I’ve made it nine months past my original prognosis! 

How am I doing? 

I feel better than ever, reduced pain in my bones and body, and a great joy in my heart.

You can help by seeing me as free of all disease, healthy and happy. Can you do that for me right now?

The day began like so many up here in Canada, in my second home of sorts at The Healing Oasis, where I have been coming for three years to receive treatments, and to volunteer.

I feel I am in the right place up here. I feel part of a mission, a team. 

But, I wish I was all better. OK: a miracle. 

I was, however, not quite prepared for a sweet little miracle that was right around the corner. 

There is a part of me that craves oblivion.

It is all so much. Sometimes. 

How MUCH I have been through with so MUCH treatment. A bit of awe at my staying power, fortitude and resilience. 

Which is why I was so thrown my what happened last Sunday. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my skeleton.

The prostate cancer I was diagnosed with in 2020 has a tendency to attack these lovely bones (as of yet, I have no organ involvement, but my last scan has indicated widespread disease throughout my sturdy and faithful skeleton).

I want to say first off: Thank You. 

This is how it happens: you are doing the life thing, it’s going well, you’re a little scared of the future, but after a few successes and a few travails, it hits you: Life Is Loving You Hard.  

Every cell in my body sizzled and sang with a symphony of oxygen, as I lay on my mat with a dozen other cancer warriors, guests at The Healing Oasis in British Columbia. We were experiencing a breathwork session, having gathered in the same room I coach healing guests on oxygen exercise equipment. Oxygen does not get along with cancer, they refuse to even be in the same room together.  

Can I have a “cancer vacation”?

After six years of this singular battle, maybe it’s natural that I want at least a temporary reprieve. 

This month, I found myself retreating into myself a bit. I felt tired of the supplements, tired of the diet, the treatments, and often the anxiety of trying to find a radical healing solution in the jungle of opposing suggestions by family, friends and experts. 

I have speculated if this is depression. If so, it would be oddly timed after the fantastic physical resurrection I experienced after my Pluvicto treaatment last month.

Are you ready? This one is a scorcher. 

We skidded into March, and towards my new prostate cancer treatment Pluvicto, with my partner Mark suddenly required to deal with his parents both ending up, at the same time, in the emergency room. He eventually spent the better part of a month there, his father finally transitioning, and with his mother moving in and out of states of delirium, confusion and pain. 

Simultaneously, I began to have the first severe cancer related pains in my body that I had ever experienced…

I did not want to believe it. 

The night before, I had driven to Los Angeles from Idyllwild in the dead middle of the night, outrunning a winter storm, with an alarming pain in my side. Huge, towering dark clouds menaced the horizon, the wind smacking my little Prius around as the torrential rain began. 

When I was packing that evening, I had decided on a good night’s sleep, planning to travel instead the following morning. As I lay down, I gasped. WTF? This was bad. 

I beat the odds. I’m here longer than my prognosis, feeling healthy and great. This blog will now turn around time, and next month will be “+1 Month (Believe It)”. 

Today is my birthday. I’m 62. I feel both peaceful and powerful. 

Lately, I have been pondering if this will be the last year of my life. I don’t usually allow these thoughts in through my somewhat relentlessly positive affirmations, but I think it’s OK. 

I wish you could see me after hot yoga. 

Who would have thought, just five months ago post-chemo, stumbling around like an old chubby invalid, that I would turn into this wiry, strong bearded guy with a fierce gaze and the sweat pooling on his face like a Gatorade commercial?

I wish all the news was sunny, though. My cancer markers have risen, and my recent scan is a bit shocking. There are new tests to take to be certain, but it may appear there is somewhat a rise in disease expression.

FEAR.

If you’ve been following my journey, you know that my PSA, the standard marker for the presence of metastatic activity in prostate cancer, has risen higher than it’s ever been before. 

I always choose to think in the positive, so I take this optimistic view into my brain. I also sustain my thoughts with powerful affirmations. 

But there is a side of me that is terrified, and that side came to the surface, not in my conscious thoughts, but in my behavior last month.

Everything changed this weekend. 

First of all, my numbers are high, but this could mean many different things, especially after alternative treatments. But the real news is a physical resurrection like no other. My strength is back, my hair has grown back, and pain in my body has reduced since I’ve been on this new protocol based on the work of Dr. William Kelley.

“If you want me God, I’m here. Take me as thou wilt, use me as thou must.”

I was beginning my final three days at the Healing Oasis with a swim in Echo Lake. The temperature had dipped the day before, and chilly mist was rising from the water, but wolves and loons could be heard as I dipped my shivering body into the invigorating depths, baptizing myself in the “peace that passeth all understanding”. 

I am swimming in a lake, in Canada. Loons warble, the sun sets. My mom, who died of cancer when I was 18, is with me.

I haven’t seen her in so long. Wild red hair, a white linen embroidered shirt, bell bottom jeans. She wants me to know she sees me in this place, and is watching over me. 

Do YOU believe I only have 6 months left? 

This blog's original intention was to refute this medical prognosis, but two weeks ago, after six treatments of chemo, I found myself in the hospital with “A-Fib”, a heart condition (likely brought on by chemo) where your heart is running a marathon even while you are stationary. Yikes. 

How is it when, through significant hardships, you find yourself in a state of mind that regularly sees and acknowledges events as Divine Grace?

What a state! As I complete the final chemo treatment - with the intense fatigue, toxic brain fog, emotional and cognitive dysfunction, finding nutrition where I can, making the oversized beanbag in Idyllwild my home for a few days - I start to notice things.

I recently told myself: “Just Go With God In Complete Surrender”. It seems, somehow, I am always given exactly what I need when I need it. 

Over the last few months, as I now approach the completion of my chemotherapy, I have been struggling with a perception of limited resources, and uncertainty for my future. Understandable, right? Read on…

So, medically speaking, the average life expectancy of a person with my prognosis is “10 more months”. 

As a Radical Remission coach, we are fond of saying “believe the diagnosis, but not the prognosis”. Hence, my recurring parenthetical “(Don’t Believe It)”.

I began chemotherapy a few weeks ago. Though I tolerated it well, it was a controversial decision. One of my naturopathic doctors doesn’t recommend it, the other thinks it’s great on tumors but ineffective on the stem cells that create the ongoing pattern of metastatic activity. 

So, medically speaking, the average life expectancy of a person with my prognosis is “10 more months”. 

As a Radical Remission coach, we are fond of saying “believe the diagnosis, but not the prognosis”. Hence, my recurring parenthetical “(Don’t Believe It)”.

I began chemotherapy a few weeks ago. Though I tolerated it well, it was a controversial decision. One of my naturopathic doctors doesn’t recommend it, the other thinks it’s great on tumors but ineffective on the stem cells that create the ongoing pattern of metastatic activity.