Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment

And your life. Good day and welcome to Medicine and Health with Dr. Paul Anderson. That's me. I am Dr. Paul as usual. I'm usually not anyone else coming to you from Seattle, Washington, where we've had a really nice week and it's, it's a little bit smoggy outside. We're hoping we don't get any more of the forest fire smoke, but that's unavoidable sometimes. But right now, just, just a little, little overcast. So today on the program, last week we did an intro to my new book. So if you look above my giant head here, you see there's a blue one there and And there's a white one over here on this side, and then there's some more white ones in the middle. The ones in the middle, we just received the author's copies of, so it's really exciting to do that. So if you're watching the podcast, you know, live or, you know, somewhere on a video, there's the book, it just came. So I wanted to talk about it in a little more depth because although I certainly, I wrote the book and I certainly have a lot of information on it, I thought I'd just kind of go through the book and talk about where it came from and a little bit deeper discussion about some of the points than we had last time. The other thing is, if you're listening to this live, this is October 1st, 2020. So if you're in the future, it could be any time, you know, in the future. But the official launch date for all of our online book outlets, whether it's a print book or Kindle And then later on, there'll be an Audible version as well. But for the Kindle and the print book, our launch date is on the 6th. So we've really only got 5 days left until the official launch. And the book is called Cancer, and then the subtitle is The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment. And so the first couple of questions that I got to answer today, people had written in and asked, you know, a few things that were really kind of cool about the book, because we've been doing a lot of promoting of it on social media, et cetera. And so the first thing was, well, is this like your other book? And so if you look there over my shoulder, the big white book over there, Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, that Dr. Mark Stengler and I wrote. That particular book has been out now for just a little bit over 2 years. And it is, been translated in a number of languages, and it's in other countries. And we're very pleased and proud of that particular book. It is a unique book in that it talks about— its name is Outside the Box Cancer Therapy. So that's the focus is, you know, what do we know about from science beyond the standard sorts of therapies, which certainly can be useful in some cases, but things like surgery and radiation, chemotherapy. Is there anything else? Are there ways that we can make those therapies work better? What if my doctor tells me I can't get those therapies because I'm, you know, too sick or I'm too old or I reacted badly? How do we deal with that? That book is all about the therapeutic side of cancer and what to do and how to improve your quality of life and outcomes with that part of the cancer journey, the physical cancer journey. And in that particular In this particular book, one of the things Dr. Stengler and I did that was very specific was we put references in for everything that we talked about with regard to therapies, because in North America, it's a little bit newer of a concept to do integrative oncology-type therapies. And so we wanted to make sure our colleagues in what we'd call standard oncology were able to look at the research and the science behind what we're doing there. So whereas outside the box cancer therapies is really, let's say, excuse me. Oh my! Now that'll make some good TV. I don't know what came over me. Maybe it's the smog. So while outside the box cancer therapies is about those treatments and what do you do, you know, to help improve your standard treatments, what sort of Other treatments are available. The the thing that we really talked about a little bit, but we didn't. Of course, there's only so much you can put in one book. We didn't have the space to get into in super deep amount was the what what I would call the internal or the mental emotional journey that you go through when you get diagnosed with cancer. So the new book that just, just came to me, and it'll be coming to the world in 5 days on October 6th, the new book is my work to write about that, the internal mental emotional journey. And the thing that I think is important about that is just as what you do for your body physically and your cells physically with respect to cancer. is terribly important. It's important for dealing with your cancer. It's important for your quality of life and probably your quantity and length of life. So is what you do for your mind and your body, or your mind and your body and your spirit, depending on how you like to look at those things. That is equally as important because the way that the mind and the body are connected You have this very grand and elaborate filter that everything goes through. And so the mind, you can't be thinking of and feeling about a particular topic in a certain way and not have your body kind of follow suit. So when we were working with the publisher on the, you know, what are we going to call this book, because, you know, they were initial working titles that weren't really working out for us. The idea to call it Cancer and Then the Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment, it really is about that journey from, oh no, I have cancer. And then you get all of these feelings that wash