25: Creating Paths to Health and Community with a Breast Cancer Diagnosis with Amy Robinson and Maria Bachteal

Hello and welcome to the Kenya breasts podcast with Dr. Jen. The show dedicated to empowering women through knowledge, tools, and resources to take control of your breast health journey. I'm your host, Dr. Jen Simmons, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this insightful and inspiring journey. As a breast cancer surgeon turned functional medicine physician, I'm on a mission to empower women to live their breast I need best lives. This podcast dives deep into all topics related to breast health, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and holistic approaches to support overall well being. You know what I say? Breast health is health. So no matter who you are, a breast cancer survivor, newly diagnosed in treatment, living with metastatic disease, or you're simply seeking to improve your breast health, this podcast is for you. Join us on this transformative path towards better breast health and a thriving life. And now, let's get to today's episode. Hi there, it's Dr. Jen.

Welcome to another episode of Keeping Abreast. I have two really, really special ladies with me today. These are two thrivers who both have amazing stories that they're here to share with you today, but they're also on a mission. They're on a mission to build community and to create a. A safe space where people can tell their stories. But these are stories of not only survival, these are stories of thriving. These are stories of women who, in the conventional medical world, are given no options and a ticking timeline. And in this world, in this world that we all know, we see opportunity, we see community, we see supporting each other, and we see creating life. And that's what these ladies are doing. So without further ado, I'm going to introduce Amy Robinson. She is the founder of Radiant Healing Together, and she has a beautiful group that helps women to reclaim their health after a breast cancer diagnosis using functional medicine. So that is a cause very near and very dear to my heart, as you well know. And then, Maria Bakhteel, I don't say it with a Midwestern accent, but, you know, I'm a Philly girl. I'm doing the best I can. And Maria invented Breast Cancer Pathways worksheet, and with that, she helps people to design their pathway to health. So, ladies, welcome. I am so delighted to have you here. What you're doing is really important because none of us are getting through this alone. This is all about community and the communities that we build. And when we do that, we lift each other up. And there is strength in numbers. A lot of strength in numbers. So, Amy, can you start us off by just sharing your Story and how you got into being a healer because he went from. From another place, I assume.

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much. It is a joy to be here with you here today and with Maria. My own history, I studied things like public health, nutrition, sociology, psychology. When I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley, I did master's in science studies in integrative health and clinical nutrition at Maryland University of Integrative Health. I've always felt that passion and care for the well being of others and really wanted to be a force for good in the best way that I possibly could. I think that's something that we all share here and most of your guests probably do. I was really launched into this particular journey when I had my own breast cancer diagnosis in 2018. And that was. I really see now, both from my own experience and from being there holding this community space for hundreds of women, that on the breast cancer journey, there's the before and then there's the after. It's like your life has been this tapestry that brings you up to the moment of diagnosis and then everything stops and changes. And many of us are tasked with how are we going to reweave this life from here going forward. And so I had my own experience with that. I had extensive breast cancer. I had three different kinds of breast cancer, which is very rare. And. And so I was diagnosed with stage 3C breast cancer in May of 2018, began treatment immediately, went through the whole conventional route. But I was also the kind of person that prior to that, didn't want.

To take an aspirin or a Tylenol.

You know, I was very integrated, very, very, you know, natural minded about things, and had always considered myself to be very healthy and very health conscious. I was the most health cons friend in my circles, as are most of us, interestingly. So I went through my own journey with that and. And it really became a personal mission meeting so many other women on the Facebook groups, also in. In person here in New Mexico, where I live in California, and then through different groups I'm a part of, in other parts of the country and world. And I felt a real calling to be able to help other women on this path and was doing so until I had one person I was working with in my meditation classes and coaching who had said I really need a community to heal. And she had two different kinds of metastatic breast cancer, had been diagnosed five years earlier. And I just really wanted to do everything to help. So she was. Lisa Rosen was an inspiration for creating this group. She helped me Start it then instead of waiting until I could do it all, you know, perfectly, get everything lined up. I just really wanted to do everything I possibly could to help her and other women on this journey to heal with all of the tools that we have available, all of the evidence based tools which can be the hard data and also the soft things like the therapeutic art and listening to one another. And I so identify with what you said at the beginning about that sense of being alone and how community transforms that. Because I feel like every woman that I've talked to on this journey has had moments of really feeling alone with it. Even if they have a lot of support from family or friends, they have moments of feeling very alone with the experience. And so creating a community where they feel held in a sisterhood of other women walking this path with them transforms the experience completely.

