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
When Everything You Believe Is Tested: A Cancer Survivor's Story
This episode is only available to subscribers.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs +
Facing the unthinkable can shatter everything we thought we knew. When podcast host Joe Grumbine received his squamous cell carcinoma diagnosis in October 2023, his world tilted on its axis. After decades spent helping cancer patients with alternative treatments, particularly cannabis oil, Joe suddenly found himself walking the same difficult path—with surprising results.
This deeply personal episode takes listeners through Joe's lifelong spiritual journey, from his early Catholic upbringing to his near-death experience at 18 that cemented his sense of purpose and connection with his Creator. With raw honesty, Joe reveals how his cancer diagnosis forced him to confront his most fundamental beliefs about healing. Despite his extensive knowledge of plant medicines and natural treatments, his rigorous 90-day cannabis oil regimen yielded no improvement. This humbling realization launched him into an exhaustive exploration of healing modalities—from fasting and oxygen therapy to Reiki, sound healing, and countless supplements—while his cancer continued to advance.
Perhaps most surprising is Joe's recent decision to undergo chemotherapy, an option he "never thought in a million years" he would consider. Rather than seeing this as abandoning his principles, Joe views it as part of an integrated approach: "I'm burning the field down and creating a place where God can rebuild me from the ground up." Throughout his ordeal, Joe has discovered something unexpected and beautiful—an extraordinary community of diverse supporters united by love and acceptance rather than shared dogmas or backgrounds. Now, he extends this community to listeners, inviting fellow cancer patients to join his weekly support group where experiences and insights can be freely shared.
Whether you're facing health challenges yourself or supporting someone who is, this episode offers profound wisdom about maintaining faith while remaining humble about the limitations of human knowledge. Join Joe on his continuing journey and discover how even our most difficult trials can lead to deeper connection, purpose, and truth. Have you been diagnosed with cancer or know someone who has? Consider joining our Sunday support group at 4pm Pacific time and become part of a community focused on healing with open minds and open hearts.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Well, hello and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and you're listening to a subscriber-only issue of the podcast and I just want to say that I'm grateful for all the new listeners and I want to welcome Candice to the podcast. And we've had so many new listeners and I realize there's a lot of episodes and you know it'd be difficult for anybody to jump right in and really get the handle on everything. So I thought this episode I'm going to reintroduce myself and give a real quick synopsis of some of the important elements that I'm currently talking about. And I don't know, even if you think you know me, if you don't know me at all. I think you'll be able to decide if that's something you want to explore or not, and hopefully it is.
Speaker 1:So my name is Joe Grumbine and I'm 58 years old, and in October 14th of last year 2024, I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. For a long time ignoring it because I'm so certain that my body can heal itself, and being told by a doctor that it's probably not cancer and I let it go and subsequently it's turned into a big problem that well, this podcast is about health and healthy living. My current situation has consumed most of my focus and I am using this platform to share my journey of finding truth and solving this very difficult problem and hopefully inspiring others to seek the truth themselves and realize that a lot of things that we think and believe are not necessarily the way we think and believe them. And if you want more information about anything I'm touching on here, realize that there are many episodes that go deeper and deeper into these topics. So I'm just going to take a quick step back and I'll be walking through these things really quickly, but there's just a lot.
Speaker 1:I've lived a big, full life and a purposeful life as a young child. You know I was raised Catholic and I began a journey with my creator. You know, before I really knew what was going on. Right, you get baptized as a newborn and indoctrinated and brought into the church and the mass and the sacraments and all of those things, and you're taught, you're told things, and so we believe things because we are told them. But over time I began to find a relationship with my creator. Find a relationship with my creator and, taking another step prior to that, I learned to read at a really young age and I had a hunger for knowledge and I read and read and read and just learned, couldn't learn enough, couldn't go to the museums enough, and just wanted to learn how everything worked. And knowledge was super important.
