A Breast Cancer Diary

I'm back for a short season interviewing my personal favorite oncologist friends... the first of which has published a wonderful book that goes on sale today! I'm sure you've heard of Dr. Teplinsky if you've been on the breast cancer end of Instagram. She's an amazing collaborator with some really wise doctors who are trying to broaden lifestyle limits that most of us breast cancer patients and survivors encounter every day--things like dry skin, brittle bones, stiff joints, and incontinance. Most oncologists don't even speak to these post menopausal and hormone blocker symptoms, but Dr. T has an amazing toolbox full of suggestions and her book is a great summary of them all. I hope you'll enjoy learning from her here.  We talk about: the Wisdom Study for those at higher risk, the safe use of estrogen and other supplemental hormone precursers like DHEA and Testosterone, the dangers of alcohol use before and after cancer, and the new ways that AI, in its current basic form, has shown to be promising for breast cancer science.  Even though Elenora is an oncoloist--she's not YOUR oncologist, so don't take her or my words as medical advice please! - Related Videos: The youtube playlist of both of my first two podcast seasons: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6UwzXU_5wZHEnUiAVtorqEsWpcYTBDpC - Links: Find the new book here:  https://interludecancerstories.com/book/   Did you know that I'm on substack? My publications there are at https://abreastcancerdiary.substack.com    The land where I recorded this video was once Kalapooia Tribal land. Join me by contributing to and learning from your own local indigenous farms here: https://www.soulfirefarm.org/get-involved/reparations/  

I'd hoped to make season two an even 20 episodes again, but there's more important work to be done right now....   Transcript:  Well, I had hoped to have three more episodes before closing for the summer, but I had a long month and a half off after my dad's passing, and I didn't get back on until last, uh, two weeks ago. And in the meantime, our country seems to be in quite a bit of turmoil. Our world seems to be in quite a bit of turmoil and I don't feel comfortable kind of moving merrily along on my path, just ignoring that at this point in time. I've always been an activist, at least at heart. I have only been an activist actively since I was about 30, when I adopted my daughter, but. I think I was meant to be an activist 'cause I picked it up and ran with it. And, uh, so I feel like that's where I need to pour my efforts right now. A lot of heartbreaking things going on in our country. A lot of shock and awe, which is just part of the plan with this administration, but also just legitimate, heartbreaking. Things happening. A US center senator in California was thrown to the ground by the FBI in his own federal building in his own state after having been invited there by the feds. And, it just seems particularly interesting that they invited him there and provoked him to speak and, um, speak the truth and then threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. That I just can't get over that, that is like so rattling to me that I can't talk about anything else right now. And today I'm recording on Saturday, the day before this is going live. And today is No King's Day, otherwise known as Trump's birthday and, Flag Day and the 250th anniversary of the military or the army. A lot of things today. It's a, it's a very momentous day and I've already been to one demonstration and I'm headed out in an hour to go to another one. And that's what's giving me life right now. I can't even talk about breast cancer advocacy because I've gotta get out in the streets and do the thing that brings me hope. Um, but I wanted to share, for those of you who are intentionally ignoring the news the way that I did up until a few months ago, I wanted to share some of the things I've been learning. That do affect us in all of this as breast cancer survivors and patients. And I think the most upsetting thing to me is this, um, what they're calling the big beautiful bill in Congress and, um, all of the damage it will do to Medicare and Medicaid patients. We've already seen a lot of our breast cancer research funds go away. They're gonna be going away permanently in the fall, but they're starting to dwindle already now. And I, I would encourage you to not give up on breast cancer research and do what you can to contribute to research through organizations like the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Komen and other local research, uh, providers so that we can keep as many scientists in our country as possible because a lot of them are already leaving for Europe, where they'll be paid to do what they're good at. But I also wanna talk about the VA. Uh, the fact that VA is slated to lose 83,000 employees and the VA already serves breast cancer patients really poorly right now, they are stretched thin on the budget that they have right now. And so just imagine 83,000 employees going away Our veterans who, largely because of their service in the military, are being exposed to the toxins that cause breast cancer are going to