Healing Skin Cancer with Dr. Michael Traub! | How Humans Heal Podcast

Hi, everyone. It's Dr. Donnie. And I'm excited you're listening in today, and I'm excited to introduce you to my really good friend and colleague, Dr. Michael Traub, who is a naturopathic physician of many, many years. He's going to tell us more about himself. And he's located in Hawaii, or I should say on the island of Hawaii, but has done so much for the naturopathic profession and for his patients and for me as a friend over the years. And so I'm so appreciative of him and so grateful for him to be joining me for this conversation today about.

Sometimes those of us as doctors turn out to be the patient. And so Michael wants to share about his experience being a patient, especially after all of these years being the clinician and the expert in dermatology, the expert in oncology and naturopathic medicine. Now he's here to talk about his perspective as a patient. Thank you so much for joining me today, Michael. I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Donnie. I'm grateful to be here and grateful to be your friend.

We met each other, I think, soon after when I graduated from Bastyr University. I think we Met maybe in 2001 or two, but in New York City, that was when you were president of the association, the national association for Naturopathic Physicians, the aanp. And then I, after meeting you, decided to run for that board as well. And so we got to really spend a lot of time also on that level working on. And in boards and working on legislative processes for the profession. And so, yeah, just so everyone has a little bit of sense of that. But tell us more. Like, I mean, that was definitely not. When you graduated from Nature Public School. You had. That was. You were like, now I'm like, oh, my Gosh, I'm at 21 years of practice. And then I talk to you and you're like, yeah, that was. That was a ways ago.

Tell us what led you to go to naturopathic medical school and, you know, know what inspired you to do what you do.

Okay, well, I. I will gladly do that. And when I get to the point where we met, I've got my side of the story to share also.

Oh, please do.

So I grew up in Southern California, the son of a dermatologist, and my mother was a nurse. And.

I was the oldest of five kids. I wanted to be a doctor like my dad. I didn't really think that I could do anything else, you know, for a career that I might have wanted to do, but I didn't have the talent to do like be a professional tennis player or be a rock star. So I went to naturopathic medical school. I'm sorry. I went to University of California at Irvine for my pre med. And the first year that I was there, a very pivotal thing happened to me in my life where I kind of fell in with a group of people who were very committed to nonviolence and were very committed to ending the Vietnam War and would go to.

Anti war demonstrations and try to keep them peaceful. Because it was kind of a paradox where sometimes these protests would turn into violence, where what we really wanted was peace. And so.

Along with that, we affiliated with a group from the American Friends Service Committee to do a non violent act of civil disobedience, blocking a ship leaving from a naval weapons station carrying arms to Vietnam. And we jumped in the water in front of that ship and tried to symbolically block it and intended to get arrested. And so we did. And so fast forward three years or so after that, I applied to medical school. And I thought that writing about why I had arrest on my record would be of interest to the medical school application committees, the admission committees. And I was very wrong about that. I think they were looking for somebody who was a conformist, not a non conformist. And so I started looking for alternatives to conventional medicine. And I knew nothing about naturopathic medicine at the time, but I did find out about it and thought, well, this is interesting. It's more like the kind of medicine that I want to practice where I can be more like a family doctor, have relationships with my patient, rather than get into the high tech world of medicine. So I applied for the.

I applied for the naturopathic medical school in Portland, which was the only one at that time. This was 1977. And.

My interview consisted of the admissions committee trying to talk me into going to their school. So it wasn't as competitive as conventional medical school. I think that my arrest was probably recognized as a act of, you know, humanism rather than one of being of misbehaving. So it may have worked in my favor. Anyway.

