Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Chemotherapy: Finding Hope Through Education and Advocacy with Dr Robert Hoffman
"What are you willing to do?" Joe Grumbine asks himself on his cancer journey. His answer: "Whatever it takes." This mindset drives the powerful conversation with Dr. Robert Hoffman in this deeply personal update on Joe's cancer treatment.
Joe shares exciting news about his successful port installation and first chemotherapy session at UCI Medical Center. What stands out immediately is how Joe transformed from being someone adamantly against conventional treatments to embracing an integrated approach that combines evidence-based chemotherapy with complementary therapies. The turning point came when Joe, working with Dr. Hoffman's Anti-Cancer Organization, researched and proposed an alternative three-drug combination treatment backed by published studies – which his oncology team ultimately approved.
The podcast reveals the remarkable preparation strategy Joe implemented before chemotherapy: fasting protocols, doubling his methioninase supplements, maintaining a strict low-methionine diet, and various oxygen therapies. Dr. Hoffman emphasizes that this comprehensive "stack" approach represents the future of cancer care – not relying on a single treatment but combining multiple evidence-based strategies. The results speak for themselves as Joe reports experiencing minimal side effects 72 hours after treatment, even managing to sleep better than he had in months.
Beyond his personal journey, Joe has become a beacon for other cancer patients, connecting them with valuable resources and the Sunday support group where patients, doctors, and advocates freely share knowledge. This podcast doesn't just chronicle one man's fight against cancer – it demonstrates how becoming an educated, proactive patient advocate can dramatically impact treatment outcomes and quality of life. Have you considered how combining conventional and complementary approaches might transform your health journey? Join our Sunday Zoom call to learn more from those who've walked this path.
Intro for podcast
Here is the link for Sunday's 4 pm Pacific time Zoom meeting
Hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and once again I'm here with Dr Robert Hoffman with the Anti-Cancer Organization. Welcome back, robert. It's always a pleasure to sit with you. It's a pleasure to be here and for once I've got some good news to share. Well, not for twice, this is the second one in a row. So when we last spoke, I had just gotten confirmation that I was going to get the port installed and we were go for the next day and that went well. I got the port installed and Monday so it's now Thursday today that we're recording this and Monday I came into the infusion center at seven o'clock in the morning and I met with a nurse practitioner who went over everything that was going to happen.
Speaker 1:And you know I'm working with UCI Medical Center and they're a teaching hospital and they've really been great to work with. The people that I've been working with seem to genuinely be concerned and remember, I walked into there with knowledge and an understanding and a confidence that I know what I'm trying to do and a willingness to do it and I think that that's changed the tone. I know a lot of people go into these places and they don't feel like anybody hears them or whatnot, but we're communicating well and this nurse practitioner was very gracious. She listened to everything I had to say, she explained to me what was going to be happening and gave me the go ahead. Now, remember, I've got this, this sort of weeping wound coming out of my, my tumor, and I've been very concerned that that was going to keep it from happening and I've been doing everything I can to you know, I'm on antibiotics and I'm doing everything I can to keep it cleaned up, but it just wouldn't stop. And this lady, she said, listen, that happens. And I said thank you, I don't want to stop this, I don't want to slow this down, I want to move forward. And she says we're going forward.
Speaker 1:And I think that that was the moment where I finally was able to let go and say, okay, we got this. And of course I I was a little concerned. I just had this port installed in me, which is an operation. It's a minor operation as things go, but still they were tunneling around in my chest and they stuck a tube into my vein right next to my heart. I mean, it might be minor to them, but it's not minor to me and I want to make sure that whoever's handling this has got the care and concern that I need, and this practitioner that set up the IV was beautiful and gracious and you know they took a lot of care. This is something that I noticed, and I like to point these things out before we get into our whole discussion, because there are things that I noticed as a patient.
Speaker 1:And the first thing I walk in and sign in, they check, make sure I am who I'm supposed to be and all that. And then they weigh you, and I went in there. I had, it was pretty chilly, I had a pretty heavy jacket on and I lost all this body weight, so now I get cold pretty easy, and so I was wearing this jacket when they weighed me in and I didn't think anything about it. And then when, before I went to get the infusion, she weighed me again and this time I took the jacket off, and she comes back and she's like what the heck? How did you lose weight so quickly? I'm like what do you mean? And I says I've lost 20 pounds in the last three months with this diet. I'm on, but that's that. We already did that I've maintained. And she says no, you've lost four pounds today. I'm like, no, I took. I said I took my jacket off and so she goes. Well, let's weigh again. So I went in and took my jacket off, weighed again and she was fine and I thought that was amusing, right. But the truth was she was checking the dosage of my chemotherapy against my current weight and what happened was, when she did the numbers, she says well, they calculated this on the weight. You came in when you met with the medical oncologist a month and a half ago and you've lost weight since then. We need to recalibrate your chemotherapy.
