I have a confession to make.  I knew almost nothing about cancer prior to my diagnosis.  My knowledge was limited to a lot of people die from it, but quite a few don’t.  Either way, it wasn’t something you wanted to deal with.

I can confidently say that is no longer the case.  In the past 15 months or so, I have learned a lot.  I’ll admit that we were a few months in before I actually Googled “How does cancer kill”, but I got there eventually.  The biggest thing that I learned is that there is a lot of conflicting information on how to deal with the disease.  I learned the success rates of conventional practices have not improved much over the past fifty years.  Sure, the number of patients cured has gone up, but so has the number of cases.  I’ve also learned about several alternative approaches and implemented all that I could.

I believe that what I’ve learned has helped get us to the position we’re in.  A position where life has returned to mostly normal.  Let’s face it, it will never be the same as it was.  Mostly because I don’t have a bladder, but I digress.

What follows are the things that we have done and are still doing in some cases to get to where we are.  I’m not going to get into a whole lot of detail (for now) as that would make this an extremely long read with a little more science than I care to try to articulate.  However, if there is something that I write that you want to know more about, please reach out and I’ll do my best to explain where I got the information and what I know about it.

Our journey has been a mixture of conventional treatments, alternative therapies and a few other things sprinkled in.  Here’s the part where I declare that I’m not a doctor, scientist, professional researcher or anything like that. The only thing that qualifies me to write about this is THIS IS WHAT I’VE DONE TO KEEP STAGE 4 CANCER WITH POOR PROGNOSIS FROM BEATING ME.

Conventional Treatment

On the conventional side, we followed the advice of doctors and did what we were told.  We saw a nephrologist (kidney doctor) because of increased blood pressure and high creatinine levels signaling a problem with my kidney function. He eventually had a CT scan done that showed a mass in my bladder. That led to a urologist visit which led to surgery to look inside my bladder.  What they found was a mess.  What they couldn’t find were the openings where the ureters (tubes from the kidneys to drain the urine to the bladder) opened up.  Long story short, the tumors were creating a blockage causing those tubes to stay full and back up into the kidneys.  Not good.

The urologist decided to place nephrostomy tubes.  These went through my lower back into my kidneys and would drain the urine into an external bag.  The function was to keep my kidneys draining while the parts that were supposed to work were having issues.  Had this not been done, the backup of urine would have likely led to kidney failure.

Around the same time, I started chemotherapy.  My regimen was four different chemo drugs: Fluorouracil, Leucovorin, Oxaliplatin and Bevacizumab.  My infusions were every other week and took 3 to 4 hours to complete.  We completed 12 rounds over 26 weeks.  The July 4th holiday and an unscheduled hospital stay a few weeks later caused two delays.  My side effects were minimal.  I vomited one time over the entire course, but it turns out I also had a nasty urinary tract infection at the time for which I was hospitalized for a few days later.  The Oxaliplatin caused a severe cold sensitivity, which we learned to deal with fairly quickly and neuropathy.  The neuropathy is still present over 8 months post treatment, but it is not too difficult to deal with.

Another traditional medicine aspect to my treatment had been blood pressure meds.  I take three different pills, two of them once a day and the other three times a day.  That is still the case today, more on that later.

Then there was the major surgery.  They cut the cancer out of me by taking my bladder, prostate and 93 lymph nodes.  I first met with the surgeon in May after a remarkably clean PET scan. In October of 2023 they cut me open and worked their magic. The surgery was considered a success as none of the tumors in the bladder or on the prostate were still active.  They found traces of active cells in 15 of the lymph nodes, but on the bright side, they were now out of my body.

Rounding out traditional treatments, starting in January of 2024, we went through six cycles of immunotherapy infusions along with three months of a chemotherapy drug in pill form.  The reasoning was that if there were still some active cells in the lymph nodes they took out, it was best to hit it again to knock out any lurkers.

As of April 2024, the only medication I’m on is for blood pressure.  I still see all of the doctors, but the frequency for each has gone down.  It’s safe to say that we’re in the monitoring phase of my condition.

Alternative Treatment

The alternative part of this journey is much more of a grey area.  Post diagnosis, I started doing a lot of reading.  I also started visiting a functional medicine doctor to get a different perspective.  The following is a list of things that I started doing based on what I read and the advice of the functional medicine doctor.