Yeah, absolutely. Maria, I'm sure that you have your own pain to purpose story. Could you share it with us?

Longer and more painful in some ways, but not to. It wasn't more painful, but it has been a long and painful process.

Yeah, we don't want off each other in the pain.

Yeah, we all have our pain. I was diagnosed in 2011, so this was before any of this stuff was available. I. And I've been moving a lot. My family had moved for my husband's job quite a bit, had had a lot of health issues that had begun when I was a child and just never got resolved. And so there was a. I had a lot of troubles just from early on and never felt as if I got good diagnoses or got on top of things. So I was pretty much saddled by age 40 with, well, 31, with infertility, endometriosis, all kinds of issues, weird issues that I couldn't quite pinpoint. Digestive, terrible digestive issues.

But unfortunately, while that should have been a call to action, the conventional medical world doesn't recognize that as the telltale precursors to breast cancer. Because if they did, and if we recognized it, acknowledged it and worked through it at that stage, you probably wouldn't have gotten to a breast cancer diagnosis.

Yeah.

I was recently on Dr. Felice Gersh's PCOS summit. And the reason that I went on a PCOS summit is because those are my people 10 years before they know that those are my people. Right. And if I can get them at that stage and help them to course correct, they don't have to become my people. I mean, listen, I love people, that's why I do this. But everyone is better off if they don't need me.

Same here. So I, and I did see some integrative doctors and there were a few who unwound some things, but I never really got really dug down deep. And I actually got pregnant because of an oncologist or I mean a reproductive endocrinologist who was willing to use acupuncture in his protocol. So I did, I did have a lot of different integrative things happening, but nobody really healed me. It was always that objective of oh well, you know, get your hormone numbers looking better or get you sleeping a little better or get you pregnant. So I, I really kind of just knew that there weren't, things weren't right. And when we moved here to California, I had wanted to re, remake my profession. I had started out, I started out in hard science and I, I got a biochem degree. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian like all the other little girls, but then I ended up going of all things to Northwestern to pursue a PhD in tumor cell biology. Do you imagine what I'd be unlearning now if I had had learned tumor cell biology in the 80s?

Wow.

So right in the middle of curiosity.

Like what, what drew you there?

I, well my, my grandmother had died of leukemia and I enjoyed genetics. Like I really found genetics fascinating in undergrad and molecular biology. So that, that was, and I knew I wanted to write, but it was kind of funny like I was the one who would use my liberal arts classes to bring my science and GPA up because that was what was easy. The writing part was easy. The science part was, you know, memorizing and learning organic chemistry was hard. But against my father's good advice, which I ignored, I went to Northwestern to a medical school based program and yeah, my first year, histology and all those lovely medical students who like to switch, switch around the microscope so you can't see the slides. And I, I was just not, I wasn't prepared to be surrounded by Ivy League. I was from a state school, I wasn't supposed, I just wasn't prepared to be surrounded by that. And I was in my first year of my marriage, so that whole thing just went by the wayside. And I decided to retrain in journalism because I knew I liked writing. And then I spent my career working in not for profit research companies doing writing and editing and running a program within a department there. So. But I did give all that up at one point when my kids started coming and we were moving a lot, so I didn't have a profession When I moved to California, I was looking for something new and I wanted to go to school one on one, not online because at the time my, my brain was just mush. I mean, I really felt like I couldn't remember one thing to the next. I was so nervous going to this school where most of the people didn't even have a science degree and I knew a lot more than they did. But just the fear of saying, you know, opening my mouth, not having the answer was just so scary to me. But I did.

