C (4:27)

Did you grow up in California?

A (4:29)

I was born and raised in San Diego, California. Home is. It's paradise to me. And we thought about, every once in a while we thought about moving away and relocating. You know, the dollar goes further, get more free money. And I always, my philosophy was, well, I don't want to go live somewhere and save up all year to go visit a place like Southern California.

C (4:53)

Right.

A (4:53)

I already live here. You know, he's. You just got. You just make adjustments. I think it's sort of like that. It's the frog and boiling water. Right. You don't really notice. Yes. It's more expensive. Yes. You know, everything is. Cost more and. But the, you know, everything's so nice too, and it just gradually creeps up on you and you just keep up just like everybody else does. We're all just keeping up, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay.

C (5:17)

Yeah. So you've lived there. You got family there?

A (5:20)

Well, we all, we all came from here. My parents were married here in San Diego from El Cajon, California. And I have a brother who has since moved to Illinois. And my sister passed away a while back from breast cancer. And she's part of my testimony as well because, you know, we learn, we learn from those who go before us. And so I learned a lot from the people who went before me who had cancer diagnoses. Yeah. So we were all, we all lived here. I lived in, mostly I lived in a little town called Escondido, California. Okay. I went to high school there. Yeah. And I lived in. In that town until I was almost 45, something like that. So from the time I was about 10 to 35 years of my life lived that. That's my hometown, I would say. And it's, you know, Southern California's people, for one thing. It's funny though. So people say, well, Southern California people, they're so healthy, right. They ski, they. They go to mountains and ski. You go to the beach and you surf. And I did all those things. But doing those things can only make you. So it's not really. It's not the output as much as it is the input. Yeah.

C (6:35)

So you're a lot like me. You always are healthy, but you ate like an unhealthy person. So. Yeah, I totally relate to that.

A (6:43)

My, My ex. Wife said I, I eat like a teenager whose parents are on vacation and I got left home alone. So. Yeah.

C (6:51)

Yeah. So, okay, let's go back to the old colonoscopy. Obviously not a good result.

A (6:56)

