Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Shrinking Tumors and New Protocols: A Personal Health Update
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The battle against cancer often reveals itself as much more than a medical journey—it becomes a profound exploration of personal choices, scientific research, and the courage to forge your own path. In this deeply personal update, I share the encouraging news that my primary tumor has resolved completely following three rounds of chemotherapy, while two remaining nodal masses have shrunk dramatically by 40%. Though recovery has been challenging, with persistent fatigue and a need for daily naps, I'm slowly regaining my strength, rebuilding muscle mass, and reclaiming aspects of normal life.
My approach has evolved beyond conventional treatment as I implement the Nori Protocol—a natural chemotherapy alternative combining selenium, vitamins, and minerals that targets cancer cells through a process called ferroptosis. This complements my ongoing low-methionine diet strategy designed to starve cancer cells of the amino acids they desperately need. What's particularly compelling is how my conversations with two patients who had identical cancers have shaped my perspective—both deeply regret choosing the standard radiation and chemotherapy path their doctors recommended, offering a sobering counterpoint to conventional wisdom.
The road ahead involves critical decisions about additional testing, including the highly specific MetPet scan from Japan that uses radioactive methionine rather than glucose to identify active cancer cells with unprecedented precision. As I navigate these waters, I'm simultaneously rebuilding other aspects of life—relaunching programs through Gardens of Hope, working on business ventures, and appreciating the tremendous support that surrounds me. Through it all remains the fundamental question that defines this journey: when can I confidently know I'm cancer-free? Until that day comes, this protocol continues, fueled by equal measures of scientific inquiry, personal determination, and unwavering hope. Have you or someone you love faced similar medical crossroads? Share your experiences or questions—your insights might help others facing their own health challenges.
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 am your host, joe Grumbine, and this is another special edition subscriber-only episode and I haven't been recording a ton of these because I've been busy healing and trying to get my life back together. But it's time for an update. So a week and a half ago, or a week and a couple of days ago, I got a CT scan. I finished the third round of chemo and I'm recovering finally from that Kind of whooped my ass pretty bad. I finished the third round of chemo and I'm recovering finally from that Kind of whooped my ass pretty bad. But I'm getting my energy back and the nasty taste is going away and my dizziness and lack loss of memory and focus is starting to return, and that's all good.
Speaker 1:The tumor has shrunk dramatically. The CT scan showed that the main tumor was resolved, which says it's gone the primary tumor. I'm pretty confident it's gone as well. They're showing two they call them nodal masses that have and there's still some tissue there. There's still a lump. It's not completely gone and I don't know what these nodal masses are. They're more than likely still cancerous, but that's part of the problem that we're at right now. So they've shrunk by 40%, almost half, and so significant reduction of these last two masses Gaining weight back, getting stronger out there shoveling sand every day and building my strength back up.
Speaker 1:It's still kind of rough. I get tired pretty quick and still taking naps during the day, but I'm getting up early and trying to go to bed pretty early and, you know, keeping a pretty healthy situation. The diet's rough. I've started this new protocol. It's called the Nori Protocol and I connected with Mark Simon's group and it's kind of a. Basically it's a natural chemotherapy and it's got selenium and vitamin B6 and D3, iron, magnesium. I think there's a bunch of a few minerals on top of it. There's a bunch of few minerals on top of it and if you maintain your diet right and you're able to keep your pH healthy for your healthy cells and not for your cancer cells, it can stimulate ferroptosis, which is a severe oxidative damage or ultimately death of the cancer cells. So I've started this protocol and I'm hoping that it has the effect.
Speaker 1:I'm staying on the low-methionine diet. I'm still taking methionine A's. I've been breaking down a little bit but every time I do I take extra enzyme and I'm confident that I'm still on point with that. Supposedly these capsules or these pills that I've taken help your body to destruct the cysteine, which is along the same lines of methionine. But most of the food that has methionine in it also has cysteine in it. So if it has cysteine in it it has methionine. So this restrictive diet is going to kind of kill the two birds with one stone. I've been taking three doses of hominix every day and with my coffee in the morning, and so basically I have three cups of coffee in the morning and a scoop of hominix in each one, and so I'm getting my aminos without the methionine and cysteine. And then I get out there and I do a pretty vigorous workout. So I'm starting to build some muscle mass back. I'm happy about that getting stronger a little at a time. I wish it was happening faster, but I guess everybody that I see pretty much has said that I'm looking great in the sense of you know, my health has improved dramatically and you can see it in my face and my body's looking much better than it was as far as it was really.