over you. And some people never get beyond there, but there is a journey you can go on that goes from all of those feelings washing over you all the way over to feeling and being empowered as a patient or as a caregiver and a loved one. So the first question that I got sent in via email was, can you tell me, is this book written for doctors or is this for patients or is this more for the friends and family of a cancer patient or is it for everybody? Well, purposely wrote the book at the level of and focused on anybody who needed to read it, meaning it's really for people who have cancer or those who are supporting them, their loved ones, their family, coworkers, et cetera. And the reason for that is, is that somewhere between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 people in their lifetime will experience cancer of one kind or another. So it's not an unusual thing to have happen. And with those statistics, it's either going to affect you as the patient with cancer, or it's gonna affect somebody that you love or care for or work with, et cetera. So the purpose of this is to look at that from the point of view of either you as the patient or the person who is the loved one and the caregiver. Now, just like with Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, there's a lot of doctors that are obviously interested in the information as well. There are a lot of doctors that deal with patients with cancer, and I've had a lot of really good feedback from doctors around North America that I had do some pre-reading of the book and take a look at it from the point of view of, you know, does this match your experience? Do you think this is good advice for patients? And a lot like Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, the book is destined to be in some cancer clinics now as a resource for people. So it's really written for you, the patient, or you, the caregiver and loved one, but anybody, of course, can read it and gain benefit from it. The next question that came in that was also really good based on the book over my shoulder there, Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, somebody said, well, so is the new book like Outside the Box Cancer Therapies in regard to it having a focus on integrative medicine or integrative therapies or alternative therapies or naturopathic medicine or any of those things? And the bottom line of the new book is no, it's not, because the mental-emotional experience that you as a patient or a loved one have Around cancer is universal. It doesn't matter what kind of treatment you're going to do or not do, or what's available to you or not, as far as the, you know, cellular physical part of the cancer journey. What I was writing to here was whether you are, let's say, a more standard patient who is diagnosed and you have a very particular treatment protocol where you're gonna go and you're gonna have surgery, and then you might do some radiation or say some chemotherapy, and then you might do some things to heal up, or whether you are diagnosed really late and they tell you, you know, with your kind of cancer, the therapies would just be too toxic and dangerous for you. So we don't really have a lot of therapies to offer you at this point. Or whether you're somewhere in between, or whether you're deciding to do a lot of integrative treatments. It's all the same when it comes to the mental-emotional impact of that cancer on you or your loved ones. So the book is really written for anybody who has cancer. It's— I like to say it's agnostic of how you're going to treat your cancer, because the point that I wanted to make in the book, and this is based on, you know, decades of just sitting with people who are cancer patients and their family and working with them on You know, what do we do to try and wrap our mind around the fact that there's this cancer as part of our life? How can we more appropriately and in a better mental, emotional, healthy way deal with this diagnosis? And then, you know, the book tries to answer some of the other questions like, does any of that really make any difference? Does it make, you know, why would we care? You know, does it really— help to become more empowered as a patient or to help be the kind of caregiver or loved one who empowers somebody as opposed to disempowering them? And the short answer is it really does make a difference. It's a huge difference, both in the way that you experience the diagnosis and all that goes with it, but also in the quality of life that's available to you. Now, another question that came in that was really good was from one of the doctors that I had Sent the book to. And they had been one of my primary beta readers on the book that Mark and I did, Outside the Box. And so when they saw this one, they said, well, this one seems a little shorter than Outside the Box was. Was that by design? Well, there's 2 reasons that it's shorter than Outside the Box. So if I, if I had really long arms, I reach back and grab Outside the Box, and we could hold them up next to each other. One reason is in Outside the Box Cancer Therapies, the last about this much of it is all references that are put in. And so a lot of the pages are scientific references in Outside the Box that made it bulkier. The other thing was that we took a lot in the 10 chapters and we went pretty deeply into different areas of cancer therapy and how they work on your body, how to to make them more optimal, et cetera. And so that book is a little bit more like an encyclopedia. This one, The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment, is specifically made to be an easy read, a quick read if you want