be left out in the rain, out in the cold and not served sufficiently at all. And that is really tragic to me. I did wanna say one thing that I was hoping to say in this episode, the episode that followed my interview with Nanette. Uh, before I go for the summer, I wanna say, uh, there was a reference in my interview with Nanette where I kind of was shocked and showed my shock very candidly. And, um, that was because I had just read, a review of, of trial, of studies, making it clear that CT scans are extremely dangerous for us cancer patients and for people in general, especially when they're performed over and over again in close proximity, like within a year of each other. So I was really shocked to hear that she got regular CT scans as a part of her trial, and I think that's pretty common. Trials are there to see if drugs are working, and the way to see if drugs are working is scans. Um, and CT scans are among the best. And so of course trials are gonna be set up and designed to require a lot of scans. I think. It's really hopeful to me that, um, we still have some research money here in the US for breast cancer and the research money that we do have still here in the US is the kind that, requires things like patient involvement in studies. And I just became a patient advocate on a, on a study myself that hasn't been funded yet. Hopefully it will be funded, but it's, it's in the application process for funding. Going to a different source than the national, the federal funding that's been stripped away. But, um, I think it's really important that, that we as patients are advocating for things like less toxic scanning because based on. Results of studies like this, which I will reference. I have, actually, I'll just point you to my, my Substack. I have a, a paid substack that is for my clients only and it's just, a subscription service. But I do every once in a while have posts on it that are free. And so I'll just point you to that where I posted, uh, a free reference to this. Um. Review a systematic review of studies that shows how dangerous CT scans are for cancer. And that is at cleanupafterbreastcancer.substack.com. And it's not the last post that I made, but it's the second to last post that I made, and that's why I responded to Nanette with such shock at, at hearing that she had CT scans every six months. I think as patient advocates who sit on trials on the boards of trials, we need to advocate for less of that kind of toxicity now that we know just how toxic it is. So that's my one little breast cancer plug for today. Um, but I also wanna tell you about some other things that I've been thinking about in the last week or so as I'm trying to. Discover what my involvement in on the national situation will be. I really liked, I, I always love Heather Cox Ri Richardson, which she is, is kind of the most famous person on Substack. So since, since I moved all my socials over to Substack and all of my videos and, and audio over here to podcast, um. She's been someone that I've really been enjoying listening to, and she's a political historian. Um, her main job is as a history professor, and she's been a really good general public lay educator lately on both substack YouTube, so I hope you'll check her out, but she had a. A discussion a couple days ago with Pete Buttigieg, who was just remarkably hopeful. He has this ability to get up out of the current circumstances and see the big picture, the long term picture, like Heather Cox Richardson is looking into the past long term learning from all the lessons of the past, and Pete Buttigieg seems to be a, like a future historian kind of a "Futur-orian," where he's able to look at the big picture and see where we might end up. That's hopeful as a result of what we're going through now and. Both of them were saying that yeah, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Um, Heather was saying that the next three months are pivotal, and that's why I really wanna take the next three months off and do everything I can to restore our democracy. It's already backslidden massively in the last couple of months, but I wanna pour myself into that as an activist. But, but Pete was saying that yeah, it'll get. Worse before it gets better, but when it gets better, it might get way better. Like it could also just get way better. 'cause we've had a lot of really icky stuff in Washington. I mean, people are pretty disoriented with both sides of the political spectrum for good reason because our leaders have been bought out. Like they've, they've been. Pretty much just thinking about themselves in a lot of ways. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And so if we can kind of have a, a fresh start and kind of a renewed spirit, um, and cut down some of the traditions of callousness in, in politics, um, and, and money grubbing in politics, once we get past this like. Oligarchy problem and the billionaires being the only ones that seem to have a voice right now. Um, I think, you know, we can have a lot of really grassroots leaders coming up from the states that are much more effective at caring about the little guy than the current folks are. So that was really helpful and I encourage you to go and, and listen to that on Heather Cox Richardson's Substack channel. Uh, I think that's helpful for everyone. And the other thing that's really hopeful for me on a daily basis is that I am associating myself with not a party, not the Dems or the Republicans. I grew up in a Republican household, um, staunchly Republican and around pretty much all Republican people. And you know, for the last 20 years I've been a, a staunch progressive, sometimes third party, sometimes democrat, but. I am so in love with this organization that I am leading with that I'm on a steering committee for locally called Indivisible. If you haven't heard of it, go and look it up. It's two young people, husband and wife who worked in the Obama administration and, um, learned not just from Obama how to do things, but learn from. The icky, ugly tea party folks how to organize, and they have been organizing since 2016. Not just Dems, but Republicans too. People who are fed up with the way that things are going on both sides. And, uh, they wanna bring us together, and that's the word, indivisible. We, we need to stand together as a country and not be so divided, which we are because of Facebook, you know, because of social media. We're getting so polarized and because of COVID and all the thi

My colleague and friend Nanette has been leading yoga for breast cancer survivors for the past few years in her community of Austin Texas, even as she's navigated the tough journey of recurrent metastatic disease in her bones. I think you'll love her spirit as she shares her story... Link to yoga4cancer: https://yoga4cancer.com/ Transcript: Today's guest is Nanette Labastida. She's in Austin, Texas, and she and I have been ambassadors together for Stand Tall AFC over the years. She is a realtor by trade, and her passion is yoga, which we'll talk about at the end of the interview. But I want to start out by asking Nanette about her background, diagnosis, and current, uh, treatment plans. Welcome Nanette. Hi, I am so excited to be here and chat with you. So yeah my history, my background diagnosis, I was originally diagnosed in 2010. I was 42, um, with breast cancer and it, it was--back then I didn't really pay that much attention to the words-- but I do know that it was ER/PR positive and HER2 negative. And I had chemo, like four rounds of chemo, no radiation. Um, and I had a mastectomy with implants, you know, with, uh, expanders and then implants. And I did tamoxifen for four years. and then in 2019 I explanted to flat. And so that's when I joined that community. It wasn't necessarily through any. um, implant illness Um, it was more like discomfort and never feeling like myself and knowing that at some point they'd need to be changed out and I'd rather not. I had the ability to do it timing wise and insurance wise--zero regrets. And then in 2022, um, I was diagnosed with, uh, stage four metastatic breast cancer. Um, so it was a recurrence, with mets to few spots in my bones, rib pelvis, and a couple on my spine. I think, um, a collarbone lymph node here, which is really the thing that got me into the oncologist. Thank goodness. And pleural effusion around my lungs. Uh oh. And then I started, uh, treatment at that time I was actually qualified for a, a clinical trial. My doctors did some research immediately and just based on like all the factors of my previous treatment and the type of cancer, all the stuff I, I entered this trial called the Serena--I might not remember the exact name of the trial, but the trial was a blind trial in which I was taking (a CDK4/6) Ibrance, taking two other pills. One was. Anastrozole. The other pill was a new drug called "SERD," or a placebo. So I would take both of them not knowing if I was getting which med I was getting. So I was getting treatment, I just didn't know which one. Okay. And it turned out in the end. Now, you just recently found out, uh, that you were on the blind arm of the trial, which means you were only taking a CDK4/6 inhibitor. It turns out I was not taking the SERD, the new trial drug, which was the blinded. So I was taking anastrozole, so I was on what I'd have been on if I wasn't on the trial, like the standard is like almost everybody or you know, a lot of people, they just do the, the CDK4/6 inhibitor and the AI and that's what I ended up being on for three years, almost three years. I didn't get the trial drug, which I've heard that it might be out later this year--a SERD on the market--an oral SERD. It's, it's, I think you had someone recently talking about fluvestrant and that's a SERD. Um, so it's kind of less, less quality of life and, and they all work a little differently anyway... For the sake of listeners who don't know what a SERD is, um, I personally got it mixed up with SERM, which is very similar. So there's selective estrogen receptor modulator. Or a SERD is the newer drug, which is a selective estrogen receptor disruptor. I believe those are the words.  Degrader.  Degrader, okay. Thank you. So it's, it's actually degrading the receptor site so that the receptor can't receive estrogen, right? Is that the mechanism?  