Speaker 1:And later on, as I was probably maybe, I don't know around confirmation age I think that's like 12 or 13, something like that I began to seek wisdom and I prayed for that and, after you know, reading the story of Solomon and all that, I thought wisdom was the thing I needed. And so from that point until not that long ago, I've lived a very difficult life and I put myself through many challenges, including battling the government and losing many things and getting into all kinds of problems that I had to solve and and just many, many uh deals. And you don't realize it, but that's how you get wisdom. You know it's it's through experience and and uh doing things that you get the wisdom from it. And when I was about 18, I was in a serious injury, in a coma, and I was even given last rites and I realized when I came out of that that I was anointed and I began to walk more with purpose, with my Creator, and to this day I continue to walk and I realize that I have a purpose and I realize that if I work to fulfill this purpose, I will have a more fulfilled and meaningful life. And I know this, I have no question. My faith is unwavering and recently I read a book, I listened to a book called the Structure of Scientific Revolution, and I've always kind of understood this or believed it, known it if you will, that you know I'm human, we're all human, right.
Speaker 1:And if you look at the history of knowledge and science and our understanding of things, we have gone through so many paradigm changes and revolutions of our understanding of how things work and we've gone from being the center of our own universe to thinking. We understand quantum physics and we don't know anything. We don't know what's in the universe. We don't know how our body works. We don't know what cancer is, even though we make claims and say things. We don't know what's in the universe. We don't know how our body works. We don't know what cancer is, even though we make claims and say things we don't know.
Speaker 1:And we also make assumptions about our creator. And I know this. I know that my experiences have been real. I know that everything is possible. I know that I have experienced many miracles in my life I have spent time speaking with my Creator and hearing, listening to my Creator. I have no doubts whatsoever about my relationship and as much as I'm not going to tell you anything about what you should do, I just know this as much as I know, and I think I know that my experience is so limited that one day, you know, when I leave this physical realm and probably get to see more, it'll probably be a beautiful and completely different experience. So I don't make assumptions about things the way some folks do, and I get solace in that I create a place to continually learn and grow and I will share everything that I'm going through so that, hopefully, others can find more purpose and realize, you know, their purpose in their life. So, again, I know anything is possible. I've experienced so many little miracles in my life, and big ones too, and I continue to do so, and I know that my body is capable of anything and I amazing things have happened. I've actually recently become cured my lungs of a lifetime disease Western medicine could never help me steroids and all these things that I've done, and recently, with all the work that I've been doing and the formulas that I've created and a combination of all these things. I have no more affliction in my lungs and, in addition to all the things I'm dealing with on the downside, you know, this is another beautiful acknowledgement and reminder that all things are possible.
Speaker 1:Next, I believe that visualizing and seeing what you want to see in life can help it to happen. I think that when we pray, if we can see the things we're praying for and pray for the highest good, that our Creator recognizes these things and I think they happen more easily. If I can explain it any more than that. Next, I have an attitude of gratitude, regardless of what I'm going through. I'm going through a lot of suffering right now, but in spite of that, I'm aware it could be so much worse I'm just so grateful that I can continue to talk, even though it's a little labored and I can't talk the way I used to, but I know I'll get back to that and I'm just so grateful for this opportunity that I'm here, I'm above ground and breathing, my mind works and I'm able to do these things. So gratitude is key and I try to remain in a constant state of gratitude.
Speaker 1:Once I was diagnosed, I began a quest and I've talked about it a lot. You know, I've been studying plant medicine since I was in my 20s and I had a lot of knowledge and a lot of assumptions about things that worked and what to do, and I've supported and helped cancer patients for 30 years and and I had beliefs about cannabis oil and have made it and helped people, including my own skin lesions have come off and my wife's and animals, and I've just seen so many examples of cannabis oil curing cancer or at least appearing to. And I went through my own 30 day or 60 day regimen. No, it was a 90 day regimen, 60 grams in 90 days, and I did it on point and it had zero effect or possibly a negative effect, as I understand.