to, but you can also take it and go into deeper depths with it. And what do I mean by that? It's the last thing you usually need in the world, especially if you wanna deal with your mental emotional state, around a new diagnosis, especially something like cancer, whether it's you or a loved one, the last thing you need is, you know, a 1,000-page book to try and sort through how you're going to deal with that. What I tried to do here with the help of a lot of editors and a lot of great editorial assistance from many, many angles was to make it very real and make it very personal, but to the point. So, for example, there's a couple of things that the reader can do. One is they can look at the table of contents here and say, you know, I kind of have these things, I kind of understand these things, but the place I'm stuck is— and then you can fill in the blank. Maybe it's dealing with family members. Maybe it's, what am I supposed to expect from this process? Maybe it's, you know, it's not me that has the cancer, but it's a child. Maybe Maybe it's, you know, I don't, I don't know where to start. So they can literally kind of go into the table of contents and you can cherry-pick and just start where you feel you need it. The other thing, as we all do, we all are unique humans. We've lived our whole life. We have all of this experience that goes on. And so there may be places that we have to do this little journey to go through to get more empowered as a patient. Or be an empowering family member or caregiver for a loved one. But we might be, you know, really able to sail through steps 1 and 2. Step 3 is something we've never really done well with in any way. And so we need some resources. The way the book is set up is to give you the tools you need, the way to get started. And then if you really need some deeper resources, let's say it gets to something like dealing with family. And that can be, you know, really enriching and wonderful, or you can have family members that are, you know, really upset by the diagnosis. And so their being upset is not helping your mindset, et cetera. And so you can read through the, you know, dealing with friends and family and get some good ways to get started, but you might need some deeper resources. And in the resource section, I've got a lot of deeper resources you can go right to. And with, you know, with the internet, it's easy to get to most of those things. There are some other things. For example, there's some really great books that dovetail in with the process of moving towards empowerment. One, for example, is the book by a colleague of mine, Samantha Brody. We had her on the radio program one time, and her book is called Overcoming Overwhelm. And she was able to— she published that book About a year and a half ago, I think maybe two years ago, and she goes through taking you to how to organize and clarify things in your life so that you have a way to have a purpose and and a focus, etc. And the reason that that dovetails well is sometimes that's where people get stuck. They've been doing things for everybody else around them. Now suddenly they're very ill or they have a very ominous diagnosis, and they have to work through that to kind of make themselves. a priority. So there's many, many things like that. So the purpose of the book being smaller is it's easier to read, it's fast read. You can give it to family and friends or other cancer patients who maybe don't like to read, and it takes you through easily. Another one of the reviewers that I sent it to sent this question and said, I really was intrigued by the way that you used the patient stories as you wrote each chapter to illustrate the Benefits of going on this journey towards being an empowered patient or caregiver. Where did that come from? Well, there's 2 groups of stories from patients that I have. So one is a juxtaposition of 2 people, and they're named— not their real names, of course— but they're named Bob and Gia, and they're patterned after people that I had as patients over the years. And what I tried to do with these 2 people, Bob and Gia, is compare and contrast somebody who takes this, you know, really earth-shattering diagnosis and works their way through it and gets help and moves forward and becomes empowered versus somebody who gets stuck, which is very common. It's human nature. People get stuck. And the other person stayed really in that state of you know, being stuck, being angry, you know, having a lot of negative emotions, and tell the story of how they dealt with these things as they go through these different parts of the book, and really how that affected the outcomes with their cancer and their quality of life, etc. So I thought that was very, very useful, and the reviewers really did like it. Now there's a second place where the where patient stories come up. And this might've been also what the reviewer was asking about. And the second place where the story, the patient stories come up is we have a whole chapter where I was able to interview either patients or family members and let them give feedback so that maybe you're a loved one or a friend or a colleague of a cancer patient, or, you know, you have someone in your life and they have a child with cancer or something. These people who were very brave to put their stories in, they allowed me to use their names and, you know, everything just as is. They really lay out some wonderful ground rules for how to interact with somebody who's got this diagnosis. What's going to be the most helpful? What sorts of things are going to be areas where you want to enhance and what sorts of things are going to be areas you