When I was in naturopathic medical school, I had a course in dermatology that was pretty pathetic. And when I got. When I graduated and became a resident, I wanted to teach dermatology because I knew that in teaching it, I would learn more about it. That's what kind of led me into the dermatology field. I wanted to be able to converse with my father about dermatology intelligently. And so I wanted to understand it better. That's what pivoted me into dermatology. But to back up a little bit, when I was in high school, I had really severe acne, which was ironic because my dad was a dermatologist. But he sent me to his partner, who treated me with everything in the book that they used in those days in the late 60s for acne, including superficial X ray radiation, radiation that, you know, wasn't effective. And they didn't really understand that it would result in a high risk for skin cancers later in life. And so after I graduated from medical school, I practiced in Portland for a couple. Well, for four years. And there was something seriously wrong with the weather there, and I was looking for a sunnier place to practice. At the time, there were just six states that licensed naturopathic medicine, and only two of those states were in sunny places. One was Hawaii in the middle of the ocean. One was Arizona in the middle of the desert. I'd grown up by the ocean, so I picked Hawaii. In 1983, I came to Hawaii and took the state board exam to get licensed. This was before we had national board exams. And then in 1985, I made a New Year's resolution. But by the end of the year, we would be in Hawaii. I was married, and I had a young son at that point. And in February, I got a call from a friend who knew of my desire to move to Hawaii. And he said, michael, there's a doctor on the big island of Hawaii who wrote a book on natural medicine, and he wants someone to cover his practice while he goes on a book tour to promote it. I called him up, and I said, I'm your guy. And we came over and I started practicing here. I grew up in Southern California. I've lived in Hawaii the rest of my life, pretty much, and I've had a lot of sun exposure. With that, combined with the X rays that I had as a teenager for my acne.

I started developing skin cancers around the age of 40. And they just kept increasing as the years went on.

I've had probably 40 or 50 skin cancers, a lot of them on my face.

In December of 2019, my dermatologist proposed giving me a carbon dioxide laser treatment for a small light brown lesion on my left cheek. That would look like here, but I'm seeing myself. And so it looks like I'm pointing to my right cheek, but it was on my left cheek. And I was uncomfortable with her just destroying this unidentified lesion. And I told her I wanted to have a biopsy because I'D had a friend recently pass away from.

Basically having a chronic condition that was undiagnosed and later determined to be a cancer, and he had passed away.

That was fresh on my mind. I didn't want to treat something without knowing what it was.

The biopsy revealed that it was a basal squamous cell carcinoma with perineural invasion, which means it's a combination of the two common types of skin cancers, basal cell and squamous cell. But it was invasive, and it had invaded the infraorbital nerve under my left eye.

There were no symptoms at the time, but that was an ominous thing for a type of cancer that doesn't usually invade, to be invading already into a nerve. So I had to go for a second surgery, and I went over to Honolulu for that and lucked out and had a surgeon who had performed the first successful face transplant in the United States at the Cleveland Clinic. And so I had. I was in very good hands. But when he excised the rest of the lesion, there was still perineural invasion. So that meant that this was, you know, it was a metastatic situation that surgery was not going to cure by itself. So I had to go through 30 sessions of radiation therapy.

And.

Before I did the radiation therapy, I had a baseline mri. And after I finished the radiation therapy, I had a follow up mri.

The report initially said that my MRI was clear, but my radiation oncologists asked the radiologist to take a second look at it, which led to the radiologist making an addendum to his interpretation of the MRI scan when he saw that what he thought was metastatic spread to the brainstem. This nerve, the infraorbital nerve, is a branch of the trigeminal nerve that goes to the brainstem. But if you have brainstem cancer, you usually have a lot of weird symptoms, a lot of involuntary motions and all kinds. You don't look right and you don't act right, so it didn't really make sense. So I was advised to get a second opinion. And I spoke with a Mohs surgeon who's an expert in dermatological surgery, and he recommended that I call a friend of his at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles. And so I sent him a copy of the mri, and I heard back from him about two weeks later, during which time I had the opportunity to.

Kind of.

Deal with the fact that I might have be making an early exit from this life and, you know, have kind of a dire prognosis. And a lot of my friends and Family and loved ones were very concerned about me because I had this diagnosis of metastatic, you know, cancer to my brain stem. And so everybody was all worried. I wasn't that worried. I don't know. I. Over the years, I think I've kind of developed a more philosophical attitude about death. It's not something that terrifies me like it did when I was a kid, and I didn't really understand it.

At any rate, I was okay. But during those two weeks, I also searched for other options in terms of how best to deal with it. And I called major cancer centers, and a couple of them really were disappointing because they basically treated me like just another cow in the line. And I wasn't given any extra respect for being a physician, and they wanted just my insurance information. And there was no empathy, no caring.

It really made me empathize more with some of the experiences that my patients have gone through with cancer diagnoses when they aren't really given the type of care that they deserve.

And so that kind of has.

Inspired me to take a more active role for my patients with cancer, especially. But outpatients, to help them navigate the health care system in this country, which most of us are aware of, has a lot of shortcomings and misdiagnosis. Medical errors is part of that.

People who are involved in health care who are not caring is part of that.