That's the mechanism, and so it's similar to an AI's to an aromatase inhibitor, but from a different like angle is what I understand. Well, it's similar to Tamoxifen, I think. Tamoxifen is a SERM where it's a, um, modulator, so it'll, it'll block the receptor so a SERM sits in the receptor and blocks it from receiving any oth other estrogens where a degrader, I think destroys the actual receptor. I love talking about the science. I, uh, I, I'm learning more and more, you know, especially 'cause I'm sort of such in the depths of it. And I also, like last year, attended the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, um, as a patient advocate. And it, I, I'm so glad I did in this progression because I am so aware now you know, and I can bring them up to my doctor. It was. It I thought it was like too much information, but there's definitely some that like settled. Awesome. Yeah, me too. I'm, I'm hooked. Yeah. Okay. So tell us about what happened. So you had Mets in 22. Okay. That's when you started the trial right away, when you started with your diagnosis of Mets. So that's three years ago. And then just this year in 2025, you had another. Incident or, um, you know, change in your diagnosis. So tell us what that was like and, and how you understand that now. Yeah. Um, yeah, this was, um, you know, for people that don't totally know some of the terms, progression is when you've had metastatic cancer, You have it and it's been stable or even no evidence of active activity, cancer activity from your treatment, and then some scan or some results of something shows that it's active again and maybe grown in that area or there's a new area. I had a scan that showed it. Yeah, I had a, um, I had a CT scan, which I was having every three months, and an area in my left pelvis that looked larger, but they, it's where I had mets originally. So they were sort of like hesitant to say, or they couldn't tell, like the CT scan doesn't necessarily show that. It just showed that they were like, they were like, maybe it's just bone degeneration from been affected although, and I had had some like hip pain and I was doing this sort of typical cancer survivor sort of thing of like, "Is this bad? Is it just 'cause I'm working out? Is it 'cause I'm 57???" Is it, you know, you know, or, or is it like alarming? I need to bring it up. And you, you always wanna not bring it up even though you probably should. And I had gotten to this sort of like. Feeling like, Hmm. It's kind of gotten constant. So, then I got this result then, and that was right before going to YSC, which we'll talk about later. I had to like go anyway and, um. You know, sort of shelf any worry. And then when I came back, I had my sort of actual doctor's appointment and my tumor marker result, like numbers were up a little bit. Okay. I immediately, you know, like you sort of put puzzle pieces together. So I was pretty certain, um, that it, there was progression, but I also had to have a, PET scan scheduled and an MRI of the pelvis. And then I had to delay this appointment, but I also have an appoint, had an appointment with a orthopedic oncologist for X-Ray conversation. I love seeing him. This is my second time and he just gets a little nerdier deeper into the bone structure. Um, I. But he's not my primary oncologist. So yeah, it showed activity in my pelvis, um, in the, uh, I can't remember the scientific term, but it's the back of my pelvis. Um, and there's a hole there. Um, and that's why it hurts. Oh, wow. And the rest of the bone is like an eggshell. So I'm a fracture risk. Um, and. I also had to have a biopsy of that, which was it, it was not as bad as I thought, but you know, like that really scared me to go get something from my bone. It's so different than a soft tissue, you know? Right. A marrow biopsy then? I think it was, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I was, you know, semi like twilight sedated, so it really was like, it was like, oh, you're done? Ok. That's not so bad. Um. And that is to, I, I know there's a lot of tangents on this topic, but there are a lot of tangents in this world, and so it just goes this way. So the reason for the biopsy because of mutations that exist in, um, cancer treatments in cancer. . I think largely as a result of being on treatment, but, you know, can, there's these mutations that can come onto your cancer type that completely change the course of treatment, um, if you have them. Um, and so it's, and that's one thing I truly learned like deeply at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium--the, the need for this knowledge to figure out your next treatment and not just go, oh, you have progression. We'll just try another version of the same drugs... Which is what we used to do.  