don't want to get into. You want to, you know, not go down that road with somebody who has cancer or has someone in their family with it. And so they were really great because, you know, the whole book is advice and it's advice from me as a doctor who's dealt with people with cancer for a long, long time. So I've been in the middle of it. But this is advice that's a little bit more personal even because it's advice from the first-person experience of, you know, for example, you, you know, are hearing from someone whose child has cancer and how to deal with that and what they felt were the best things, you know, to do to help the family. What are the things you don't want to do? Also from, you know, adult children who are caregivers of a parent who had cancer and went through the the process and the journey. What's that like and how do you support those people and what's the best way to interact with them? And then direct adult patients who have cancer. And again, you know, what are the things that they appreciated when people interacted with them about? What are the things that they didn't appreciate? So those things, there's no, you can't beat experience when it comes to that. And again, you know, a million thanks to everybody who contributed contributed for that particular chapter. Now, another thing that came up, somebody that we, as I said, it was a few days ago, we got the author's copies with, if you've not written a book, you, when the book first is going to come out, they send you an author's copy or copies. And so they sent us a box of them. And you can give those to people to do reviews as well. And so, as I had a couple of local people lined up, I was able to get these copies to them rather quickly. And somebody said, well, I see that you have a foreword written by Dr. Bruce Lipton. You know, isn't that the same person who wrote The Biology of Belief and a number of other books? And it's true. Yes, yes, it is. And I was, and still am, extremely honored to have Dr. Bruce Lipton write the foreword to the book. And it was really a joyous surprise. And as I said, you know, an honor for Dr. Lipton to write that. And part of the reason I'm assuming and hoping that he agreed to do it, based on the way that he wrote about it in the foreword, was The overall idea of how we have this mind and body connection to our epigenetics, which is something he writes a lot about and talks a lot about, is so critical when people are dealing with either preventing illness or dealing with having illness or supporting someone with illness. And all of his work is aimed in that direction of trying to explain that with what we know about science, science now, and the science of epigenetics, which are the things that actually control your genes. So as opposed to your genes being a complete hard blueprint, epigenetics help to turn them on and off as they go around. Well, when you're looking at epigenetic signals and triggers, there's a lot of them that come from the way that you hold things in your mind. And the whole point of my book, when he wrote forward for is it's very important for you to get that place in your mind set up so that you're empowered. And my book is about tools to get there. So yes, that is the same Dr. Bruce Lipton. I'm very, very pleased and honored that Bruce wrote the forward for it as it goes through. Now, there's also a couple of other specific questions. And so one of them, because you don't— unless I happen to have sent a book to you and you're listening to this, you probably don't have the book in front of you. But let's just take a particular chapter here. So chapter 2. Chapter 2's title is I Have Cancer. I Feel Lost, Angry, Confused, and So Much More. And down below that, I wrote, you just got some of the worst news a human can get. You're normal. So chapter 2 goes through a little bit about Gia and Bob and talks about them and talks about how they dealt with their initial diagnosis and the shock of that, etc. And then it gets into, well, okay, so Gia and Bob are real people, but they're a little bit fictionalized. How does this Help, or how does this guide me as a patient or as a loved one or a caregiver to start to move from the shock that I have towards being more empowered and towards, you know, having a better mental-emotional place in my mind for everything? Well, it goes through, and the first thing I do is kind of break down, okay, this is This is what we see in those stories that relates directly to what I see in people in real life who have these diagnoses. And then one of the things that I worked with the editors on, which was a really wonderful idea, and I had hoped that this is the way we would do it, is each chapter at the end has a little shadow box. And again, this makes the book easy to read, and you can just go right to the shadow box if you want. But each of the chapters has a next step shadow box. And basically it says, well, okay, what are the next steps? So one of the things that I do to try and help is to just put some framework around all of this is to talk about the stages of grief that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross brings out. Now, stages of grief are relating to loss and that sort of thing. And so people say, well, you know, as a cancer diagnosis diagnosis the same exactly. It's not quite the same, but from my personal experience in watching cancer patients and talking to them, et cetera, it's quite similar when you get down to it. So yes, there could be little changes and differences, but those stages are really the ones that most humans go through as they go along. So in chapter 2, the next steps, for example, the first