Right, right. And, you know, I went in, not really expect anything, didn't. But I was, you know, you go in and you prepare for yourself. Right. You hope for the best, but you're prepared for the worst. And uh, I had my, had the colonoscopy done and when I woke up the doctor was still there sitting right beside my bed. And I thought, hmm, that might not be a good sign. And she, now they don't, they didn't do a pathology or anything so she could only go by what she saw. Right. But she was, she saw enough to, to tell me it doesn't look good, it looks like it's cancer. And so, and the funny thing was, wow, did the mood change from everyone in the room, you know, and, and it's sort of, that's our, that's our programming that, you know, hey, this is really bad. And it is, I mean it can be, it can be pretty bad news. But before it, everybody's joking, light hearted, you know, we're having a good time. I like to smile, I like to laugh. So we're having fun. And afterwards, you know, they're looking at you like, oh, oh, you know, like they're never going to see you again kind of a thing. Like they talk in hush tones. It's been fun. Bye. Yeah, good luck to you. But she, she told me then and there that it might be. And I got, you know, I got in the car still pretty sedated and I don't really, I don't really remember saying anything to my wife on the way home. She, she drove, drove me home and we live about a half hour from where the procedure was done and I don't know, I don't think we even said a word to each other. I, I thought they already told her and I was waiting, maybe I was waiting for her to say something about it, but. So when we got home we talked a little bit about it and cried a lot because, you know, at the time I knew nothing about it except that this is not good and it could be, it can be really serious. And all I remember saying is I don't want to die. And that's, that was sort of when I put it in my head that I'm going to do whatever it takes to stay here. You know, it's. I, I'm not ready to leave. I'm not ready yet. God, you know, God. And I don't think God wanted to take me. I think God wanted me to wake up when I went to sleep that night. The next morning I really woke up. I woke up not just to the sunshine, but I woke up to a new life. I woke up to a new way of thinking. And I took action the Next day, I didn't wait to go see another doctor to tell me what's going on with my body. I made my decisions immediately. And I feel like that was God speaking to me, that when I woke up with that inspiration, right, that was the voice of God. And we make our decisions based on our. Our past. Whatever our experiences are, it shapes us into what we are now. And we only know what we know. So from my experience and my family's experience, I knew for a fact that chemo and radiation were not for me. I wasn't going to go down that path because it wasn't successful for them. The quality of life was awful for them. They suffered. And I was talking about this the other day how, you know, we talk about honoring our fathers and mothers. And to me, that doesn't just mean doing what we're told. That means learning from them. And we learn from both their victories and their failures. We're supposed to learn from those and not make the same mistakes they made. Not to repeat the mistakes of our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters, all that. And if anybody's the youngest child, I'm the youngest of the three. So when you're growing up, you learn real quick to watch what they do, and if they get in trouble, don't do that, you know, go another way. So I learned from what they did that what I. What I learned from it is that that's. That's not ideal for me. And they were only around couple years after their first treatments, it went away. For my sister, it was breast cancer. For my grandfather, it was prostate. They got treated the way they get treated, just, you know, standard treatments. It went away, as they say, and it came back. For my sister, the first time was so bad, she didn't want to face it again, and she just let it run its course. She just let the disease run its course because she just couldn't do that again, and she didn't know there was another option. Right. And for my grandfather, they radiated his pelvic area for the prostate cancer, and when it came back, it was all over his pelvis. They said it looked like someone fired buckshot in his pelvic area, and that's how many tumors were all around. Well, there's nothing we can do for you. Here's your hospice. Here's the number for hospice. Get you all set up and you're done. And, you know, they don't know. We didn't know then that there was. There was another choice. So for me, I mean, facing those and living through that all I knew is there had to be another way. I didn't even know really if there was another way. I knew. I just knew I can't go that way. And I would almost rather just let nature do what nature's gonna do rather than go through that, have that happen to me, have that done to me. And so when I woke up, you know, I had to talk with God, as we do. You know, that's in the song that you're. We were talking about. Right. I went home and I had a talk with God, and I did. And I told God, you know what, God, we're going to do this. We're going to. You're going to show me the way. I'm going to follow you. You're going to show me what I need to know. And when this works. Not if I said. I said, when this works and I'm still here two years from now, I'm start telling everybody what I've been doing. And I did. And I. That's two years later, we'll talk about that. But that's what I did. And I. You know, I'm a man of my work. If I tell someone I'm going to do something, I do it immediately. The information I needed to hear for myself, that resonated with me just started flooding in. Everything I looked at, oh, I can use. I can do this, I can do that, I can do that. And I started implementing those changes immediately, the day after I had the colonoscopy because of what the doctor told me. No pathology, no sur. No treatments of any kind. I just figured, you know what? I'm not going to wait to see if this is malignant. But not. I'm not going to wait. There's something wrong inside me, and I need to fix it. I'm a DIY guy, you know, you just try, give it a try. I'm that way with just about anything. Something breaks, I'm going to try to fix it. And then if I can't, I'll call in the experts.

C (13:46)

Yeah, that's a good mindset.

A (13:49)

Yeah. We are creators at heart, too. I think. We're DIYers and I. We're all DIYers at heart. We. We like to make things either with our mind, our imagination, our hands, whatever it might be when we're cooking a dinner, you know, a meal, painting a. Painting a house, painting a picture, just. We all love to create. It's in us. It's one of those things. It's one of those godly things that our father put Inside us, you know, we are, we're like our parents. Why wouldn't we be like our Father in heaven too?

C (14:16)

You're obviously an optimist. And not too many people jump up the next day saying, hey, we're going to fix this. I know so many people I've talked to, they're in a, a stupor, in a fog for, you know, sometimes weeks. Like, oh my gosh, what do I do? The doctors say I should do this, they're smarter than me, that kind of thing. So it's rather refreshing to see someone jump out of bed and go after it.