Um, so, the, while waiting for the results of that, because they're actually still not all the way in, he, my doctor did put me on versions of the other drugs. So I started treatment, I started with, um, another. , CDK four inhibitor, verzenio and then flu tran shots, which is the third that we were talking about--it's a different, different manufacturer and it's in a shot. So it's a different version of this, and different manufacturer. Um, and you know, he's just like, we just wanna get some, you know, some treatment Started. And it was interesting because I had a very difficult time getting Verzenio delivered because of insurance. And this is actually another tangent, but like my insurance is actually quite good and I have, when I meet my deductible, I have a hundred percent medical coverage the rest of the year. So I learned I learned from Ibranz that I can get these drugs classified as a medical benefit. And then they'll be a hundred percent covered instead of a benefit. However, getting everybody to understand that on the same plane is really challenging. For some reason, the insurance actually was the first one to like, approve it for that. But the pharmacy needed lots of information and my doctor's office was like still submitting it as a pharmacy because that's all they know, you know, and, and so I had to keep explaining. So it took a really long time. To get the Verzenio. And I

Just a quick episode reflecting on Heather's story and the difference between "functional" or "integrative medicine" and "alternative" medicine. Subscribe on: APPLE PODCASTS - SPOTIFY Join my Newsletter List here: https://abreastcancerdiary.substack.com Heather's web site is: https://heatherjose.com/ and her podcast is here on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@ImStillHereCancer/videos Kathleen does zoom based peer navigation/mentoring sessions now. Schedule a session here for a sliding scale of $35 to $95 per hour long session: https://kathleenmoss.simplybook.me/   Transcript:  Those of you listening on the day that this episode is released, happy Easter to you if you celebrate Easter. I'm just here again just me reflecting on some of the things we talked about in the last episode with my guest, Heather Jose. Her episode was packed full of controversial issues and I'm just gonna cover a couple of them today. And also wanted to give you a heads up that I may not be putting out episodes in the next couple of weeks. I've had a couple of guests cancel and have to reschedule, and then my dad just passed away this last week, and so I'm not able to reschedule with them soon. I do still intend to put out, um. Maybe three or four or more episodes before I take a break for the summer though. So I will be back at some point probably in May and not in April. Um, but don't worry, I haven't finished this season quite yet. So just to get back to last week's episode and some of the topics discussed with Heather, I wanted to talk about her complimentary or integrative, uh, approach to her oncology, the fact that she worked in tandem with both the conventional system and the lifestyle medicine system. This can be really confusing for folks who aren't familiar with. The world of functional medicine or even nature paths. There are so many different types of cancer experts, so-called experts in the world, and some of them are, are highly, you know, board certified and backed up with lots and lots of education and others of them may not be. All of them claim to have some interest in some kind of research, or usually they do, but not all of them have really solid research behind their practices, and so this can be really confusing and really expensive and kind of scary for the typical patient to explore. I have a background, personally, I'm a functional nutritionist, so I have a lot of experience with telling these kinds of schools of thought apart. And unfortunately in cancer there's a lot of quackery. I think there always has been. Throughout history with cancer. There's a lot of, um, people making false claims or really, really naive claims without a lot of research behind them. And this. Movie that we talked about that Heather and I were talking about briefly in the last episode that just came out on Netflix recently called Apple Cider Vinegar is a really good example of a couple of different really scary elements, um, in this kind of shady practice. In the movie Apple Cider Vinegar, which I'm not sure if you'll be able to watch as a cancer patient. For me, it was excruciating. It took me a couple of months to get through this very short series of episodes because it was just so painful and uncomfortable and cringey for me to watch. Just, just a really unfortunate story that seems to be somewhat true, um, that takes place in Australia. But, uh, there were two elements that were disturbing. One was that this one character in, in the film, which the film kind of was focused on, was completely lying. She was a sociopath and coming up with dietary measures for people to fix or. Cure their cancer through As someone who had never had cancer and was claiming to have cured her own cancer, that really never existed. Of course, that is a bizarre and disturbing story to watch for anyone. I. But then there were a couple of other characters in the movie that were kind of,, carrying on a claim for themselves, and they did have cancer. they were looking into all the alternative to conventional medicine options that were out there in the world. There were things in Mexico and South America and, um, different in indigenous practices and. , it didn't go into all the details of all of them, but the really poignant part of the story was the