next step, which has some things is, you know, recognize that the stages are real. These are not just something someone made up. If you've gone through anything, you know, whether it's a loss, a big change and a shift in your life, any, anything that's very emotionally taxing on you, you'll notice that these stages really hold true. Now we'll talk about how They're not the same for everybody. So some people have more of one and less of another or whatever, but they really do hold true. So the first thing is, you know, recognize that these stages are actually real. You want to honor them and you want to say, okay, I— even if you have to suspend disbelief early on because we're early in the book, you want to realize that these are normal and they don't mean that you're frail or fragile. They mean you're human. And the first part to moving past the devastation of a diagnosis of any kind towards being empowered with it, because you're going to have the diagnosis, so you have the choice to be either disempowered or empowered. And, and I leave it up to you in the book which way you want to go. But let's say you do want to do that. The first thing to realize is this is a normal human process that we all have to go through with big Life changes. The next thing is, you know, we all have different ways of dealing with things. We all have different amount of time that we may spend at different stages. So for some people, you know, the shock and disbelief and everything at the beginning doesn't last very long. But they might find that they're getting more angry, and that's very normal. That's a very normal, healthy step. You might also have people that feel like they got past a certain stage and then something happened. You know, a lot of times what happens with patients who have cancer or family members is they're going and they're getting treated, and then suddenly they get some bad news, you know, like their tumor markers went up or, you know, there's some metastases or something. And that kind of thing can throw you back. And so you might have to actually kind of cycle through a part of the process again. That's totally normal and fine. So trying to break this down in the book and say, look, this is normal. It's also normal to sometimes recycle through some phases. But the real important part is that you do something about it and you wind up moving forward. That's very, very important. The next big step that I list is You need to know that however you move through them, it's your way. It's nobody else's way. And so while there is an outline and there's a way that we lay out in the book to talk about how best to navigate all of this, that doesn't mean that you can't do it your own way. This is a construct through the book, whether you use the stages of grief or other words for them. It's a construct through the book to help you navigate and not miss parts. And so that You are just open and honoring of things as they go along. Very, very important. The next big step is know that close supporters and loved ones are going through their version of all of this as well. And that's an important thing to keep in mind. So if you're the patient, obviously you have to focus on you, and that's important. But you also need to understand people may react to you because they're unsure what you're thinking, how you're doing. And while it's not your responsibility to, you know, take care of anybody else's emotions, etc., it is good to remember that other people need help as well, and other people are going through this shock. Or if you are the caregiver or loved one or coworker of somebody who has cancer, that is, you know, it demystifies what's going on in the mind and the body of the person who you care about. The next thing, which I think is very important because I've heard this from a lot of people, and that is that recognizing that acceptance in this schema of going through these stages is not resignation. You're not saying, well, I accept I have Cancer in this case, and and that's it for me. That's not the point of acceptance. The point of acceptance is is accepting that all of the steps that came before, you know whether they were you know disbelief or bargaining or anger or you know whatever it is you were doing, those were normal. But you're accepting that I have this issue within myself or my loved one does or my friend does. And while I wish that they didn't have this going on, I am also logical enough to say this is going on with them or with me. And so what do I do about it? So as opposed to being accepting and then resigning to your diagnosis and letting the diagnosis just wash over you, what you're really doing is accepting that Yeah, this is a process. It's an important process that I'm going to go through, and I am going to continue to move forward and become empowered. And I, I accept what's going on with me. And then the last next step in that chapter is, you know, to find outside help if you need it. We give some ideas about different types of providers and helpers that can help you as you go along. Now, not everybody does this. Probably would be great if we all, you know, whether we have a bad diagnosis or not, get help from time to time, talk to people who can be objective, do things of that nature. But when it's something like this, whether it's you're the, you know, the spouse of somebody with cancer, or you're the patient, or you're a friend, It's a lot to deal with, and sometimes you can get lost in the weeds. Now, the purpose of the book is to help you kind of see where the weeds are and move forward and move towards that place of being more empowered from whichever side you're coming