The story has a happy ending because the series of second opinions and third, fourth, and fifth second opinions that I got all concurred that this was not a sign that I had cancer in my brain stem. It was a side effect from the radiation.

Makes sense.

And so.

I relaxed, and people cared about me. Relaxed. And.

I did.

Decide to take a year's worth of immunotherapy as kind of added protection to make sure that if there were any cancer cells left, that they would probably be.

Gone after a year of immunotherapy. And there was a particular drug that was just approved for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma called simiptimab, that I got as infusions every three weeks for one year. And I just finished that in September. I feel like I'm pretty much.

Immunized against any more skin cancers at this point for at least a period of time, because even my skin and my incidence of pre cancers and basal cell cancers and squamous cell cancers has decreased during this past year because I've had this immunotherapy, unleashing the power of my immune system to seek out and destroy any cancer cells in My skin.

That is basically my journey. And I think it's instructive not only to share with patients and other people who have cancer and other serious life threatening diseases, but also for my colleagues. I want to encourage naturopathic physicians in particular, especially those of us who specialize in oncology, to take an active role in helping their patients to get through the health system as smoothly as possible for their care.

Because.

There'S a lot of uncaring, unfortunately, I think that we encounter as patients when we have cancer and other serious illnesses.

Thank you. Thank you, Michael, for sharing your story and for your insights in the process. And I'm sorry. Yeah. So happy for you to be on this side of it, of course. And to be able to. Do you feel like you have. Did it shift at all your view of like what are you going to do with your life now?

Yeah, I would say it really helped to motivate me towards self care in a way that I had not been motivated enough before. Like you. You know, I've devoted a lot of my life to my time, my financial well being, to supporting our profession and other related integrative medicine organizations. And I, you know, about three years ago I served on the boards of about 20 different organizations and my friends thought I was crazy and you know, when I had never counted them all up, but when I sat down and counted them all up because one of my friends wanted to know, how many boards are you really on? I was stunned. And so little by little, I started disengaging from these voluntary.

Obligations and spending more time taking care of myself.

Spending time with my spiritual practice, with reading.

I'm a triathlete, so I was training for triathlons. And you know, I think I got myself into a position where I'm healthier now than I was, you know, at the time of my diagnosis with cancer. Because it really, you know, was a wake up call for me as it is for a lot of people to change the things in my lifestyle that were not conducive to my own health and well being.

Yeah. Makes you just really look at it and reprioritize. Right. And like.

Right.

What am I doing with my time and my energy in my.

Skills? For sure.

Right.

And I think you're, you know, even from the beginning of what you shared with us, you're, you're a giving person. You see, when something could be different and you want to get involved and help. So it's, I think a lot of people could relate to that. You know, if we're a person who's wanting to help. But how do you then choose to make sure you're helping yourself enough also? It's a really hard thing to learn and do.

Right? Yeah, yeah. I was talking with my therapist a couple of years ago, and although I've seen her for quite a while, she asked me about my family of origin and where I was in the birth order and everything like that. I told her I was the oldest of five and she said, oh, that makes a lot of sense. You know, that's why you've been taking care of people all your life, because from the time you were young, you know, you were responsible for helping your mother take care of your younger siblings. And I, I said, yeah, that, that's definitely true. And it does explain a lot of my behavior in life, you know, to try to, you know, make the planet a better place for other people and, and help people out in need. Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's such a beautiful thing. And, and I hear you still, you still want to help people even in their healthcare process, but now you're like, okay, how can I also help myself? And you're so resourceful, you know, like, that's a lot of what I hear in your medical processes. You know, constantly being willing to think about, like, if we think about just like if a person was just starting in a medical process of needing to get something diagnosed and going through imaging and deciding how they wanted to treat it, what would you. I'm trying to look at what you did, like when you stopped the doctor who wanted to just treat the lesion before diagnosing it, and you thought to yourself, no, I want a biopsy, which is just a simple, different thing to do. But it was, you stopped the decision making process and you said, no, I want to do something different. Now, a lot of times people may not feel confident saying that to their practitioner, but maybe from listening to this, they might feel a little more comfortable saying, hey, doc, can we do, Is there anything else we can do before? Or tell me, what would you suggest for people?