I'm sorry, are you a perfectionist?

A bit, yeah.

No, I'm just wondering a lot of people. Yeah, you know, that's, that's a huge driving factor for illness is that we, we stress about doing absolutely everything perfectly and it really takes its toll on your health. Because.

My adrenals are not happy at the 4:30am Wake ups to, you know, jump on and do homework and be ready and take my kids to school and you know, race around. It was not good. And I also, during that time I had, we did hair testing and I found out that I was full of mercury, like chock full. And of course I didn't have the guidance to look at my, how bad my gut was and how my detox pathways were clogged and all was not good. And I just went and got those things out because, oh my God, I have metal in my mouth that's poisoning me. So three months later, that's when I found the lump and it literally came out of nowhere, which is a really typical thing for her. Two positive it grows fast and you can be self checking. I've had my last mammogram and ultrasound a year before I had dense breasts that was being followed by somebody before I moved by ultrasound. So I had to get this, you know, immediately it was like, this is, you know, the usual, they rush you in, it's urgent. Was told that because the tumor was at my breastbone that I had to, my mastectomy was my only choice. So I did do that. I also took up my ovaries because I was totally freaked out with my body and thinking my body had just done this to me and just get rid of all those evil estrogens. And I was left with some pretty serious crashing on that. But the worst part came when they did. So back in 2011, insurance companies are still paying for PET CT scans, especially when the company that the practice owns the PET CT scan. So they loved having everybody go in for one. I had no reason to, I had no notes, I was Stage two. But they, they scanned me and lo and behold, thank God, because I had a 3 centimeter tumor in my cervical spine that was not breast cancer, but that was threatening my life. So I went back into surgery two or three months later.

Wait, and you had an unrelated tumor in your cervical spine?

Well, we all know it's related. It's all related. Right, right.

But they said it was not breast cancer.

It was. No, it was an ependymoma. And it probably been there for many, many years. Yeah. And so I, and I had some symptoms, but I was ignoring them because I was pushing through school. So they, you know, went into surgery. It was basically, you know, told to us that it was life threatening. But I really, I have this attitude like I can get over anything. And I thought it would be fine. And boy, three. Three weeks of intense physical therapy in house, in hospital because I couldn't move my arms, I couldn't walk, I couldn't take care of myself at all. That was all done. And so then, of course, I went back to the requisite oncologist visit. And even though I came in on a cane and they knew my history, they all said, chemo, chemo, chemo. Because back then, the only way you can get Herceptin is with chemo. So we're talking about 2011, 2012. And it was 2012. This is the thing that's changed about me. I used to be bad about listening to my gut, and my gut was telling me, do not put these drugs in your body. But my. But I was just panicked because everybody was saying, you're going to die without Herceptin. You have to have it. And, and there was no, There was.

No possibility of doing Herceptin alone. No one was entertaining that.

No, nobody was entertaining that back then. Yeah. And I did have a little bit of integrative support, but not a lot. It was, it was expensive. You know, I mean, I, I really feel for the women who come into the same in, in total shock about all of a sudden. Yeah, pony up thousands a month when you just bought a new house and you've got kids in college. It's big. So I didn't get as much help as I could have, and I just kind of said, okay, well, this is what they're saying I have to do. I guess I'll just do like I always do and buck up and I'll take it and it'll be fine. Wasn't fine.

Yeah.