Speaker 1:I have taken on, with a very open mind, every type of therapy that you can imagine, you know from diet and plant medicines, fasting, oxygen therapy, infrared. You know prayers. I've been prayed over by so many people in so many ways. I've been anointed laying of hands, frequency medicine, reiki, sound medicine. I mean all just literally, if you can think of it. I've either done it or realized that it wasn't something that fit with my program and in spite of all the things that I've done, including supplements, exercise, oxygen therapy ivermectin, fenbendazole, supplements of all kinds.
Speaker 1:This thing has continued to grow and it has reached a place where I can barely move my neck and I'm in constant pain. I can hardly sleep, and through this journey I have discovered and helped to build an incredible community of people, and this includes doctors, patients sharing experiences, practitioners of all types and from each of these people I have gained something and hopefully I've shared something of mine with them, and I have today the most beautiful community that I've ever had. I have today the most beautiful community that I've ever had, and I've shed off most of the old, all the people that I thought were my community in the past. Not all of them there's a handful that remain and there's another handful that sit on the fringes, but these people that I am connected with, we're connected deeply and regularly, and you all know who you are. Some of you are listening, some not, but this community has become my family and it contains a handful of relatives believe it or not, but mostly not and in fact, it contains a handful of people I've known more than a year, but mostly not.
Speaker 1:And this has just been an eye-opening journey that, when you experience love and trust in a way. That includes attention and effort. It changes you, and without the drama and without the hypocrisy. I've studied and been with traditions from all over the world and, without any exception, over time, every one of these has yielded hypocrisy and drama and everything that's opposite of what it was supposed to represent. And through it all I have this community that is as diverse as anything People from all over the different places in the world, different belief systems, different everything, but the thing they have in common is this beautiful love, this beautiful acceptance. You know the things that actually are the truths. You know love. It really boils down to that, and when you experience it you realize all the other stuff isn't that. And even though it's guised and wrapped up in a bow and we are told that it is, we can tell that it's not.
Speaker 1:And so through this I have learned a lot of things, and this journey finally took me up to yesterday, where I went under the knife and had a port installed right into right, next to my heart and it goes into a vein, and I'm going to begin a neoadjuvant chemotherapy treatment on Monday if everything goes according to plan. And as much as I never thought in a million years that I would support this. I'm 100% confident that this is the way forward for me, and it's not just this one treatment, it's everything that I've done, this gigantic stack of things, including my fasting and diet and exercise, and all the different supplements and things that I currently take, and all the different treatments that I am currently taking, which I've outlined in many episodes here. And I see it this way, I'm burning the field down and I'm giving myself a place to regrow and I'm giving God a chance not giving God a chance that it was arrogant, but creating a place where God can rebuild me from the ground up, and I know that this is what's going to happen. I've never had any doubt through all of this, although there's been a lot of suffering and I'm in pain as I speak right now.
Speaker 1:And it's not about that. It's about what do we do with it. It's about you know this attitude. It's about what we're thinking about, it's about what we do, and I just want, if you have been diagnosed with cancer or you know somebody who has and you think that you know something about yourself or your cancer, I would love to talk to you. I would love to share with you this group that we meet on Sundays at 4 pm Pacific time and the insight that can come from speaking with people that have similar experiences and realize that these answers that people tout um. Maybe they would work for one person one time, or maybe they work for a bunch of people a bunch of times, but I believe more people have suffered and died because of their unwillingness or ignorance of how to pursue a truth and how to solve a problem like this, then have been healed by it by a long shot, and we only hear about the miracles but we don't see the giant pile of bones of all the people who thought they knew and didn't.
Speaker 1:And I'm here to live the longest, fullest life that I can and teach people along the way how I did it. I do not expect you to take anything I say on its word. Hopefully it inspires you to go and find your own truths. I cannot help you. I can only help me, and hopefully in my healing myself, that you can find a way to your health, and so for that I thank you and I hope that you find this enjoyable, entertaining, inspirational or even more, and if you do, please take some time and listen to more episodes or tell somebody else about it that would make this fulfill its purpose, and thank you, and I'm so blessed that you're part of my journey and I wish you the very, very best.