A (14:40)

Oh, I, I, I also there's, there's a, there's a downs, there's a, I wouldn't say negative. There's a dark side to the. I have a little anti authoritarian personality in me and I do think I'm smarter than most people. I, I'm just being honest and. Not you, though, Jim. Not you. Oh, no, no. But I don't think I was. You're smarter than me. But the doctors bother me and because they do have that I know better than everyone else thing going on. Not all of them. I mean I, I have cooperative doctors that are, that are, enjoy conversations, but most of them just do it my way or hit the highway, you know, my way or the highway kind of got people and I've seen what they do. I've seen them treat people. I've seen, obviously I didn't, not me, because I didn't go, but I saw my mother just go from one medication to more medication to more medication to more, you know, this medication to cover what that medication's doing. Now here's some medications to cover what those medications are doing. And I never saw anyone getting better. And I thought I can do, I can do better than that. And I, and not that I'm smarter, but I'm just smart enough to find another way. I'm dumb enough to think I can do anything, but I'm smart enough to figure it out. That's about it.

C (15:58)

Perfect combo.

A (16:00)

Yeah.

C (16:01)

So what did you do next? Did you change your diet first? I mean, that's usually an obvious thing for people like, or that are eating garbage like most of us eaten McDonald's.

A (16:11)

100%. You're right. Yeah. That. First of all, the first thing I did was research because I didn't know.

C (16:17)

Right.

A (16:17)