• Intermittent Fasting
• Reduced carbohydrate diet
• Reduced red wine consumption
• Drinking green tea every day
• Red Light Therapy in conjunction with Methylene Blue Drops
• Supplements I started taking:
  • One aspirin daily
  • Berberine
  • Boron
  • Vitamin D3 (up to 25,000 IUs per day)
  • Vitamin K2-M7
  • Ellagic Acid
  • Magnesium
  • Black Cumin See Oil
  • Turmeric Forte
  • Melatonin – 60mg+
• Supplements I added as we went along:
  • Acetyl L Carnitine (to help with neuropathy)
  • Alpha Lipoic Acid (also to help with neuropathy)
  • Calcium Citrate (to help with mouth sores from the immunotherapy in 2024)
• Supplements I was already taking that I continued to take:
  • Omega 3 fatty acids
  • Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc combo
  • B Complex
  • Glucosamine
  • Probiotics

The reasoning behind several of those is obvious.  I started intermittent fasting and drinking green tea a few months before the diagnosis.  It’s entirely possible those two moves made a big difference.  I obtained the supplement information from a few different places.  If you, or someone you are close to has recently been diagnosed, I’d urge you to read How To Starve Cancer by Jane McLelland. That one kick started me with the supplements.  Also, find a functional medicine doctor.  Preferably one that has been around a while.  (They don’t stay in business if they don’t help people).  If you’re in the north Houston area, I’m happy to provide a recommendation.

The Other Stuff

There are a few other things that have played a part in where we are to this point that don’t necessarily fall under the treatment category.  We’ll call this part attitude and cattitude.

For me, my attitude has been key.  I wrote quite a bit about that in previous blogs so I’m going to avoid getting repetitive here.  The only thing I’ll say is that I have been obsessed with living and while the alternative crosses my mind now and again, I have spent zero time dwelling on it.

Writing the blog has been therapeutic.  It checks a few different boxes.  For one, writing my thoughts gets them out of my head.  It’s essentially been a public journal.  Two, it helps keep people in the loop on what’s been going on.  Three, it can hopefully help others that find themselves in a similar situation.  And four, by being as open as we have been, it has gifted us with more positive vibes, thoughts, and prayers than we could have imagined.  The power is real.

I also chose to be as active as I could be.  That included walking, going to the gym, camping trips (by camping I really mean glamping) and anything other than sitting around allowing a disease to dictate my actions.  Don’t get me wrong, there were naps and periods of low energy, especially during chemo and the surgery recovery.  I chose to put the energy I did have to use living life.  I feel like I’ve heard that a key to surviving is having things to live for. I’m not sure where that’s from, but it makes a lot of sense.

The final thing I’m going to mention is Luna.  Luna is one of our cats. 

She is now 15 years old which means she was turning 14 when chemo started.  She can be the most annoying cat in the world.  If she is hungry, she will let you know.  Loudly.  Even at 4am. She’s very vocal.  But shortly after all of this started, she would insist on climbing onto me, settling down and start purring.  It probably happened before the diagnosis, but not nearly as much.  Apparently, cats’ purrs have a frequency range of 20-140 Hz which is known to be medically therapeutic for illnesses in humans.  I have no idea if and how much it’s helped, but I’m not going to question it either.

That’s the short version of what we’ve done so far and brings us to where we are now.

We did a PET scan last month that was inconclusive.  Nothing popped out, but it did show something abnormal in my right pelvis.  The doctors are not overly concerned and we’ll probably re-check soon.  My latest Signatera Test – that looks for DNA from the tumors I had – came back negative.  We’ll repeat that one again next week to make sure we’re still looking good.  

The biggest indicator to me is how I feel.  And I feel great.  I’m back to setting goals and working to achieve them.  I have a few irons in the fire and will be sharing them more and more as time goes on.  I’m staying active and for the first time in over a year my 30-day step average is back over 10,000.  I saw the cardiologist recently and started the discussion about what it will take to get me off the BP meds.  That will involve shedding more excess weight and making good lifestyle choices.  While I’ve stuck with the intermittent fasting this whole time, I’m working harder on doing it the right way.  I’m watching what I eat, especially sugar and carbohydrates.  I’m even wearing a constant glucose monitor to see how different foods affect my blood sugar.   It was something I requested because I’m a data nerd.  The doctors are all for it.

We’re now 15 months or so past a time we were told that things didn’t look so good.  I’m feeling as good as I have in years, possibly decades and I have no plans to slow down.  A year ago, I promised that we would “Get Busy Living” and that’s exactly what is happening.