I, day three, had the worst pain of my entire existence. Way beyond any childbirth Ever. And I gave up the chemo, kept on with Herceptin, but that entire year was spent basically angry, resentful, searching for who can fix this because I'm in so much pain. And. Yeah, so I think that's, you know, for me, that was something that I didn't know how to cope with and I didn't have community. I was living in a place that I didn't even know anybody. And I had some family. You know, my parents would come and people would help me out for my family, but it wasn't a day to day and I didn't have a lot of friends day to day who understood what I was going through. So I didn't have the community. And I don't think really the online community existed even at the Facebook level. If it did, I was definitely not queued into it. Yeah, so I, I really had a rough year. A couple years, year and a half. I guess it was after. Well, it was two and a half years and then lo and behold, it came back in my liver mostly and then a little in my spine. And, you know, that was the wake up call that I wasn't handling this right. I was on a very intensive protocol, supplement wise. I had an integrative practitioner, but I wasn't dealing with the emotional side stuff. I wasn't dealing with how I felt about what had happened to me, how I had not been supported by some members of my family, my, you know, my children, my husband. Just like what their expectations were that I had set up, of course, because the way I've always been for them and I just let it eat me up. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just feel like that was a big reason why it's really.

Hard to get better in the same environment that you got sick and you, you can't supplement your way out of it.

No.

And I, you know, people say to me all the time, you know, these supplements are expensive. Tell me which ones are the most important ones. And quite frankly, like, I think the most important thing is to figure out your.

Why.

Because it's often not what we're putting in, but what we're taking out that that gets us the most result.

I say to people all the time that the life that created the cancer is not the life that's going to help you heal from it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yes.

So, you know, Amy, you kind of had one of these situations which we find ourselves in all the time because, you know, Maria, you knew that you had gut problems and you knew that you had hormone problems and you knew that you had mercury problems, but Amy, you were seemingly healthy. And I would say that 90% of the people that end up coming my way and coming to me for help say I'm healthy, but I have breast cancer. Right. So can you kind of share the work that you did to look at your why and what you discovered?

Absolutely. And I feel like one of the things that really was a great wake up call for me was after I had gone through all the Adrian, my son, I'd gone through because I had multiple different kinds of breast cancer. I have the Taxol and Herceptin and Progetta. I had surgery and then I had very extensive radiation and I was testing my circulating tumor cells. And about six months after finishing treatment, I did some testing. It was biopt at the time and it showed that my circulating tumor cells were skyrocketing. And, you know, having had stage 3C triple negative breast cancer, we know that that's something to be concerned with. We know it often comes back quickly, etc. And so I was, I was really on a mission at that point to consult with every doctor I could connect with. So I went to integrative doctors across the country. I did a consult with the head of breast cancer oncology at Stanford. So I was really gathering, I mean, I think I met with six or seven different doctors at the time, lots of different information, and then really doing such deep dives into what are all the pathways that triple negative breast cancer follows. What. Just gathering all this information and doing deep dives into the research. And what I kept finding time and time again, meeting with some of the more integrative doctors is them saying that the high stress environment that I had been in that had brought me into this situation was something that was going to help perpetuate it. And so I really, I, I put everything in. I'm a single mom, I've got a kid. You know, my daughter was 8 years old at the time that I was diagnosed. So I really needed to make myself well. And so I, I started focusing on what are the best ways for my own stress relief. I've been a meditation practitioner and teacher for a very long time. And so I was focusing on the meditation, I was focusing on the exercise, I was focusing on all of these different areas of stress relief. And that also led me to be sharing that information. I wanted every woman to have this information too. And so that really informed my mission because what I was seeing was that women can consult with the best doctors that are available. They can get all this Information, but they might not be understanding that inside out piece. How are we really feeling on the inside? What are the things that we need to address? Whether it's, you know, I love the Dr. Gabor mate's work, whether it's our emotional healing with that mind body connection, whether we need to be talking about what's going on for us. So when I, I created Radiant Healing together, I was so mindful about all of these different pieces of the puzzle. So we have meditation within our group, we have mindfulness within our group. We have something called Story Medicine. And we came out with a book just last month called Story Medicine where we come together and we write stories. It's an expressive writing program. We have our therapeutic arts practitioner led by Dr. Natasha, who teaches therapeutic arts. Within our group we have spiritual directors. We have all of these different ongoing teachers who are physical therapists, occupational therapists. Just so much experts trauma so that we can really hold women exactly where they are and then give them a chance to talk about what's going on for them, what their is.

So how did the two of you come together?