death of, of one woman who became kind of a thought leader and influencer of other cancer patients. And all the while her cancer had been progressing and she was denying that. And, it's a really good wake up call for those who are seeking the alternative kind of solution to cancer in in our world right now. I think we need to have that kind of sobering reality brought to us every once in a while, and yet people like my guest, Heather Jose, do feel like lifestyle changes, diet and exercise and stress. Related and sleep related changes in their lifestyle have made all the difference. So there is, there is something to the lifestyle end of things. And I think for me anyway, in my, in my research and my exploration, I have found that functional medicine is the best kind of mediator of the two, um, of natural and integrative and complimentary medicine. Approach to cancer as well as medical, conventional medical, because most functional doctors are actually MDs. They're, they're fully trained in the conventional system, and then they go beyond that to get trained in the lifestyle medicine, complementary or integrative, depending on what. Label you wanna choose, and the difference is that they look for the root cause so they're going back to the origins of the disease, which only makes perfect sense to you if you're a scientist like it. It would make sense to most people who are scientifically minded and Dr. Block. My impression is, um, when Heather went to Dr. Block in, um, Illinois, that he is one of those functional type doctors. He is an MD so he is certainly a, a full fledged oncologist, but he's also looking into some of the other ways to compliment that with natural and lifestyle approaches. And I'm really hoping myself that he does not get shoved under the bus as we are watching films like apple cider vinegar, uh, because there are very few people like him that bridge that nicely, that really embrace both sides of the continuum. And I think that is where the most hope lies personally. Um, I've talked a little bit about my enthusiasm for exercise oncology. As a nutritionist, I have seen literature. Across the board with nutrition and it is really messy. It's really hard to establish whether or not food can be the reason for certain outcomes, positive outcomes, and lowered risk when it comes to cancer, because food is just really hard to isolate in our, you know, study of our habits. It's, it's not something you can. Crystallized down to one behavior, well, the way that science kind of needs us to do. But exercise and sleep and stress are much easier to get crystallized down to a single behavior or outcome. So I have a lot more confidence as a nutritionist, even as much as I've studied and as much as I do believe in nutrition, I have more confidence in exercise and stress reduction. We, we are so young in the world of science, and that's why it breaks my heart that so much science is being, dismantled right now with our current political situation. But I just wanted to clarify kind of how I separate out these things, and I just wanted to say again, how blown away I am that Heather is out there sharing her story every week, just the salt of the earth, the most down to earth. Human being, not making any wild claims. She's the opposite of these personalities that you see in the Netflix series, apple cider vinegar, where they're just so confident about the reason that they got better, supposedly got better, which neither of them did. Um, whereas Heather has stayed cancer progression free as a stage four patient, which is remarkable. It's not unheard of. There are other women like her who've lived 20 or 30 extra years with stage four cancer without. Any extra meds, even like her not having a whole lot of lifestyle inhibition by the drugs that she takes, but, uh, but that is pretty rare and I just love that she's sharing incrementally how she's doing week by week and staying on with her kind of. Regime of, of strict lifestyle habits with diet and exercise and stress, reduction in sleep, habits to increase the quality of her sleep. So I just love, I love having her in the cancer community at large, not just breast cancer, but the larger cancer community. 'cause I think she gives people hope. And one of the things that Heather and I talked about was the placebo effect, the fact that. Patients do better when they believe they're doing something themselves that makes a positive difference. And I think this is true with any patient taking just about any drug. Um, for anything really, it's, the drug is so much more powerful when we believe that it's making a difference. But it also can be true of our lifestyle choices, our dietary habits, our sleep choices, our stress management. You know, our exercise habits, all of those things, if we believe they're making a big difference, that makes our body all the more powerful, somehow in some magical way that we don't understand and that science can't really capture. But it's called the placebo effect. And Heather was saying that she's a big, a big fan and believer in that in mindset, um, and mindset. Is not just a hocus pocus, you know, belief in something that's false, but it's a belief that the small things that you're doing, even though you can admit that they're small, make a big difference. And so I think this is a great reminder to all of us to choose something, you know, whether it's green tea, like her first oncologist told her to just to go out and start drinking green tea. And then we'll talk about getting rid of this cancer next week. Um, whatever it is, eating more vegetables, eating more fruits, eating m