Anything about cancer. And I had to figure out, first thing I had to figure out is how not to make it worse. That's all I wanted to do at first. I wasn't Looking at healing, I was like, how can I just not make this thing worse? What, what is it that's making it grow? What is it like what does it want? And, and I found out because it's out there, right? All this information is readily available through PubMed NIH. One of the first books I read is how to Starve cancer by Jay McClellan and she speaks of the metabolic pathways of cancer. So isn't that interesting? You know, like I said, God puts these things. I'm looking for books and this is one of the first books I read and my concern was how am I feeding this? You know, what is making this thing? What's making this tick? How do I get a hold of it? How do I control it in some way? And so she talks about the metabolic pathways. It's a very first part of the book is her testimony, which is great. She's, she's been through a lot of recurrence and all kinds of things like that. And then the second part is more scientific and it's very deep. I didn't understand all of it but, but I got enough takeaways where I could alter my lifestyle in a way that would limit the, the fuel that is going to the cancer. The metabolic pathways, you know, there's what, glucose, glutamine, fatty acids. And you know, you can't eliminate all of them because our body, whatever we eat, our body's gonna turn to glucose if it can, if it can, it will because that's what it wants. So it's gonna be hard to eliminate. The idea is just to reduce it so that the muscles, the organs, the cells that need the glucose, get it first before all the little hanger ons come along and you know, just have a free for all. And, and one of the things she, that she implemented was 15 minutes after every meal, go for a one mile walk. That way the muscles, your body is moving using and then you're using all that glucose, all that energy so that you're not just sitting on the couch and every cell in your body is just a free for all. You know that now it's just first come, first serve. You know, whoever's strongest and whoever's the meanest is going to go after it, go for that walk, do some squats because the, the thigh muscle uses the most glucose because such a large muscle. Do some squats while you're walking and use up that energy because that is really why we're supposed to eat anyway, is for energy. I always say that when I started looking at Food as enter as nutrition rather than entertainment. Then I understood how I should be eating and what. What I should be putting in my body. You know, so many times where I eat, it's just for fun. We're just eating cause it's fun. Cause it tastes good. And, you know, we don't even think what it. What it's doing inside of us. So that was my first. My first book. And again, study and research. And I also read World Without Cancer by G. Edward Griffin. Also changed my whole entire view of how to heal and healing is possible. And of course, Chris v. Cancer. Right. His books. Chris work, his book. And the reason I read his book is the most important thing I think I did was I knew if I wanted to heal, I was going to have to find someone else who healed. Because if we want to be successful, what's the best way to be successful is to find someone who's been successful and do what they did. Right, Right. And I. Yeah, the wheel. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's been done. If it's been done, it can be done. Then the question is, are we willing to do what it takes? And so I wanted to find out, you know, in conventional treatments, they're offering you at the best, five, maybe 10 years. To them, that's a success rate. When they say success rates, they're measuring people living five to 10 years. I was 56. That was not enough. That was. That wasn't going to cut it for me. So I wanted to find people out there that, you know, 15, 20 years down the road, people who have exceeded at least that timeframe. And also someone who had my diagnosis, because at the time, I didn't realize healing is pretty much healing, really. We could just. We could pretty much heal ourselves of almost anything if we're doing. If we're treating our body right, if we're providing the right conditions. So I thought, well, I'll find someone that has my diagnosis and I will follow their lead and see what I can do as much as they did. And Triswark is a stage three colon cancer thriver. Uh, and he's 21 plus years out now. Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, so that's. I thought that's a good mentor right there. I'll. So I had to. And then, of course, I checked out the square one program. Now this is all I had six weeks from my. From my colonoscopy until my surgery. So I really haven't had a diagnosis yet. Because they don't diagnose you Till after the surgery. And they get the pathology right. So they did take a biopsy from the mass. So I did know that at that time it was malignant. And after they took that biopsy, that's the first time, other than the few years back that I ever saw blood in my stool. And that really freaked me out because I knew, oh, they opened it, they broke containment because that's what a tuber is. It's containing all the bad stuff. And they broke it open. Oh, no. And now I knew what was in there. And now it's getting out, and now it's going out throughout my body. And I. I was not happy about it. And I had to wait six weeks. But that is one reason I went through the surgery normally. You know, I might have even. I might have even bypassed on that. But I really just wanted it out of my body at that point. So I changed my diet. Oh. Also from Jay mcclellan, how to starve cancer was the power of green tea. Egcg. So I learned about compounds that eliminate cancer stem cells. And the top five egcg, Resveratrol, sulforaphane, genistein. And I always leave one out. Curcumin. Curcumin. Oh, good old, good old turmeric. Yeah. So those are things that we want to get in our body. I wanted to get those in my body. So I started drinking six to eight cups of green tea every day. Most important, before I started adding things to my body, I eliminated. I think you were talking about that also, right. That I eliminated everything that was bad for me. Because what would be the point of me putting in things that are going to help me when I'm still putting in things that are bad for me? Now what am I doing? I'm just treading water, you know, I'm just breaking even. So I had to eliminate as much as I could. And I went as much as I could. I. To me, I thought it was 100% zero tolerance for anything. But I didn't know right away the best diet or anything like that. So I went on what I said was a medi keto diet. It was a mediterranean, low carb kind of a diet because, you know, I was avoiding the carbs, like the glucose, things like that. So there was no pastas, no breads, no, just I would eat 4 ounce servings of chicken and fish once a day. That was about it. I would eat oatmeal every morning. I would have salads for lunch, and then in the evening, I would have a roasted vegetable of some Kind maybe some greens in there and the chicken and the fish. That was. That was really my diet for the first three to four months. It was kind of learning as I went, you know, like we all do. Every time I go to the grocery store, I would pick up something else and, you know, I would find something new or I'd go online and, oh, I'll add this to my. I'll add this powder. I'll add. I'll add this plant. I'll add this herb. You know, it's not all at once. I didn't just go out the next day and go shopping and change everything in my life. It was very gradual. Right. So I read also from the World Without Cancer. My big takeaway from that. And probably anybody who's read it would know the big takeaway from that is the apricot kernels. Yeah. And the power of amygdala. Amygdalin and laitril. B17. And also not just the power of healing in B17, but also the cancer industry, the entire industry, not just the medical side, but every organization that does make money from people being sick. There's very little incentive for anyone else besides me to heal me. There's no. There's no financial motivation for. And it would have to be completely personal, you know, on a personal level, which is why we share our testimonies, because it is on a personal level for us. We do want to share what we've done with people. But unless you have someone like that in your life, you know, no one else is going to look out for me but me. And that's. That was really sort of my takeaway from that book is, well, I can't really count on those people in general, you know, not everybody's the same. I don't want to generalize everything, but just to be aware when you walk into that setting that my best interest might not be what their motivation is.