Well, as doctors, we are actually responsible for not only making recommendations about what we think is in the best interest of our patient, but also letting them know what their other options are, are if they're not our recommendations and what the benefits and risks of our recommended treatment plan is and what the benefits and risk of other therapeutic options are. You know, it's basically the principle of informed consent. And so I think that in the, in the haste of medical practice, it's often kind of overlooked and you Know, you're handed a form to sign, and it's got, you know, it's two or three pages long, and. And in the fine print, it says, one of the risks of this is that you could die from this procedure. And you're expected to just kind of, like, speed, read it and sign it and give it back, rather than there being a thorough, thoughtful discussion of all of the various options. I mean, an example would be that I'm a naturopathic physician. I'm not an acupuncturist.

I understand the value of acupuncture, but I don't do it. It's not something that I often recommend, but it's something that I probably should recommend to my patients because acupuncture is really valuable treatment, and I should let them know that that's another option besides what I'm doing.

Yeah, it's true. But it's even sometimes it's a matter of time when. And a matter of just having space for those conversations and to. You're really pointing out, hey, this is a valuable conversation we should make space for before we proceed with any treatment or protocol.

Right, right.

I'm curious, like, just from everything, your expertise in dermatology, even before you experienced these dermatological conditions yourself, what do you recommend for someone when they're watching their skin, you know, for potential lesions? What did you. Did you learn something new that you didn't know already? Or is there anything that you're like, you know, if you see this, you should definitely have it?

Yeah, The. Mainly, the main lesson that I learned from this experience with my dermatologist was not only to question what she was recommending, but to know what. What it is that's being treated, to identify, to make a diagnosis and then treat. But not to treat something without knowing what it is.

Know what it is. Yeah, but, like, what. When people, like, say, you know, a lot of people have probably lesions on their face. What. What should they be looking for? Where they should even go in and have it diagnosed?

Well, I think almost every human being should have an annual skin check. Even if you got perfect skin, you could have a skin cancer someplace that you can't see, like someplace on your back that you don't see or that you can't reach. You have no idea that it's there.

Skin cancer is something that should be part of our emphasis on preventive medicine. Skin checks. When you get a skin check, I think it should be from a highly experienced dermatologist, preferably, who does a skin check from your head to Your toe and you know, you, you know, you undress, they look everywhere and then you go back a year later and they have like photographs and written records of what was there the previous year and they make a comparison and that's how, you know, we should best be you know, evaluated on an ongoing basis. I think for abnormal skin conditions, especially.

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Well, luckily you were, you were fine. I mean, I have to think if it wasn't for your interest in dermatology and your background, you may not have even been, you might have even noticed this lesion in time.

Yeah. I mean, at the time that she wanted a treatment, it wasn't something that was bothering me. It wasn't something I had necessarily noticed. She found it on an annual skin check and she said, why don't we just take that off? She wanted to laser it, which would have meant that there would not have been a biopsy specimen. It would have just been vaporized and we would have never known the cancer had already spread to the nerve. And who knows what would have happened if she had done that. I might be in bad shape.

Wow.

Reminding everybody. It's good to do the annual because you may not have even realized it's happening on your skin.

And it's not just on the face. It could be anywhere.

Right, Right.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. It's so, thank you so much. I mean, I think it's, it's so insightful. And I, as you know, I. This past year you and I had kind of a parallel process. I was going through diagnostic process myself this past year. It's so interesting that we had that in parallel and.

Mine turned out to be not malignant. It was a benign sort of acellular, unknown growth. But it meant that I needed to enter into.

This diagnostic process. And I agree with you, over all these years of helping patients, I don't think I fully understood the challenges of. Of that process in the medical system. First of all, just trying to find the right specialist that matches up with your insurance plan already is difficult because the insurance plan determines. I went to the closest.

Facility to me, which is only five minutes away, but they aren't covered by my health insurance. So I had to. Then I went. I paid that doctor out of pocket anyway, because I wanted his insights, in his opinion. So I paid him out of pocket. And then he gave me the name of his. Who? The.

Thoracic. This is a thoracic surgeon. He gave me the name of his mentor thoracic surgeon in Manhattan at Mount Sinai, who was under my insurance. And so I was. I've been traveling into Manhattan that's, you know, at least an hour and a half each way to be able to see this specialist. But I'm so grateful because it's. It's. It makes all the difference to be working with a specialist who has. Right. Like this expertise, this experience, this ability and access to facilities and other treatments that maybe wouldn't be possible if you're not. If you're just working with.

Right.