Speaker 1:I says thank you, they took the care to catch that, and had they not caught it, I would have been hit with a dose higher than I needed and it may have had side effects. I didn't want and it took another half an hour. But they got it, the doctor cleared it, it got reformulated and we got started. And so initially she hit the line into my port and I was like okay, what's it going to be? Like? It was a little pinch, nothing didn't hurt, was no problem. I says that's it. Yep, that's it. So she tapes everything off.
Speaker 1:She says okay, the first bottle we're putting you on is, um, an anti-nausea medicine and, um, something for anxiety or something it was. It was two little two, two little things as a precursor. And then the second thing we're going to hydrate you. And so they gave me IV fluids because one of the drugs can attack the kidney and it's really important that you have constant hydration while you're on this drug. And then they started in. So they hit me with the docetaxel first, and now this is where you come in, robert. Remember they wanted to hit me with chemo and radiation. We ran into problems get my dental clearance. This thing's continuing to grow.
Speaker 1:I'm like we got to come up with something, and you and the group on Sunday came up with the notion that well, there's a neoadjuvant, first-line treatment that we can propose and if we can get the study to back it up, I should be able to offer that and they should consider it. And we did that. We came up with a three-dr drug combination that had well-published papers of its efficacy for head and neck cancer, the way I have it, and I was able to go in there and present that to this woman and she said, yeah, that makes sense. So they're following a protocol that I gave to them through this group that we're working with, through you and your research, and in seeking the truth, and I'm so proud of that. It's such a the fact that we were able to do this in a way that is not me being subversive or combative, or just I'm just trying to find these answers and solve my problem, and they're working with me. And so these three drugs docetaxel is one of them and so I just want to run through.
Speaker 1:You know, as we're talking about chemotherapy, I know a lot of people that listen to the show are starting to think differently about conventional treatments. You know, our first thought is well, it's terrible, it's evil, it's poison, all it's going to do is hurt you and it won't help you. But the reality is, is everything can hurt you and help you All the herbs out there, the water you drink, the air you breathe If you don't do it right, it can hurt you. If you do it right, it can help you. And these chemicals are no different, and I think that's an important element to this. What do you think, robert?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, joe, everything all the chemo you're getting has been tested on probably hundreds of thousands of patients. Now. These are very established chemotherapy drugs, very scientifically controlled clinical trials have been carried out with the drugs, each drug alone and in the combination you're getting, and they never could get approved without showing benefit. So surely, and you can just go on PubMed and read and read and read and you'll see that the millions of patients that have benefited from these drugs, the issue with cancer, and why there is the flexibility that you're seeing, is there's no one treatment that's far and away better than the other for most cancers, almost all. It's not a disease. It's not like you come in with a strep throat and they'll swab it and they'll see what antibiotic kills the bugs and give you the antibiotic. Cancer's not like that the bugs and give you the antibiotic. Cancer is not like that. It's much more complex and we know much less how to treat it.
Speaker 2:You did your homework, you studied a lot, we discussed a lot. You came up with a combination of three drugs that have enormous experience with head and neck cancer and you said I want to do this rather than the chemo radiation, because I'm very worried about the dental side effects of radiation. I think any reasonable oncologist would have agreed with you. He didn't come in there and say you know, I'm going to use some herb and it has no scientific testing. He came in and wanted to do a drug combination in which there's been a huge experience. Okay, that's the way it works, and you got what you wish for one, because you learn what you wanted to wish for Right, and you did a lot of homework to do it. And this goes to show how important it is for each cancer patient to be their own advocate.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Nobody else is going to be their advocate. The medical oncologist probably, on their clinical day, see a hundred patients. They don't have time to be anybody's adequate advocate. Right, you've got to be your own advocate. You've got to study hard and I feel sorry for the cancer patients who feel they just are going to be passive about it and let the doctor decide what they want, based off of really reading their general guidelines. Nothing individualized about it. So you did what I would hope most every cancer patient will do the importance of doing your homework and seeing what's best for you. If she wanted to do chemo radiation, if you would have been a passive patient, we don't know how much radiation damage might have been done to your teeth or whatever. We don't know. And the good thing is we can always come back with radiation.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:What you're having now is really, in my opinion, really neoadjuvant therapy.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Therapy before potential other therapy, mm-hmm. If we take the example of Ms Hozumi on our Zoom call, she had neoadjuvant therapy and she went into remission.
Speaker 1:Right and we have that chance.
Speaker 2:That was not the intent of the neoadjuvant therapy In her case it was just to make her breast cancer metastases operable.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And the surgeon at the end still wanted to operate. She said what are you going to get out of it? It's all gone.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if your tumor is going to be all gone, but it's going to have a good improvement.