Well, the first time we met, actually Amy was going through that whole thing with her ctc. I remember the CTC report because my gosh. So what happened was, and I wanted to make sure it's clear that Abby Mitchell, who is my friend and colleague in Australia, was the co developer of the breast Cancer Pathways worksheet with me. Actually, we owe it all to this wonderful woman, Lauren, who's no longer with us, who showed us how to use Google Docs and Google spreadsheets because we were completely, you know, we, we had never done it before. So she set up.

It's fun when you realize all the things you can do with these kids. Right?

Yeah. So I would say that, I would say that we all kind of got to know each other through these various Facebook groups. Abby's Facebook group kind of spun out of both her. I joined her pretty quickly at the beginning. She started a Facebook group after deciding that Jane McClelland's Facebook group wasn't serving her, wanted to know more. And that's what kind of led us down that path of learning. Basically we kind of sat down with the hallmarks of cancer and said, okay, what are the breast cancer phenotypes? And we looked at triple negative. We looked at ER positive, HER2 negative. We looked at HER2 positive. And then we looked even like lobular versus invasive ductile. We really looked at what's the research saying about what drives these things? Because there's all this research out there, and it doesn't. It's bench research. And so, of course, oncologists don't care about it because it hasn't gone through a clinical trial. But it's all out there and it's exciting and interesting, and it ties things together in a way that is unbelievable, really, that people don't realize it's out there.

But.

So Amy came to me because I had created this thing with Abby and I had started to help women figure out how to, like, put their stuff in. It was very, very, you know, kind of basic back then, but, like. And since Amy was triple negative, like, what should she be trying to do supplement wise? So I was part of that piece. Amy already had the diet piece because she's got even more nutrition training than I do. She had that down pat. So I was kind of helping with that. And that's how I got to know her in the first. At first. And then we just. She. We're both in another group of integrated breast cancer survivors. That's just a really positive group where we've interacted a lot over the years. And then we just eventually became friends and got to know each other even because Amy comes to the Bay Area to visit her mother. So we've seen each other on a couple of occasions. Personally, I want to ask you, what.

Is it that you think is most important to have for people in the beginning of their journey?

Like what, what.

What do you think people need as they start their breast cancer journey?

Yeah, well, that's such a great question. I would say that one of the most important things really is community, because in a community, you can gather the information that you need. I mean, we need information, but we also need to be able to, where possible, see other women who have been on this journey ahead of us. I feel like that's. That's some of the incredible power of this journey, is we created this brave space for hope together. And we, you know, we reach back to give our hands to our sisters on this journey too. And we show that you can make it. You can get through this. And there's like this beautiful synchronicity that happens in some of our groups sometimes. I see it every week, and it's just phenomenal where we have these multiple different events that are connection events. So I call coffee and connection. We have some evening connection. I set them up at different time zones so that they work with people from all over the world. And women come together and invariably you'll have one woman who's about ready to start radiation. She's feeling fearful. She wants more information. There will be another woman in that group who has just finished radiation and has everything to share about it and see the transformation in those women who come in and they're. They're filled with fear. And now they have information and loving support from other women who've been on this journey. I see that even with just random side effects, that somebody. Someone comes into a group and they find someone who has just had the same side effect, too. And it just, again, it reinforces that sense. We are not alone on this journey.

Yeah, I know. When I wrote my book, the smart person's guide to breast cancer, I really wanted the guide, the companion that people needed as they were starting off their breast cancer journey. And then, of course, I. I led on to what you do at each and every stage, including what you do when treatment is over. And I call that the quiet after the storm. Because when you're actively in treatment, you're just surrounded by noise, right? There's constantly going. Things going on. There's a lot of movements. There's a lot of moving parts, and then all of a sudden, you're finished treatment, and it's like, quiet. But for me, I think that community piece is so very important, and you can't do that if you're rushing off to a treatment. And so for me, I think the most important thing when you get diagnosed, with very rare exception, is to take a pause. To take a pause and to look at the landscape, because there are so many women who have their breast cancer diagnosis in their rearview mirror, and they are reaching out their arms behind them to pull you up. And we do get so much benefit from the wisdom of the women who have walked this walk ahead of us, and they're delighted to share in their success, because that's really who we are as women, is that we want everyone to succeed. We want everyone to do well, because we are the creators of life. We also value life more than anything in the world. So if I'm hearing correctly, you have no evidence of disease.

