Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Wrestling with Cancer: When Everything Hurts and Hope Remains
Pain transforms you in ways you never expect until you're living it day after day without relief. Throughout my cancer journey, I've experienced many challenges, but the last 24 hours have pushed me to new limits of endurance. What began as an attempt to stimulate activity on my tumor developed into an infection, causing constant drainage that required me to wear a makeshift paper towel collar all day. The restricted movement, difficulty sleeping, and persistent discomfort have created a new understanding of what it means to truly suffer.
When pain doesn't release its grip for months on end, it doesn't just hurt—it consumes your resources. I've discovered that pain demands increasing amounts of energy and willpower to face each day. This revelation has forced me to make difficult decisions about where my limited energy goes. Some calls from loved ones remain unanswered because I simply don't have the capacity to engage, even when those connections matter deeply to me.
Despite these challenges, there's progress and hope. The antibiotics prescribed by my doctor appear to be working, with drainage significantly reduced after just three doses. I'm looking forward to rescheduling my port placement so treatment can continue. Throughout this ordeal, I've been blessed with individuals who genuinely restore my energy rather than depleting it—true gifts from God who rejuvenate my spirit when I need it most. My faith remains unshaken; I know with absolute certainty that my body is capable of healing and that I will overcome this challenge. For those following this journey, thank you for your prayers and support. Subscribe to join me on this path and witness what unfolds as I continue fighting with everything I have.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and this is another subscriber episode, and I want to thank all the new subscribers and including Shannon, who just joined us a couple days ago, and I hope you find these episodes interesting and informative, and maybe even more than that. This is another episode detailing my journey on the road to overcoming cancer, and this last 24 hours has been one of the roughest I've experienced. One of the roughest I've experienced. I left off and they determined I had an infection and I'm certain it was because of what I was doing trying to stimulate activity on the tumor and turned into a breach, turned into, uh, basically, me putting peroxide on it and then that turned into an infection and I don't know the progression of it all. But, uh, yesterday, um, that little bit of weeping grew and I literally had a weeping grew and I literally had a paper towel sort of wrapped around my collar all day and it was just dripping weeping all day long.
Speaker 1:It was very difficult. It began choking me out again and my movement is restricted a lot. I can barely move my neck right now and I didn't hardly sleep at all last night. I kept waking up. I can't find any place. That's not painful and it's just been very difficult.
Speaker 1:And all the people that have reached out with little things I should do. I can't even look at that stuff right now. And I know you all mean well and I appreciate your thoughts and intentions, but you don't. Nobody has listened to all the episodes. Nobody knows the whole story or maybe one or two of you have, I think, but frankly I don't even hear from you guys.
Speaker 1:So the truth is I'm doing everything that can be done. I've done everything that I can do. I will continue to do that. I'm giving it all, every single thing I've got. I have the deep and unwavering faith. I know I will get through this. I know that my body is capable of miracles. I know all of these things and I believe them with all my heart. And at this minute I am where I am and it may be a little frustrating and I know it's easy to have lots of hope for somebody that you're not going through what they're going through. It's really easy because you're not going through it and it's not to diminish anything, it's just these truths, you know.
Speaker 1:Again, I encourage you to read the book by Thomas Kuhn, the Structure of Scientific Revolution. It will open your eyes to where truths are and what they mean. They don't have anything to do with feelings, they're just truths. Your actions are your truths and certain things do certain things and other things don't. Just because you believe something doesn't make it so, and sometimes things happen for whatever reason. There's nothing fair in life. We just got to sometimes go through what we got to go through, and I'm not whining or anything like that. I'm just saying this is the truth that I'm dealing with.
Speaker 1:And so yesterday I got a call from the doctor. They ordered an antibiotic. I began taking it at about 4 20 yesterday afternoon. I've now taken three doses and I believe it's working. The weeping has pretty much stopped or at least reduced down to very, very, very minimal. I'm hoping that the inflammation will start to shrink back and I'll get some more relief, because this is really I can hardly move right now and just everything's painful. So they're hoping to reschedule the port placement for tomorrow. I'm hoping that that happens and we can get going on this.
Speaker 1:You know, the thing that people don't realize is this just continues on, minute after minute, day after day. It doesn't let you go, and I've never dealt with pain like this before, where it didn't stop. You know I've had broken bones, I've had pains before, but you know the progression is always, you know, days or weeks, not months, and I'm not going to take anything for this. I'm going to walk through it. And what you don't realize is that it eats you away, it takes from you, and I didn't really know that about pain before. I always thought you kind of get used to it. Maybe you do, and I'm going to work on that, and I'm still working on my do, and I'm going to work on that. And, and you know, I'm still working on my meditation and working on, you know, my mental work.
Speaker 1:But what I've discovered is that, as it comes more, it requires more energy, more will to stand up and push it back or do something with it, and so it's required a huge amount of energy for me to record this. I wasn't even going to do it. In fact, I've had a few people call me that I didn't even take their calls, and these are people I know and love. I just didn't have energy to share with them all these things because they wouldn't or haven't been able to be bothered to listen to this story and they, they care about me and love me and want to hear from me, but I don't have that energy right now and so I've had to just either not respond or let them know. You know I'm in a different difficult place and I'll get back to them.
Speaker 1:The other converse of this there's a handful of people that have been deeply connected, and I'm so grateful for those people and I've been able to spend a little bit of time with them, and they restore my energy. I know God has sent those people to me to really just rejuvenate and restore my soul, and many people are praying and I appreciate that and I love that and I welcome that. And I know there's a lot of you who do love me and care a lot, and I love every bit about that. I love every bit about that. And so just know that I can't respond the same to everybody. There's only so much energy that I have and I have to distribute it in the best way that I know how. So I hope everybody understands I'm looking forward to getting on the other side of this and get back to my normal huge amount of energy and resources. So, all right, well, hopefully we'll have some good news soon. Talk soon, bye.