Speaker 1:I think it's going to have an opportunity to be all gone Very high.
Speaker 2:It's not a guarantee, but it's very high.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Then we can see, based on the extent. Do we need some radiation or are you now really a candidate for surgery?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Where do we stand?
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:So your experience, I think, is a great example for everybody. Your experience, I think, is a great example for everybody. Study hard and you can determine for yourself what you think is good for you. And the good thing is, doing all these chemo, the three drug chemo, doesn't prevent you from doing all the other things you like to do, exactly.
Speaker 1:Methionine low methionine diet, methionine, acyver, mectin, oxygen therapy, on and on, on and on Right.
Speaker 2:All will help.
Speaker 1:And you know the thing is there's a number of pieces to this is one is, as you were just mentioning all these other things. When people think about that, the whole totality of what I'm doing is a giant stack of therapies. It's not one thing, it's not another thing. It's all the things together that make it work and all the things that I'm doing to prepare my body for this, meaning the exercise I've done, the diet I've been on the, the methioninease I take and in fact I've even accelerated the amount I'm taking it and thank god to the people that have supported there are some fundraising going on. I've been able to do that. I'm going to be reordering again soon because I've been able to increase the amount I'm taking. I know it's integral in this stack that is keeping me alive right now and ultimately saving my life. Doing the oxygen therapies, creating the ozonated glycerin and chlorine dioxide and the peroxide nebulizer all these things I'm doing together. It's not one of them. That's the answer. I drink soursop tea. I do all different things, but I can't take any one of them to say it's going to solve this. Even this chemotherapy maybe, had I not done all these things, the chemotherapy wouldn't have had the effect that it's going to have. But in doing it all and maybe the piece on the top of this right now is the preparation for the chemotherapy so I did the 72-hour fast, or fasting, mimicking while taking the medical food to make sure that my body's not eating its own muscle and developing its own methionine. That was a strategy. This is a chess game and I was thinking four moves in front that said, well, if I do this, there's a really good chance that the chemotherapy is going to work better and the side effects are going to be reduced. And guess what? I'm sitting here talking to you more than 48 hours after the chemotherapy. I have currently a pump right here 72, isn't it Joe? 72?, yeah, 72. I finished it. I finished the first infusion about 10 o'clock, oh no, about one o'clock in the afternoon, monday. So now it's Thursday. Yeah, 72 hours. And I have five, 76. I have this pump here that's pushing the five fluorosil into my body for the for the next day and a half and that's a five day process.
Speaker 1:And the side effects, the immediate side effects to all of these are nausea and vomiting, fatigue, muscle pain, possible kidney problems again, appetite loss and you know what? I haven't had to take any of the nausea medication they gave me. I've been eating when I broke my fast. So the 72 hours ended at about one o'clock Tuesday morning and so Tuesday morning I broke fast, ate some fruit, slowly built my meal, but I had mild nausea. You know, I'm not saying I've had no symptoms.
Speaker 1:Yesterday and and the day before I was a little bit woozy, a little bit wobbly, a little dizzy, but had a funny taste in my mouth, but not not decommissioned. I've still been able to get around and do some things and I've taken it super easy, resting most of the time. But you know what has happened Already it's only been a couple of days and the pressure is released a little bit and I was able to sleep last night for longer than I slept in three months and I haven't slept past four o'clock in the morning in three, four months. And I woke up at 630 this morning and the last time I had woken up prior to that was probably about two. So I got a solid four and a half hours of sleep for the first time in three months.
Speaker 1:As a result of all of these things that are happening, and today I've been up.
Speaker 1:This is the third interview I've done today and I didn't know if I was going to be able to talk at all. I was preparing for, you know, the worst flu. I was preparing for, you know, not being able to eat or drink. I was preparing for not being able to talk. I mean all of these things and I'm not saying there's going to be a progressive repercussion from this, and you know the side effects don't all come at once. But typically, from what I hear, the first couple of days after the first round are pretty rough and I have not experienced that and I'm confident that that is because of the work that I've done in the front to strengthen my body and to prepare through fasting and this diet that I'm on. I I I increased the methionine A's by double the days two days prior to me doing this. So I said I'm going to weaken these cancer cells as much as I can, I'm not going to feed them and I'm going to strip that methionine out of my blood and, frankly, I think it worked.
Speaker 2:It does work. You can think it worked. It does work, you can feel it yourself.