C (25:37)

To me, the fact that the medical community that thrives on. On pharmaceuticals, if they hate something so much, they shut it down like the apricot kernels. That means, hey, there's something to that. You know, it gets our attention. Like, okay, why don't they like that? Because they're not making money at it, and it's kind of working against them.

A (25:57)

So 100%. And you. And you hear about how it's. And they will tell you, oh, it has cyanide. Oh, well. And has anyone ever been unalived by an apricot colonel? No. The only. I think the only negative report they have is Some lady had one lady in all the millions of people that have eaten k broke heart kernels, had to go to the hospital and I guess get her stomach pumped or something like that. That's it, that's all you've got. And she probably ate too many at one time, right? Which is going to happen with almost any food you eat. Almost. But there's a, there's a method to apricot kernels and introduce because they are potent and you know you have to gradually increase. But at one point I would eat my oatmeal every morning I was eating the apricot kernels. I started with three a day and I did that for a week. Next week doubled it six a day. Next week doubled it again, 12 a day. And eventually three a day is easy just to chew on. I'm not a big fan of the flavor. I know some people like it, some people don't. I would stuff them inside a date and eat them that way. And to me it tasted like a Snickers bar. Oh man, this is so good. It was a great little treat. Yeah, Little hack. And then after that, eventually I was up to 30 to 40 a day. And it's a lot to snack on all day. So I ended up putting it into my oatmeal. I have a concoction, a mixture, and in the blender I would put all of the nuts, the Brazil nuts, the walnuts, the almonds, the apricot kernels, coconut to grind them up so that they're more chewable, little nugget size. So I would put them in there. So in one serving of oatmeal, I would eat 30 to 40 apricot kernels. And I did that every morning for two years. My, my was very strict with my diet for two years straight because that was my deal with God. Right? And then after two years and I knew even after I got clear scans, I knew even after that I had to keep going, I couldn't go back. And there's no, there's never going. I'll never go back to the life I had before. That's, that's not even, that's non negotiable because I, I want to live as long as I possibly can. Um, so yeah, the, the diet changed and then after that, after all the reading, initial changes with my diet, you know, I was losing weight already and I knew I had a surgery coming up in my abdomen area. So I was working out. I was focusing on the, the middle stuff section there, you know, because I know when they do Surgeries, there's less likely to be complications, the less body fat there is in the area they're going into. So I thought, well, I got to get that. I got to get that little thing. Not little. I got to get that roundness down. Not where it is now, but I made some progress. And so when I went in for the surgery, they did the laparoscopic. Everything went great. I had a fantastic surgeon. I have nothing but nice things to say about him. He was. He was great. And I asked him. But I wanted to know at the. When the surgery was over, I asked him, how big was the tumor? When I had my colonoscopy, it was a 5-6-cm tumor that they found mass inside. And when I asked him at the surgery how big it was, he said it was 2-3 cm. So I thought, wow, that shrunk in half. I don't know if it shrunk in half because of the biopsy. And half of it leaked out into my body. Wow. Or to me, in my mind, I thought, wow, everything I've been doing so far shrunk it in half. And had I known then what I know now, I might have put off the surgery and waited for another scan to see how big that was. Because in the scan they did right before the surgery, it was already at 2cm. I had that scan about a week before the surgery. Yeah. So in five weeks, it had shrunk in half. And I thought, wow, that's, you know, and that. That sort of reinforces what you're doing, right? When you and I know that's the hardest part for some people, they're making changes. They're. They're doing as much as they possibly can, and there's no progress. They don't see that progress. And it's hard because as we know, it's not just what we put in our bodies that affects our immune system so many things. Sleep, stress, environment. It can be all kinds of things. And some things we don't even realize are doing it because it's what we've been conditioned. It's how we've been conditioned to live. That's just our life. You know, that's when we. My grandparents, God bless them, they were married for most over 60 years. They fought a lot, they argued a lot, and that was their way of communicating, which, you know, is great, but that can add stress, too. That can also add stress. That can. That could suppress the immune system and. But sometimes we're not aware of it there. People would just be there and they Would, you know, argue with each other right in front of all of us, and we're like, okay, are we done yet? And. But that was just their way of doing it. And they didn't see any, you know, any reason not to. Yeah. Now we're all stressed. Yeah. Sometimes we're not aware. Like I said, we don't know what we don't know. Right. We. Right. We're not aware that we're harming ourselves with some of the things we do, the way we re. The way we react to stress and grief and things like that. Before my diagnosis, I had gone through major stressors in my life. There are, there are some major stressors people go through, and it's marriage, divorce, moving, a new job, and a death, you know, and I had, I almost had all of those. I was checking all of those boxes in my life the years leading up to this. Right. And I probably didn't deal with it the way I should emotionally. You know, my. My immune system probably was suppressed. And then add on to that, all the bad things I was putting in my body. Alcohol, for one thing. I would drink on a pretty regular basis almost every day. I would have a beer. I was, I was. When I had my diagnosis, I was semi retired, so I didn't have to get up in the morning. And I w. I wasn't drinking all day. It was at dinner time. At dinner time. Once we start cooking dinner, I'd have a couple beers and then after dinner a glass of wine or two. And that's. That was. And. But it was regular. It was every day and just like healing. It's not the things we do once in a while that are going to affect us. You know, I could have had a beer once a week. One beer once a week. My body wouldn't have, you know, it would have rebound. It would have rebounded. It would have fixed whatever I did to it. Yeah. In case anyone doesn't know, alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen. It does it. There's no, there's no if and for buts about it. Yeah. If you continue to consume it, just like processed meats, just like salamis and hot dogs and bacon, it's the same signatures like cigarettes. It's the same thing. If you're smoking every day, it's going to catch up to you. If you're drinking every day, it's going to catch up to you.