My guest Heather has been thriving with metastatic breast cancer for nearly 27 years! How did she do it? She feels that it's a combination of things--not necessarily the trial on stem cell therapy combined with high-dose chemo. She feels that her long-term drug, Faslodex, as well as lifestyle choices around nutrition, exercise and mindset are key in her success. Heather's web site is: https://heatherjose.com/ and her podcast is on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@ImStillHereCancer/videos Kathleen does zoom based peer navigation/mentoring sessions now. Schedule a session here for a sliding scale of $35 to $95 per hour long session: https://kathleenmoss.simplybook.me/ Transcript: Today's podcast guest is Heather Jose. She's from Mount Pleasant, Michigan, and she's an occupational therapist, and the most remarkable thing to know about her is that she's a 26 year post metastatic breast cancer survivor and thriver. And that's a main reason why I have her on the podcast today. I've never met anyone that has lived that long and thrived that long after a metastatic diagnosis. I'm so excited to have you, Heather. H: Thank you. It's great to be here. K: Thanks for coming on. So a huge part of your story is, well, you're, you're a podcaster too, and you tell your story in an informal YouTube and podcast setting. Uh, there in your home with your husband usually, and sometimes your kids are, are joining to tell their part of your story. Um, so people can learn about your entire journey just by looking at back episodes of your podcast. But. I wanna hear what you feel you did differently than maybe some of the people you meet who have had metastatic breast cancer and how your path was maybe a little bit different than the conventional path after being diagnosed. Oh. Start out by telling us if you had an early diagnosis before your metastatic diagnosis. H: No, I was diagnosed de novo, so stage four from the start. Um. I think, and I, looking back, I was 26 when it happened, and I think some of what worked for me was being a little bit naive about a lot of things, right? I look at, my daughter is now 27 and doing great at life, but you know, there's a lot that you learn over the course of time, right? So I think it helped me to be able to just kind of go into this going, well, okay, how do I, how do I stay here? How do I figure this out without knowing, I don't know, even the gravity of all of it. K: Sure. Absolutely. And did you, how many months or years did you stay with just conventional treatment before branching out into integrative treatment? H: Well, the, my first doctor told me to get my affairs in order, I stayed with him for about 20 minutes and we were done forever. The, the next oncologist that I talked to was the next day. She told me even on that phone call, "drink some green tea, eat some fruits and vegetables and we'll start killing cancer on Monday." And it was so empowering, like, SO empowering. Here's a oncologist from the University of Michigan who you know, is renowned in her field and, and, she's telling me like, go get some green tea and it was the best thing ever for me. And that of course kind of was like, okay, what can I do? so right from there we started to do some research. And when I say we, I should say my mom, because I knew early on that I could not handle all the information coming in. I knew that it, I just needed to kind of protect my mind and kinda keep myself in a bubble. So she started doing, some exploration of, you know, what else is available that could help kind of bring pieces, of knowledge to the table. Because even at that time, and I, I know nutrition's tricky anyway, and I know you've talked about some of this, right? But you'll, somebody will tell you "a calorie is a calorie" and somebody else will say, "no, you have to do this." And we wanted somebody who was like, no, what we would like you to do is this, and the reason why is because the research has shown the way to go. So we actually found, um, an integrative oncologist early on. I, I was seeing him, I was diagnosed in December and I went to see him in February. K: And this is Dr. Block. H: This is Dr. Keith Block. So, yeah, and he's, um, he's in Skokie, Illinois now. He was in Evanston at the time, but they're just neighboring towns. And, um, it was so, it felt so good to me to be there, to have them kind of say, yeah, we'll, we'll help you kind of put together a plan, but also the reason why we're doing this is we're gonna look at these labs, or we know what this study says. All of that kind of information was great. I felt like I could just, you know, really rely on them. K: So when you went to see Dr. Block, did you leave the green tea oncologist behind or did you continue to work with her? H: No. She's still my oncologist. I mean, and, and I went to Dr. Block saying, Hey, I've got this great oncologist and what do you think of this plan? And he said, I think that's a great plan. And here's what, you know, we can add to it. So it was kind of nice to have kind of a second opinion all the way through, um, the first, the early years, and then also have this nutritionist and, and different people on board. K: Okay, so Dr. Block worked in collaboration with your oncologist. Would you say that? H: I would say Dr. Block, um, helped me put together the other pieces of the puzzle that I was really interested in, in terms of nutrition, supplements, he was talking about visualization, encouraging exercise, which my regular oncologist was also doing. It felt really good to have this kind of, not that they were talking a whole lot, but to have both of these people that I really trusted telling me, yeah. "Do these things." K: And they actually agreed about what these "these things" were? Wow. That's great. H: Yeah. My oncologist has always been, um, I think ahead of her time you know, in terms of recognizing what our bodies can do with proper nutrition, exercise, all of those kind of things. K: Okay. I was gonna ask you if you ever went back to her now, you know, 20 some years later and said, why the heck did you tell me to go and eat green tea? But it sounds like she has continued to be consistent in her endorsement of things like green tea and fruits and vegetables. H: Absolutely, it's been a while, but we ran a 10 K together once. She's very supportive of being active and healthy and she will always. Um, check in on all of those kind of things. What am I doing to work out? How am I eating all of that? K: Okay. Now the $10 million question, do you feel like your lifestyle choices in terms of working out and eating right, have made, and does your intuition tell you that those things have made a difference in your longevity? H: I think absolutely. I think part of it is that you're trying to build what. least at the beginning, I was trying to build the healthiest body possible so the treatments could be as effective as possible, I wanted to kind of eliminate any of the extra work that my body was maybe having to do, you know, and, and give it really great fuel. That was my whole, know, process in that was how can I make my body as efficient and effective as possible? K: Okay, so you're saying you wanted your body to be in good shape so that the treatments could be effective, so you weren't replacing the treatments with lifestyle. I think that's a really important distinction. H: God, no. Absolutely not. Not at all. And there's this other big piece, which is mindset. So for me, I was kind of like, I need to believe in everything that I'm doing, and being able to believe in these things then helps me kind of put together this whole picture. The medicine's working and it's doing its job, and I am doing my job by, you know, keeping myself as healthy as I can be. I mean, it's, it's a whole picture. K: Yeah, so Dr. Block is a, a medical doctor and he's an integrative. He has an integrative center, I think. So let me just clear clarify for the listeners who don't understand the difference between integrative and alternative, I. Because there's this really crazy amazing, um, series on Netflix right now that just came out called Apple Cider Vinegar. That is, I think, not defining these things very well. And it really strikes terror into some patients when they don't have definitions. So alternative therapy, uh, natural therapies can be offered instead of conventional medical treatment. And that's, that's what we call alternative, but integrative means it's a natural approach or a lifestyle approach that works hand in hand with conventional medical therapies, and that's what, obviously that's what you've chosen and what Dr. Block has chosen. He's not saying "you don't need chemo radiation, you don't need those oncology drugs or the hormone, suppressors." He's saying, do all of that and let's do what we can to get your body into the best shape it's ever been in so that your body is resilient. Against the negative effects of those treatment, but also receptive to the positive effects of those treatments. Okay. H: Perfectly said. K: Okay, cool. 'cause I want Dr. Block to not fall into that camp that is being, you know, criminalized--rightfully so. I think! ...by, by this, this new wave of, of truth telling in cancer where, you know, the, the Hirsch therapies in the movie, apple cider vinegar down in Mexico is, is really the Gersen plan or the Gersen therapy. And that really is an alternative. They use enemas and juicing instead of chemo and radiation Typically, I don't know what they're doing now, but typically, um, that's what they've been seen to do. And a lot of other podcasts that I've listened to that are based on health and nutrition and lifestyle will actually give. Those therapies, some airtime and some credence, and that can be really confusing for patients. So I just want patients to know that. I would not be inviting a guest on my podcast that would endorse that kind of, um, miracle Cure kind of thinking. And, and Heather is the cr