from. But there are times where things are just so overwhelming because we never just come to something like this, like a diagnosis, etc., out of the blue. We've lived our whole life, and that life might have included Other tragedies, other upsetting things, and all of that that have really taken you, uh, and, you know, kind of knocked you down a peg. And now here you're going through this new thing called cancer, and that's throwing you off as well. So outside help can be very important, and, you know, we want to destigmatize the idea of, uh, getting help when you need it. Now, other things that have come up were— I got a couple of bits of feedback, you know, this week again, as I've sent the book out for people to read and review. And like I say, the healthcare providers that deal with patients with cancer And I think it's likely because, you know, those of us who do that, we all have similar— we don't have the same experiences. We all have similar experiences too. You know, it's not so much the people that do really great and have, you know, they figure it out and all, but it's our patients that are having trouble and they kind of do get stuck in the mental-emotional side, gets really heavy. And we as the provider might be focused on, you know, as I say, the, you know, the the physical biochemical part of the cancer problem. And we might not be able to get deeply into the mental-emotional side. Maybe that's, you know, not, not what we do. The feedback I've gotten is that generally speaking, what the healthcare providers who deal with cancer patients see is that the book is to the point enough where it really can help people get through, even if they're getting outside help. Because the other part about what I tried to get to in the book that the reviewers confirmed that I was able to get to was showing that this is not only normal, but these are normal steps that people go through. And so the patient or the loved one can have a top-down view of the process and say, all right, you know, yes, I wish I wasn't in this process. It wasn't— I wish I wasn't having trouble. But I'm here. I want to move to a place where I have the healthiest mental-emotional connection to the diagnosis and getting better. And so this is a way to do it. And, you know, pretty much universally, the healthcare providers who reviewed it saw that as a very beneficial, positive movement forward from the advice as given in the book. Now, chapter 3, um, obviously follows the chapter that we just talked about, and it's titled, How Am I Supposed to Feel and Think, and Does It Really Make a Difference? So what we're trying to do there is to, uh, go past chapter 2 where, you know, you're sort of laying it out there. Yes, I have cancer. I feel lost, confused, angry, etc. And now we've made this case that you have this process that you need to work through and that it's a repeatable process, although you may do it your own way. But really, Chapter 3 then gets to where the rubber meets the road. And, you know, people will say, all right, I take it that it is important. I have to work on the mental-emotional journey. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to feel and think right now? I just feel upset or confused or angry, or you know you fill in the blank. And I think a real important thing about chapter three I tried to get into early in the book was does it make a difference? So one of the things in the book, and as I mentioned with outside the box cancer therapies, it was very. Very, a lot of scientific references. And we really got into, you know, here's all of the data behind these treatments and why that's important. In this book, because this was largely from direct experiences that I had had with cancer patients, and then some background science, there's not nearly as many scientific studies mentioned. But one of the places I did reprint some excerpts from some studies, and they're They're listed so you know who wrote them and everything. We're in the areas of does it matter to become an empowered patient? And specifically, if you have cancer, does that actually change your experience as a patient in regard to your experience with cancer? And so the short answer is both from my and others' personal view dealing with patients and families, yes, it makes a difference. But also there's actually been scientific research to look into the idea of patients being empowered or being disempowered, and does it make a difference? And the answer is yes, it makes a difference in 2 areas, certainly in your quality of life. And when it comes to dealing with any chronic illness or cancer, quality of life is paramount. People with cancer just happen to have a diagnosis that may give them a shorter amount of time statistically, but we all don't know how long we're going to be here. So when we're looking at length of life, length of life is relative, and certainly we try and do everything we can to get as long a life as possible, but there's no point in living a long time with no quality. And just about every patient I've ever had at some point gets to that issue and says, what can I do to maintain the best quality that I have while I'm here? So if I've got, you know, 90 days here, or if I've got 9 years, or if I've got 50 years, what's the best way for me to gain the most quality of time and life with those I love and what I want to do while I'm here? Yeah. So that's the whole thing around quality of life. So to the question of, does it really make a difference? That's the point of laying that out. Now, just like the other chapters, I have Bob and Gia kind of comparing and contrasting, kind of show how they dealt with how