With whoever, you know, just any old practitioner. I mean, and I heard that in your story, too, that you really sought out, okay, I'm going to go to this specialist. And so I think that's an important point, maybe for people to hear that it can be worth it, even if you have to drive further or make a few more phone calls. What do you think of that?

Absolutely. Although I am a big advocate for people, especially with cancer, getting treated at home rather than traveling to Mexico or Germany, some foreign place where they don't know anybody. I think that having your support system around you is really important when you're dealing with cancer. But I do think that having consultations with real experts, wherever they may be around the world, is a lot more feasible now that telehealth has become popular.

Most.

Physicians are willing to do that. I had two interesting things happen when I was looking for other resources for my cancer diagnosis. One was at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, where I went through this whole interview on the phone with somebody taking all of my information. And at the very end, she says, oh, yeah, by the way, you've got Medicare. We don't take Medicare. And I went, what You're Mayo Clinic and you don't take Medicare. And she said, no, and we charge twice as much as Medicare pays for. So I just, like, hang up. It's like, this is ridiculous. And then I also contacted MD Anderson Medical center in Houston, which is, like, the nation's largest medical center. And at the end of my interview there, I found out they don't do telehealth consultations. You have to go to Houston to get treated there. So.

Those things didn't work out for me because of the distance and the fact that.

Mayo Scottsdale told me they didn't take Medicare, which was just unbelievable.

So I think that what that says to me is, you.

Have to know going into it that you might have to invest some time. And because this information doesn't always happen in the first five minutes, like, you have to, like, make the time and go through the whole conversation and ask the questions until you're like, okay, is this actually going to be a fit? Or am I going to find out at some point in this conversation that it's not a good fit? And maybe you still get a little info from that.

Right, right.

And then be able to. Because otherwise it can be frustrating. Like, I remember just. I just kept having to manage my own frustration level, you know, like, o my gosh, how much time am I going to have to spend? How many conversations am I going to have to have? And just kind of ahead of time, being prepared for that, almost, like, just go, okay, this is. This is the process that I'm in, like, a project, in some ways, like your own health project. And it's going to. It's having the conversations is more important than the frustration that may come with it and let that stop you.

Right, right. And this is why I think it's really important for us as naturopathic physicians to consider really taking the position of being an advocate for our patients so that we can help them navigate their way through this and get a team of caregivers who are really caring, who are really experts, and, you know, a winning team.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. You know, that team concept, I find, you know, made a difference, too. I mean, the other thing was I found with imaging, like.

If I went to an imaging center local to me, which might be more convenient and fast, then I had to go through all the effort and time to get those records transferred to the practitioner who needed to see the records. So then I would end up, like, just figuring out, okay, maybe I'd rather just invest in driving to the imaging center that's going to be easier for my practitioner to access. And so just realizing like sometimes you just have to kind of like, like figure out what's the weigh these out and go what's the best way to get this imaging done? Or there was a lot of also like some kinds of imaging requires you have certain testing ahead of time. Especially like right now, COVID testing. You know, I would have to do COVID test and then sometimes blood tests or anything else as a prerequisite to going in for. Because I had to do two essentially lung biopsies. They weren't actually biopsying my lung, they were biopsying right next to my lung. But when you do a biopsy in the thoracic area, you have to go through the same procedure as a lung biopsy, which requires also check X ray, COVID testing, blood testing. I had to go through all of that twice.

It's just to know this is going to be something where you're going to want to, you know, set the day up, set, you know, do your self care as part of that. Right. Like I started, I need to go to bed in time. I need to figure out what I'm going to eat. Make sure you have someone who can be there to bring you or pick you up, you know, and support yourself through the diagnostic process. Because it can be a long and you know, stressful process.

Yeah, yeah. The erroneous reading of the MRI that I got I had done on the other side of the island because I was told that the MRI over there was better. So I made a two hour drive over there to get MRI that was not read properly by the radiologist.

And subsequently I didn't want to go back there. Of course I've had all of my follow up MRIs, which has been, I probably had five now done over in Honolulu which requires me getting on an airplane and going over there and renting a car. And you know, but there's an MRI sensor over there and that's all they do is MRIs. And the radiologist is highly experienced and much better than anybody we have on this island. So yeah, sometimes I think it is better to, you know, take the time to travel to get the best care.