Speaker 1:On Friday, the 11th, I meet with the medical oncologist, dr Nabar, and I'll be recording that for another subscriber episode so you can hear she will only do the radiation and chemotherapy. And I've now talked to two people who had basically the same cancer I have or had and got the radiation and chemo essentially the way they want to give me and they both regret that they did give me and they're both regret that they did dramatically like. They both would say that if they knew then what they know know this is maybe a bad choice. If I was to go down that road and I thought to myself well, you know, if this tumor starts coming back aggressively or even, you know, substantially, I might consider that. But if not, I'm going to be going after any other solution that might work. So I'm going to find out from her what chemo drugs she wants to use and I may go after just those by themselves. I'm hoping this Nori protocol really gets in and knocks this thing down. I'm hoping this Nori protocol really gets in and knocks this thing down.
Speaker 1:I am going to continue to do research. I'm going to figure out some tests. So there's this NavDx test that I've been doing and it detects the presence of the virus, the HPV virus that caused my cancer. But the last NavDx test I took there was no sign of the virus, but it still had the cancer. But the last NAVDX test I took there was no sign of the virus, but I still had the cancer. So one doesn't necessarily mean the other, in the sense of I can have no virus left in my body and still have cancer, and the cancer could mutate. There's all these different things that could happen.
Speaker 1:She doesn't want to order any other tests because she said this is the good one. But there's a squamous cell carcinoma antigen test and there's also some kind of a circulating tumor test, tumor test, and there's also a test that is called um. Um, I can't think of it right now and I thought I had a link for it but I don't seem to have that anymore. Anyways, I'll find it and my goal is to. I don't have the actual image of the CT scan yet, but I do have the two reports and my goal is to get this information, get it over to Dr Castro and see if we can come up with, hopefully, an chemotherapy solution as a finish the job and maybe a maintenance program and determine. Well, he had ordered a genetic test and I thought that my insurance was going to cover it but it turned out they didn't and they say this thing's going to cost $10,000. So I don't have $10,000. And so I don't know if I'll be able to get that, but that would be very helpful.
Speaker 1:The next thing, too, is there's a scan in Japan called the MetPet, and it uses methionine instead of glucose as a determiner, and so basically, you get injected with this radioactive methionine and then the scanner sees where it's been uptake and the cancer is going to be the cells that would go after that methionine. So it's a very good determiner of the presence of cancer, much more, I think, than any other scan that we have available. So even the PET scan, it puts glucose in you, but any active cells could be taking that in, including, you know, your own immune system trying to fix, uh, get rid of the tumor. So you could have a tumor that is not cancerous anymore but your body's absorbing it and busy attacking it with your immune system, and it would uptake a bunch of glucose. But it might not take the methionine, and so that's my hope is I can figure this out. Supposedly this test is $10,000 as well. So again, I don't have $10,000, but I'm hoping that we can find some way to either get insurance covered or get somehow it's sponsored. We're going to try to figure it out. So I'm working on that and that's really the biggest update for now.
Speaker 1:I'm, you know, trying to get my life back together as I'm getting a little more clarity. Gardens of Hope is getting a little more together. We relaunched the PALS program and just me and Liz right now. We don't really have a strong volunteer program right now, but we're going to be working on building that. The website, supposedly, is working, so I've got to go and spend some time in there testing it out, making sure everything's good.
Speaker 1:Willow Creek Springs we're still plugging along a little bit at a time, but it's a lot easier because we don't have all the overhead and the employees and the headaches that are involved. I'm working together with my wife a little better and we're going to get back into making some products. We've let a lot of products kind of go out of stock right now because we just don't have enough of a demand for them. Don't have enough of a demand for them, but as this is starting to increase, I'm considering and planning to start making more. So that's pretty much the deal for now. I'm super grateful for everybody that's been supportive. I'm very much looking forward to a resolution that I can say I know I'm cancer-free, but until I know I'm not. So this diet and all of these practices are going to continue until I know I'm clear. All right, well, thanks for your support and we will see you next time. It's been another edition of the Healthy Living Podcast.
