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 Poison Becomes Medicine: Embracing Life's Contradictions
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Fighting cancer changes everything. After being diagnosed with aggressive squamous cell carcinoma in my neck last October, I've been documenting every step of this healing journey for you, my dedicated subscribers.
My first week of chemotherapy has been a study in contrasts. One day I'm recording multiple podcast episodes and working in the Gardens of Hope with seemingly boundless energy; the next morning, I can barely lift myself from bed. Despite the challenges—difficulty urinating, the constant need to drink water to protect my kidneys, and being tethered to a pump that prevents even simple pleasures like showering—I've been fortunate to avoid nausea.
This journey has crystallized something I've always believed: nothing is entirely good or bad. "Natural solutions can be toxic and toxic solutions can be effective if used correctly." It's all about perspective and application. The chemotherapy coursing through my veins is poison, yes, but it's also medicine. The key is extracting only the beneficial aspects while minimizing the harmful ones—a philosophy I'm applying to everything from my diet to my fasting practices.
What's truly transformed this experience from merely survivable to occasionally joyful is you—this community. Your check-ins, prayers, visits, and unwavering support have lifted me beyond measure. I'm sharing these vulnerable moments because I firmly believe if I can get through this, you can overcome whatever impossible-seeming challenge you're facing—whether it's illness, addiction, relationship struggles, or any other mountain that appears unclimbable.
Today marks a small victory as I get my pump removed, giving me two weeks without chemicals flooding my system. I'll return to the therapeutic embrace of gardening, feel sunshine on my skin again, and take that long-awaited shower. Through it all, I remain grateful and hopeful. Thank you for walking this path with me—please share this podcast with someone who might need to hear that impossible things can be conquered.
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 special subscriber issue and I want to thank everybody who has supported this podcast, especially as subscribers. You guys are making a huge difference and giving this podcast more meaning, and I'm getting more people interested in participating, both as listeners and guests. The quality of our guests has increased as a result. People are willing to come forward and participate in this subscriber more raw, more deep conversations. Anyways, this is another episode of the journey, of my journey to healing myself from cancer myself from cancer. I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in October 2024, and very aggressive, very difficult but treatable cancer right in my neck, and so we're going to just continue. If you have not listened to all the episodes around this, I would encourage you to do so, because it'll tell you where we're coming from, where we've, where we've been and where we're going.
Speaker 1:Um, so I began chemotherapy, uh, less than a week ago and uh had a really great day a couple of days ago so good that I recorded multiple episodes and worked with a volunteer here at Gardens of Hope and really had a wonderful day. I was so shocked that I had so much energy and just went with it. By the end of the day I was beat. But you know, I've eaten, I haven't had to take any of the nausea medication. I've taken the other two precursor medicines that are supposed to complement the chemo and I didn't want to mess with that. So I said, well, we'll do what they want for the part that applies to them. And remember this chemotherapy, as toxic as it is I talk about this in great detail on some of the other episodes, just remember everything is a double-edged sword. Natural solutions can be toxic and toxic solutions can be effective if used correctly. And this is something I've learned in this journey. Nothing is either all good or all bad, except for, maybe, god and love. Everything has two ways that it can be experienced. And I'm really trying to just pull the very best out of all the things I'm doing my diet, my fasting, all the practices I'm doing. I'm trying to just get only the good out of and not get the bad out of. And the same thing with this chemotherapy.
Speaker 1:And so then I woke up yesterday morning and I could not get out of bed. I was just beat and pretty much the whole day I was shot and I still didn't have nausea. It's affected my ability to pee pretty bad, which is really kind of messed up. I have to drink a ton of water in order to keep my kidneys from being damaged from one of these chemo drugs. So I'm drinking, drinking drinking water, but it's made it so it's hard to pee. So we're working through it and again, I'm just being fully transparent here. It's it's.
Speaker 1:This is a difficult journey, and just realize, through this whole thing, though, the support and the love that I've received the people checking in, the people just dropping by, the people just saying something nice, thinking about me, praying for me, and any more than that, even the true support that's come through it raises me up. It makes it so much easier to handle this and I'm pretty confident, even if nobody was there with me, I'd power through it. But you guys have actually made it somewhat of a joy to go through this, and that's one of the main reasons that I'm taking the time and the effort and the energy to share this with people, because I know if I can get through this, so can you. Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be cancer. We all go through difficult things. We all go through the things that seem impossible, it seems like you could never get through it. But you know what you can. You can. You just got to carry your attitude. You're the one who makes that difference and it doesn't matter if it's an addiction, it doesn't matter if it's a relationship, it doesn't matter if it's a disease, an injury, whatever it is. You can carry yourself through this. So, basically, I slept most of the day yesterday and I woke up today feeling pretty good, so I thought I would share this little snippet with you.
Speaker 1:Today I go and get the pump removed. So I'm gonna have two weeks without any poisons pumping through my body and gonna keep going at it. I'm gonna get back into the gardens, get some therapeutic horticulture, get some sunlight on my skin and breathe some good, clean, fresh air. Maybe transplant a few plants, be nice. I get to take a shower today. I couldn't shower for the last four days because of this pump being attached to me and not they don't want you to get water on it. So anyways, thank you so much for supporting the show. Please do me a favor, let somebody else know about it. That's what makes the biggest difference. You know all the supporters, everybody who has participated. I'm just so, so, so, very grateful for everybody who has decided to participate and share this. All right. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.