Yeah. And to get the imaging from the person who can really interpret it and get it easily. Yeah, I really, I would have not known that before, you know, so it's such a good point to, you know, that, that as naturopathic doctors we can, you know, help people now to be like, okay, this is, you know, this is. And how to kind of keep your mind in the game. I mean, you talked about being a triathlete. I'm not a triathlete, but I have to think that I, A lot of times I make the analogy. I don't know if I'm being correct, Michael. You have to tell me. But I often say to people, like, even if you're not going through a health diagnostic process, even just day to day life, if we think of it more like running a marathon. When a person's running a marathon, they anticipate they're going to need to drink some water, they're going to need to stop and go to the bathroom, they're going to need to fuel themselves in some various ways. They expect it, they're going to need some sleep, they need some preparation. When we think of running a marathon, we expect all of that. But when we think of doing our day to day life, let alone a diagnostic process, we think we're supposed to just be able to power through without. Without feeding ourselves or enough sleep or. Right, Like.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I use that analogy too. In some ways, you know, dealing with any serious health condition is like a marathon. And there may be times during the marathon where you feel the wheels are coming off and you feel horrible and you just have to keep your head down and keep going or you need to take a break or slow down or, you know, something. And then there are other times where you kind of get a second win and you know, you, you, you bounce back and you're feeling good again. And so I think the analogy is very good. 1. I think in some ways life is like a marathon because there's lots of ups and downs and challenges and setbacks that we have to contend with.

Yeah. And to, you know, just, just that, like, I know you have a lot of background in meditation. That's one of the things you and I have always enjoyed talking about. Do you, did you use that during this time? Do you feel like that made a difference for you?

Absolutely.

It kind of began when I needed to have an mri, you know, and you're in this closed, you know, container and you can't move and you've got to just relax and let it happen. And you know, they take about 30 minutes. So I just meditated and I was fine. You know, it's, it was no issue for me.

And then when I would have a radiation treatment, it was, you know, for the left side of my face and I had to be in the stereotactic device where they put this plastic, like helmet over me and and fastened me to the table so I couldn't move a centimeter. And it was uncomfortable. There was a mouthpiece that didn't fit in my mouth just right. And so I really had to just kind of breathe and relax and kind of accept it and make friends with, you know, this device that was, you know, trying to help me. And so I had that to deal with. And then I read a really, really good book during that time also called In Love with the World, that was written by a Buddhist monk, Tibetan Buddhist monk, who was sort of like the Buddha himself in that he had had a very privileged childhood and early life and lived in a monastery, and he really hadn't had much contact with the outer world. And he decided, like the Buddha did, to leave the monastery, leave his family, leave everything behind, and kind of sneak away and go check out the outer world. And this was in India. And so he experienced what it was like traveling on train with, you know, people who are very poor. And, you know, it wasn't very. A hygienic situation. It was noisy and chaotic and living on the streets and, you know, running out of food and drinking bad water and getting sick. He got really, really, really sick to the point where he was so dehydrated, he was almost dying. He was dying, and he was. He was basically unconscious. And someone found him and took him to a hospital. So he survived. And he wrote about his experience. And it was a really good description and easy to understand language of what is really in Buddhist philosophy about dying.

And making friends with death and being so grateful and so in love with the world that we have to live in, you know, if we're not dying, even though we are all dying, a long process of dying throughout our lives. But.

That was a really, really helpful book to read to help me kind of navigate through those chaotic waters and to approach the possibility of death with a lot more peace and acceptance and friendship.

Oh, wow, thank you so much. That's so amazing. And I also hear and see that you maybe the. That ability to. Because with meditation, I think of it as like, so much of an ability to observe our thoughts and experience, but not be so identified with it, you know, be able to create a little space and be like, oh, let me observe this possibility of death without being in a reactive state of fear. But what I also see is that you not only did you entertain this possibility of death, but you also were entertaining the possibility of living and how to kind of balance that and be in that unknown. Right. It's about being in the. You Talked about being in the unknown for two weeks, but I. Ultimately, you were in the unknown for much longer than that because not knowing how the treatment was going to go. So you're in this unknown for a long period of time. And I have to think that your practice of meditation would have helped you kind of being in there. Like, hey, you know, how do I support the possibility that this is going to be successful and I'm going to survive? And how do I support the possibility that this might be the end of my life? And what does that look like?

That's right. Yeah. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head that really what meditation is, is.

Disidentifying, you know, with our egoic nature and realizing that a lot of our mental processes are just stories that we tell ourselves over and over and over again. And if you can get some. Some distance between the machinations of the mind and who. What our true nature as a human being really is, we can see that.

