Hello, my friend, and welcome to Cancer Can Give! in this special series of the Simplify Cancer Podcast, we share inspirational stories of people who went on a grueling journey through cancer and yet, they found their own way to live, grow and give in a way that helps others. Today, it is my absolute pleasure to speak to Trevor Maxwell, a proud man, men’s health champion founder of the incredible Man Up To Cancer.

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Glad you can be here. Let’s talk to Trevor. Great seeing you.

Thank you. again, thanks for your patience and willingness to speak with me. The cancer journey is full of bumps and crazy turns. Then when you become an advocate, things kind of like the map to cancer movement has kind of been taken off. Just kept me super busy. I appreciate it.

I was so thrilled to have you so thrilled to talk about you and your story. I really want to I first of all, I want to go back in time. I want to go back in time, what was life like? What was life like before cancer?

Life was great. I was 41 years old. My wife and I live here in Maine, on the on the Atlantic Ocean, basically, about a couple hours north of Boston, and been here most of my life. We have two daughters. sage, and Elsie, they were 12 and 10, at the time of my diagnosis, and everything was just trucking along. Before cancer, I was a pretty healthy guy very active. just enjoyed all the outdoors. Living here in Maine is a great place for the outdoors. I was a journalist for many years. Then, at the time of my diagnosis, I was doing my own public relations, consulting, just like a one-man company. My wife was a teacher, and the girls were just going through school, and it was like prime of life. It was good.

You’re on a kind of trajectory through life. Things are going your way. Then it just hits you, so tell me the moment. How did you find out?

You’re right, you’re just kind of going along, and you have all these like illusions in your head, you tell these stories yourself. I’m going to live till I’m 80. I’m going to see my grandkids you just have this imagination of what the steps are. Then cancer comes along. I say, sometimes I use the phrase life asteroid, because it’s an asteroid has hit you and your family. It’s like my God, I went from a 41-year-old mid middle of life, dad and husband and worker to “a cancer patient” facing metastatic colorectal cancer at age 41. With young children, and boom, life asteroid.

That’s a beautiful way of putting it because exactly. It is like an asteroid that just blows up into your world. What was what was the biggest change for you, Trevor?

I mean, I think at first it was just real physiological shock. People don’t talk about that enough. The shock to your system. It’s like you’re in the matrix. Then one day you realize oh my gosh, this might kill me like and soon so there’s the shock. I went into a period, a period of deep mental health struggle so I think the biggest change was like I’d always been a pretty positive person, outward person I struggled before cancer a little bit with typical depression, anxiety so many others do. When cancer hit, and the idea of possibly dying at a young age and leaving my kids behind, and my wife behind, it just crushed me emotionally. I went into a pit of despair man, clinical anxiety, depression, the whole works like I was on the floor. There was a lot of days when I would just be even functioning. It was that bad. I thought I was going to have to go into the hospital for my mental health, not even my cancer. Right. For the first thinking like six to eight months of my journey. It was it was like a pit, and it was crushing. It was just emotional turmoil.

I’m so glad that you brought this up, man, because it’s something that does not get talked about.

Mental health, with cancer, my God, I’ve gone through five major surgeries, more than 50 rounds of chemo and immunotherapy. All this stuff, like countless blood draws the whole physical stuff, and none of that, that all of that is minor, compared to the emotional challenge that I faced as being a relatively young dad and father going through cancer and you’re right. That’s one of the reasons why Man Up to Cancer exists and why I am a patient advocate is that mental health and those challenges are not talked about nearly enough and especially among men.

It goes straight to the core of your identity as a man as a father. It just throws everything up. We’re going to talk about man. I want to know you went into that pit. I know what it’s man. You stand on the edge? You look down into the abyss. What was it like and what’s helped?

It was it was hell; it was like literally being in hell. I am. Here’s what helped, love. My family. For a guy who got stage four cancer at 41. I’m honestly the luckiest guy in the world. I have a wife and two daughters who just loved me through it, I wanted to go away. I didn’t want to be a burden to them anymore. I’m leaving, I’m going into the woods. I just I can’t. My identity was just destroyed. I just wanted to protect them. I didn’t want to be a burden anymore.

I’m leaving. They’re like, “Hell you are.” My wife really was they all gave me that like that love. My wife gave me that tough love of being like hey, you need to get help. Like I don’t care if you live another year or another 40. Like we need you to be back engaged with us, we need you. You can’t just check out. That was tough to hear. It was what I needed to hear. that’s really when I got over the first barrier, which is usually the barrier for men, when they’re facing this type of life asteroid, which is accepting help accepting that you can do it on your own.

Like I reached that point where I realized my anxiety, my depression, the cancer stuff, I could not do it on my own. That’s the point, probably about six months in when I really started reaching out for the supports that I needed to get out of that pit. That pit is huge man., I know that people try to climb out of there on their own, but it doesn’t, it usually doesn’t happen.

That’s one of the things that I certainly regret not doing going through cancer is not getting that help. Not getting it early enough. It’s because it’s like its cancer. It’s like supposed to be tough.

We’re taught not to need help. Most of us are raised kind of as men to that that rugged individualism like I can handle this, I can handle my business, I got this. In some things in life, that’s not bad like home projects, etc. I will say like with cancer, I cancer just crushed me in a way that no other challenge had. I reached out for counseling.

I reached I went to group counseling, individual counseling, I started meeting people online, who were going through the same challenges I was with the same cancer type, kids with cancer. That’s where I found kind of the magic of that patient-to-patient movement and learning and because I was totally isolated. Then through online social media and through my counseling, which is here locally. I wasn’t isolated anymore. that’s when I started to be able to climb out of the pit.

You’re talking about counseling. I think one of the things that scares people away, I know it certainly scared me away that counseling or working with a psychologist. It’s because you don’t know what to expect. can you talk a little about what’s that’s like?

Totally. I mean, fortunately for me, I actually had a background like I had gone to counseling prior to cancer for just life and anxiety and relationships with my family. I kind of had a sense of what it was going to be like. You’re right, a lot of the guys in my group have that resistance are hesitant to talk about it. You know what, and I will say, if that’s not your thing, fine. there’s plenty of tools in the toolbox. Counseling is just one of them. I mean, there’s fitness, there’s exercise, there’s nutrition, there’s meditation, there’s, there’s all kinds of tools that you can use and, and the online communities.

There are all kinds of tools that you can use to avoid isolation, counseling just happened to be one that really, really worked for me. Honestly, you just go in there and you’re, you’re the one doing the work. You’re the one like sort...

Simplify Cancer Podcast Episode 087: Patient to Patient Movement with Trevor Maxwell