No, I haven't. Since 2015.

Since 2015. So I know people really want to know, what do you think were the big needle movers for you?

I think one big needle mover was that I had tumor sensitivity testing done, chemo sensitivity testing done. So which test did you use? I used. Well, his name was Dr. Larry Wiesenthal, but the one who's out here in the west coast, he's on the east coast and now. But at the time, he was on the west coast and his colleague is Dr. Robert Nagorny. I think Dr. Nagorny, you've probably heard of him because he's been kind of everywhere. He uses fresh tumor, the actual sample. I literally flew down to LA and had his guy, Wiesenthal's guy take it out because I couldn't get anybody up here in Sonoma county to do it correctly and it had to be fresh. I did end up deciding not to go conventional because I did kind of freak out and realize, oh my gosh, what was I thinking? I can't do chemo. But so I had been reading Suzanne Summers book. It was really my, you know, before I joined all these groups, what I had were books. And I decided to go to Dr. Forsyth and do IPT insulin potentiated low dose chemotherapy. It was the middle of the winter. It was Reno. It was not ideal, but I got there somehow. And because I can't drive or I didn't couldn't drive at that time, I don't think I still wouldn't attempt Reno in my condition. But I can get across, I can get across the county now, but somehow in various odd combinations of things. Like one time I took the party bus to Reno. Literally, I took the party bus.

We do what we have to do, right?

Yeah.

So he uses RGCC and there was some good overlap. So I felt comfortable with it. I still think that the fresh tumor chemosensitivity test is the best one. I also think that there's some misunderstanding with practitioners who use rgcc. It should not be used to look at whether targeted like immunotherapies work because it won't. It doesn't. It, it's not testing that. So you know, of course foresight said, oh, you don't need Herceptin. And I said, you're out of your mind. You know, I need Herceptin. I knew well enough to understand the differences between what that test was testing. So I did go by definitely, you know, went was happy to do the chemos that he recommended based on the test. And I also went by the supplement recommendations for the first few years in addition to what I was getting from my, my practitioner Madiri.

So for you, the targeted therapies.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think there's two things they're learning now that HER2 positive. There are some women who are so strongly HER2 positive that all it takes is Herceptin per data. Yeah, I might have been one of those women. It may be that I didn't need anything that may have just been, you know, nothing going through all of what I went through, it's hard to know because I didn't do a double blind. You know, there wasn't me not doing it. Yeah, right.

And you know, that's. I, I was, I was with someone over the weekend who had stage four pancreatic cancer and he was given months to live. And when I tell you that the list of what he did included at least 100 things. And so someone asked him what worked. Well, who knows? But then, but then the flip side is who cares in that he's. Well, he has no evidence of disease. So, you know, his doctor was putting him in the ground and he's alive and well, so.

Well, I didn't go with one doctor's opinion, so Forsyth. I went with their clinic for certain things. I'm also a nutritionist, so I was able to get a lot of things on my own. I had my own naturopath here who gave me IV vitamin C. I did colonics here. I did colonics with, with coffee enema implant here. Yeah, I had my, I had my herbalist naturopath at Madiri Clinic up in Ashland. And so I kind of put together a team. You know, I feel like approach. Yeah. When people let someone run their show, that could be a mistake. You are the driver.

Yeah.

That's what we're doing is trying to empower women to, to be able to drive their process right with their medical teams, but also informed by all the different pieces of, of their own puzzle and what's going to be helpful with that multifaceted approach. And that's why we're trying to provide so many of those things within the group too.

Yeah. Out of curiosity, because you guys see this all day, every day, why do you think we've made so little process in the conventional medical world in that they're still not talking about diet, they're not talking about stress reduction, they're not talking about fasting while giving chemotherapy. Why do you think that they're saying no to supplements across the board? They're saying no to IV vitamin C. Why do you think that they are not making progress on that front?