A lot of what we tell ourselves, a lot of the stories that we tell ourselves are not real.

And that they're not helpful and they may be unhelpful.

Yeah. And to get this, it's such a sort of poignant time to get those kind of insights when we're in that process. I mean, I know for myself I ended up getting so many insights about myself in the past year and insights about what was underlying, you know, for me, what ended up to be a chronic inflammatory condition, you know, for me. And as a naturopathic doctor, always asking why, you know, why. Why do I have a chronic inflammatory condition when I have spent my, you know, my life and especially the past 20 years, eating in a way and, you know, walking my talk as a nature belly doctor to reduce inflammation. I mean, now I look at it as, thank goodness. Just like with you. Thank goodness you were doing all the things you were doing to prevent this or, you know, solve it as soon as possible. But at the same time, even as nature bathic doctors, sometimes these processes still happen because of course, we're living, still living in human bodies, doing stuff that humans do to make us susceptible.

Yeah, yeah. And the same is true even for highly advanced spiritual beings. You know, monks and spiritual teachers, you know, they. They don't live forever. They get sick and die too.

Here we are. Oh my gosh.

And, but, you know, you know, this reminds me of the story I wanted to share about when we met.

Yes.

Because I recall it was in a restaurant downstairs from an art gallery that belong to a mutual friend of Ours, who introduced us, and that as I got to know you over that meal.

It seemed to me that you would. I really wanted to invite you to join the national Board of directors, our national organizations board, because you were already so engaged in the profession you were helping, already trying to get a license for naturopathic medicine in New York City. And I just thought that you would be a real asset. And I kept asking you if you would do this, if you would do that. And then just kind of jokingly, you were saying yes to all these things. I said, will you marry me, Donnie? And you said, no, I can't. I'm already married.

One thing, like, I found to say no to. And now. Yeah, like, I.

That's the thing. It's. Sometimes it's so easy to say yes. Right? Especially when it's like, yeah, yeah.

And both of us have been saying yes far too much for far too, you know, too long in our lives. And I think we've both kind of woken up here in the last couple years, and now we are seeing that, you know, our.

Constant yes saying has been, you know, counterproductive to us. You know, it's been too extreme and, you know, not in our best interest to have done that much. So, you know, we have to disengage from, you know.

Organizations that, you know, can get along without us and.

To, you know.

Be satisfied with what we already have done, rather than feeling like we have to do more, more, more, more, more, you know, to disengage from relationships that aren't healthy and, you know, spend time with people who really support us and love us and inspire us.

I love that. Thank you, Michael. Yeah, I completely agree. And it's. And I think a lot of people could relate to that. It's hard to learn how to say no, but to realize, wow, by saying no to something, that maybe we would love to say yes, but when we look at the whole picture, it's like, actually, when I look at my schedule and my priorities, I'm not able to say yes to everything. We need to be able to learn how to say no.

Yeah. Saying no sometimes means saying yes to oneself. I love them taking care of oneself. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Michael. I think this is really gonna, you know, be amazing for listeners. And I'd love any of you who are listening, if you have comments or feedback, please send it to me or. And. Or, you know, like. And share this. This conversation. And, Michael, if someone would like to be in touch with you, how best to reach you.

My email is very simple. It's Traub T r a u b.michaelmail.com okay.

All right. And I'll put this in, in the show notes, too, so they can, they can find you and, and, and connect with you and, and because you're still practicing some.

Yeah, I practice. I see patients three days a week. I do a lot of telehealth as well as in person care.

So if you're, you know, looking for someone with especially this, this expertise. But oh, my gosh, I know Michael has expertise in way more than dermatology and oncology, but, you know, if you're, if you're looking for assistance, you know, thank you, Michael, for being available for them to reach out to you. And.

And I'm. Oh, my gosh, I feel so grateful again. I mean, I don't even know how to express the gratitude for, for someone as like you in life. You know, that's just we, like you said, we, we met and we just, you know, you, you realize this is someone who you can really connect with and grow with and learn from. And you and I have gotten to do so many exciting things together over the years in terms of, you know, speaking together and, you know, working together on other projects as well. So I just want to express my gratitude and gratitude just for this conversation as well. So thank you, Michael.

My pleasure.

All right, everyone. Well, thanks for listening in, and I'll look forward to connecting with you very soon.

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