you were doing hot yoga like five days a week or something, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So when I was diagnosed um back to pulling for straws I went and met with a Eastern medicine, you know doctor, a guy that does acupuncture. Um, you know, talk to him, trying to figure out if he could do anything for me. I'm not too religious or involved with the church but my kids went to Kenyon Lake Community Christian Daycare which is at the church, and went and met with that pastor and had a big coming to Jesus moment with him. Met with a nutritionist, you know, trying to figure out what's gonna what was it come to jesus?
Speaker 2:I would love to visit that conversation. We never talked about that no, we haven't I think we've never talked about that it was just me and jesus yeah, we prayed, we cried.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was some hardcore crying that day, like nose dripping, snot eyes. You know we have to.
Speaker 2:That's just like sweating right, like it's like you have to get it out. Yeah, the release that was almost my acceptance of death I'll give a plug to another podcast person man up to cancer Right. Like that's a, that's a big one, like of a man like saying I'm effed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, accepting death.
Speaker 2:You also told me, that day was you told me one day this is my karma. So I don't I don't necessarily believe that at all. Actually that's part of that thing, but kind of interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, part of the stress.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Personal stress going on. Yeah, yeah, karma myself but you can.
Speaker 2:But getting it out, like talking about it right, I think, is huge. I think that's something a lot of people just aren't. We hold all that stuff in and don't let it out. So then here you are yeah yeah it all out.
Speaker 2:so you sweated it out like you were sweating in the ice baths and, um, I think that that I think that adds to the kind of profound um story that you have, because most people one a lot of people don't go with full tank gas, right, so you're already like I, I gotta live a healthier lifestyle. Um, but it added so much to your survival because then you're one year, just one year, which is amazing, right? So one year later, you're no evidence of disease and nothing since.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Here we are, 10 years today.
Speaker 3:I did have a scare ears today. Yep, I did have a scare. I don't know year, or maybe my second year return visit to the oncologist. I had a PET scan. I go in and meet with him and he says, do you want good news or bad news? And to me I'm like, oh shit, what the hell? What does this mean? And I said, well, give me the good news you don't have cancer. Sweet cancer, sweet okay. So what's the bad news?
Speaker 3:you have arthritis in your spine okay, I'm good, I'm good yeah, where I was feeling pain in my thoracic spine, that is arthritis and not cancer.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it's skin anxiety real yeah yeah, because when we got together you're like I, I haven't had a scan and I was like, oh, you're not gonna be with me unless you've had a scan, all right. So you went in and I remember you freaking out and afterwards you have a video of yourself crying because you were clean, so like, and you're not very good about going and getting your scan, still no well, like again kind of like when I had the mole cut off my back and had five years of chest x-rays.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so same thing. The doctor that treated me moved on. Unfortunately, don't know where he went, Don't know what happened, but met with a new doctor at the same clinic and after, I think, two visits with him he was like well, I don't see any reason why we have to keep seeing you. Yeah, it was like after year five or year seven maybe.
Speaker 2:So let's wrap it up. So if you were going to, you know, kind of sum it up, I mean, and this theme and this idea around crafting survival, you know we've talked about a lot of things that you did, but if there was, like you know, like a major epiphany or lesson that you learned that you would pass on to other people, what would that be? People dealing with cancer or dealing with whatever it is? I mean, this isn't just about cancer, right, it's about these life challenges and our health. What would that be? Is there like one piece that you would like to tell somebody?
Speaker 3:I don't know. Do hard things on a daily basis, put yourself through challenging obstacles that aren't life-threatening, but teach you resilience. You know and you know, the ice bath, the hot yoga, the working out, the things that are hard, that are painful, that you don't like doing, are going to make you better. You know, going to build up your immune system, make you stronger. Yeah, just teach you resiliency. Give you that mindset where I'm not going to give up, I can't give up.
Speaker 2:It's not. You know, I've come to the point where it's not in my DNA that will to survive is like real. I mean my DNA, that will to survive, is like real. I mean there are so many stories and wills to survive.
Speaker 2:And I asked an oncology doctor one time who does the best? Like you know, he says lots. He's down at UCSD Morse Cancer Center and I said who does the best? And he said who do you think? I said I don't know. He said women with children do the best. They will put themselves through treatment after treatment, toxicity after toxicity. I thought that was really interesting and I'm like, yeah, because they don't want to leave their kids.
Speaker 3:So your goal to survival is have kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's what I could get to death. I have five.
Speaker 3:Oh my God, I don't know and you're thriving, yeah, so have more kids.
Speaker 2:Oh, you want to no.