C (32:53)

They're not.

A (32:54)

It's not a question of if. Yeah. As the oncologists like to say, it's not a Matter of if. It's when. Yeah. So that's in their treatment. That's in, that's in their, in their repertoire too. They tell people that. That's the same thing with healing. It's not the things that we do once in a while that are going to heal us. It's every day, right. When we're, when we're healing, it's this everything, the things we do every day, all day, every day that make a difference. Now, once we get that back, once we get our health back, once we have a healing lifestyle that we're living every day. I could. I'm never gonna have alcohol again because I, I would not. It would be like me going out and having a cigarette once in a while. Why would I do that to myself?

C (33:32)

Yeah.

A (33:32)

So I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that. But if I wanna have slice of cake, piece of pie. Yeah, I could do that once or twice a month. It's not gonna. That small amount of sugar going in my body isn't going to override all the goodness that I've been doing and my mindset and my faith and all the other things that we do to heal our bodies. Wow.

C (33:54)

Dan has figured out a lot and he's excited about it, but we're going to end it right there for now and give you part two next week. And for the record, he was wrong about one thing. He is smarter than me. I'm just saying.

B (34:09)

You've been listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast, a part of the Healing Strong organization. We hope you found encouragement in this episode as well as as the confidence to take control of your healing journey, knowing that God will guide you on this path. Healing Strong is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect, support and educate individuals facing cancer and other diseases through strategies that help to rebuild the body, renew the soul, and refresh the spirit. It costs nothing to be a part of a link, local or online group. You can do that by going to our website@healingstrong.org and finding a group near you or an online group or start your own, your choice. While you're there, take a look around at all the free resources. Though the resources and groups are free, we encourage you to join our membership program at 25 or $75 a month. This helps us to be able to reach more people with hope and encouragement and that also comes with some extra perks as well. So check it out. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five star rating, leave an encouraging comment and help us spread the word. We'll see you next week with another story on the I Am Healing Strong podcast.