Speaker 1:You know, and every time I talk to people you know. The other great thing that's happening right now, robert, is partly because of your presence on the show and the continued growth of the show and me talking about this whole progress I'm bringing information to people that need it. Yesterday I had two cancer patients that reached information to people that need it. Yesterday I had two cancer patients that reached out to me one through an advocate, one directly through the show and told me about their story and I told him. I says listen, I can tell you about what I'm doing for my cancer and I can tell you how I'm finding these answers. I don't know what your cancer needs, but I know these things and I know that if you start looking at this diet and taking these foods out of your diet and if you start looking at these things, there's a few things I can tell you that I don't care what cancer it is, it will help you. And if I can cause you to start thinking in a different way and find some support and I brought these people to the group on Sunday I think we're going to have at least one new listener, maybe two, but either way, whether they come next week or the month later. Eventually I'm putting this in people's hands. And now, because of this journey I've been on and working with you and some of the other doctors and the professionals. People are actually listening and they're not just, you know, another guy talking about his story, but it's actually a group of people trying to solve some very complex problems that affect millions of people. And it's working, robert, it's working, you bet, you bet Joe. So I just really you know, for the people that are.
Speaker 1:You know, as I was headstrong, I did not ever want anything to do with chemotherapy. I was the most advocate against it, but it was my own ignorance, what I know today and my belief that all the natural things were the only solution discounted the harm that the natural things can do. And when I started to open my mind and I read the book you know, the Structure of Scientific Revolution from Thomas Kuhn, and I keep mentioning that book because you mentioned it enough times to get me to read it and it made enough sense that I says, wow, things aren't so simple as we, as we like them to be and, frankly, our knowledge is so limited that we don't even know what we don't know. And when you start to understand that, you start to say, wow, maybe I should look at it a little better and maybe recognize that the things I don't want to see. You know, I think a lot of studies have confirmation bias and that's where we have to say, well, okay, I saw what I was trying to find in these statistics, but what else was there that I didn't look at?
Speaker 1:And when you start opening your mind to these things where Dr Castro came to me and said you know, this cannabis therapy that I was so sure was going to work he says you're hurting yourself, you're turning off switches that need to be on, and I, wow, the last thing in the world I wanted to hear was that that was my plan, that's the plan I advocated for, I risked my freedom for and it wasn't helping me.
Speaker 1:And I had to accept that and realize that.
Speaker 1:Wow, it's more complicated than I ever thought and I have to have an open mind, because you know what I want to live, and I want to live a quality of life that I deserve and a long, a length of life that I deserve, and I want to do the things I want to do and when, given the question, what are you willing to do for it.
Speaker 1:My answer was whatever it takes, and I believe that that's what we're doing here. We're walking together and you know people like you and Dr Exumay and Shahiro and Jean and all these people that have you know they don't have. You guys don't have to spend all this time helping people. You've got a business, you got things you could just do and make your money and go on about your way, but you dedicate huge amounts of time and energy to help people make their lives better and to help change this paradigm, and I feel like me being a part of this gives me a whole nother level of meaning into the work I've been doing all my life and I just really want to thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's, it's, it's my mission, and and I couldn't think there's nothing else I'd want to do- Well, I, I I look forward to spending a lot more time.
Speaker 1:I look forward to being on the other side of this and being able to help without having to do all of this work to heal myself, and I know that you're going to be. I know it's coming soon. I feel like we're just about ready to push this thing down. I felt there's been a little relief of pressure around my jawbone, around the neck, and that was starting to rebuild and getting the sleep that I've gotten. I think that that is going to be paramount in the healing and I'm staying strict to the diet. I'm following the protocols, I'm doing everything and I'm as long as I don't have to take those um, um, nausea drugs, that's, that's great. It's only taking them needed. They're not helping me in any other way. So I feel like I'm in the best place I could be right now and I'm just really looking forward to the next steps to this.
Speaker 2:All right, you're going to have a lot more to tell us next week, absolutely.
Speaker 1:All right, Robert. Well, thank you, as always, for being part of this.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, joe, and congratulations on your progress and what you're doing and what you're sharing.
Speaker 1:It's great, awesome, all right guys. Well, thank you for all the support and remember the link to the Sunday 4 o'clock pm conference call that we do on our Zoom. It's a two-hour call. You can come in for a minute, 10 minutes an hour. The whole time you can be anonymous, you can share your story. It's really no requirements or restrictions. But it's an amazing group of people that have an amazing wealth of knowledge and experience and I have gained more from this than any one resource I can imagine, including PubMed They've directed. I've gotten a lot of PubMed resource from this group, but in my own research, I think this has been the most impactful step that I've taken in getting knowledge.
Speaker 2:That's great, joe. I agree with you, me too. Awesome I learn more from the patients than I learn from anything else.
Speaker 1:Well, Robert, I will talk to you next Sunday. To everybody else, I thank you.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you, joe, see you soon. Take care with your chemo.
Speaker 1:You bet.
Speaker 2:All right, take care. Goodbye everybody, Bye.