I think it's fear. And I remember one of the, one several of the podcasters that I've listened to that you've done, you know, talking about what you had to do to walk away from that, you know, that community and what they're going to say, what, how they're going to view you. And I think that's part of it. The types of testing that would need to be done to validate these kinds of measures, these kinds of treatments, protocols.

For IV vitamin C. I mean, the testing is done.

Yeah, but they would want to see. I guess it doesn't fit into their paradigm.

Yeah, you can't trademark a molecule of nature.

Right.

You can't trade, so they can't make money off of it.

Right. So there's nobody who wants to invest. I think that's probably the biggest thing is if, you know, if Bill Gates would take his money and invest it in this, or one of these guys with all this money would say, hey, let's heal. Heal Americans from cancer. You know, heal the world.

That is not one of Bill Gates's goals. Not looking to heal anyone of anything.

So one of these people with deep pockets would just put some money at the situation. It could happen. But, yeah, the money is not coming from.

But definitely not Bill Gates. Bill Gates is not looking to save anyone.

Maybe. Maybe if Elon gets pancreatic cancer.

And I think probably a lot of the oncologists just aren't trained in this. They don't have the information, they don't have the knowledge. They have a limited scope that they're allowed within the.

The.

Their insurance coverage, and very limited time is dictated by the insurance companies as well. So I think it's. I think it must be a real challenge for them as well. But, yeah, I mean, of course, we wish they would be providing a more multifacete, faceted approach like we certainly espouse. And I think we are seeing it show up in other areas of health. If you think about what Dr. Dale Bredesen is doing at UCLA with reversing Alzheimer's, or Dr. Terry Wahls with reversing multiple sclerosis, we can see there are other doctors who are leading, you know, or Dr. Perlmutter with brain function. You know, we can. We can see other doctors that are in this sphere that are exciting, expanding their understanding of. It doesn't have to just be one intervention that we test and then see the results of. We can use a lot of different things like your friend with pancreatic cancer did as well. You know, I. I'm. I'm. I'm a perpetual optimist. So I have that hope in my heart that we're moving more in that direction.

Yeah, that's amazing. I love the work that you're doing. I'm so glad that you could be here today to just share your stories. You're so inspiring. And it's just Wonderful to know that there are paths to health even when you get a late diagnosis of breast cancer. And you guys are shining examples of that. So thank you for spending the day with me today. I'm so grateful. Where can people find you right now?

My Facebook group is still quite active. We have another website that our friend Abby created and it does have a lot of good resources for breast cancer, for the Breast Cancer Pathways worksheet that she and I created. So we'll give you a link for that so people can download it, take a look at it. It's another project that has got some really exciting possibilities for the future. So, you know, that's another story for another time. But it is what it is right now. It's our compilation of research. It's not medical advice or clinically tested or anything like that. It's just two. Two breast cancer survivors who wanted to do what James McClellan told us and go into the research and look at our phenotypes and figure out what was driving our breast cancer. And then we got a little carried away.

Well, I'm sure people will enjoy.

I have a website for my own practice, so I do have a private practice where I work with women who are in remission. I don't work with women who have active cancer. I try to send them to medical doctors or naturopaths for that, but I like to work alongside those as well and I work with them on improving their outcomes, looking toward a long remission, looking toward not ever being stage four.

And then you have a free giveaway for my listeners.

I put together a special meditation bundle of six different breast cancer meditations as a gift for all of your viewers that we will have the link available for that for them to get that free meditation bundle.

Amazing, amazing. Ladies, thank you so much for being here with me today. I really appreciate it. Your stories, again, are inspiring. You're doing great work and I thank you for that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Yes, really.

Dr. Jen, bye for now.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping a breast podcast with Dr. Chen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, breast health is health. So by staying informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube @ Dr. Jen Simmons. And remember, my Jen has two N's, so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.