they were feeling and thinking and all of that, probably for better or worse, depending on which story you want to look at. But it doesn't. So again, I have a couple of quotes from some science and there's, there's a lot of other science if you want to look it up, et cetera. But I didn't take a lot of pages to get through that. I just want people to get the idea that within your own personal desires as the patient or the caregiver, you need to understand that it is important and it does make a difference to be on this journey. Now, another thing I bring up repeatedly in the book is just because it's important and it makes a difference doesn't mean that you have to buy into it. And so what does that mean? We all have the option of doing things, let's say, not related to cancer, but let's say, you know, something that's fairly universally accepted as not good for our health, say smoking. Okay, smoke cigarettes. Generally, although there's exceptions to every rule, smoking cigarettes is not associated with long, high quality of life, you know, outcomes in people. So we can know that, we can understand that that's not going to be good for us, but we still have our own free will and we can decide if we want to participate in that, which would have negative consequences or not. And so the book really tries to come from a nonjudgmental point of view and say, if you disagree with the book, you may agree that yes, these are steps we can go through and being empowered, it might be good for other people. That's not for me. I want to stay mad, or I want to stay whatever. Fine. That's your choice. And we want to leave that open. Now, as I generally say, and I think it comes up first in chapter 3, If you're still reading the book, you probably are of a mind that this is something you want to do and you want to participate in. But as I say, there are some people that don't want to, as you find out in the book. One of the stories I tell about one of the patients, that was not their choice. They did not want to be empowered. They didn't. They wanted to stay mad the whole time. And that affected their quality of life and probably their length of life. So that was very important. So at the end of chapter 3, in the Your Next Steps section, there are what I call the 6 OKs. So these are 6 things that are just fine for you to experience. And in fact, if you're not experiencing some or all of them, you're probably not human. So the first thing is, it's okay, it's a process. It's okay that, you know, I'm not going to wake up and be You know, enlightened and feel like I want to be empowered and stuff today. I just got a bad diagnosis, or my family member did, and I'm a little bit, you know, thrown off by that. It's okay that we've got this process. It's also okay that you go at your own pace, and you get to decide. You know, it's sort of like some people decide, you know, to change their diet, and some people do it all overnight, and their diet's different in the morning. Other people, they take a couple of months, and they kind of do it in increments. and do stuff differently. It's your choice. It's what you want to do. And the most important thing, as I keep bringing out throughout all the chapters, is it's not how fast you do it. It's not even how— what order you go in or any of that. It's that if you want to become an empowered patient or caregiver, that you do it, that you go through the process faster or slower. The 3rd okay is it's okay to take longer in one area than another. I have literally had people where they were, you know, they had a little bit of anger, a little bit of confusion. And, you know, that didn't last very long. But they kind of got stuck with denial, you know, or they got stuck in another stage. Everybody's got a different way of doing it. And again, the point is, it's okay. You just want to remember that the big picture is, is that we're dealing with these things as they come up, and then we're going to move forward. And if we have to go back and revisit something, that's fine, we do it. And that brings up the 4th, okay, it's okay to go back and relive a stage. Very, very common, as I said earlier, you get a reversal, you get some bad news, you know, some other thing happens in your life, because one thing that we all find out is once you get a cancer diagnosis, your life doesn't stop. You still have bills, you still have your job, you still have family, friends, you have everything else going on. Things can happen that throw you off in the process, and that's not only okay, it's normal, and you just have to be mindful that it's still okay. Number 5 is it's okay to have bad days. I don't know how you can go through a major diagnosis and process without having bad days. Because that's part of life. This is not, you know, unless you're actually mentally disengaged from what's happening, there's no way to, you know, to process and say, well, yeah, you know, I have cancer, but I just don't think about it that much or whatever. Now you can kind of get to the other side and you've processed through things and you have an enlightened version of that. That's, you know, I am Cancer is what it is, but I am what I am. And, you know, this is how I'm dealing with it. But I have seen people also who, rather than going through and dealing with it in a way that's, you know, healthy and empowering, they just kind of stay in that space of denial and say, no, it's, it's no big deal. Don't— I'm not worrying about it. But they're also not very empowered. So bad days are just part and parcel of the whole thing. It's okay to just take a break. Yeah. You know, you might have a day where you decide, I'm not gonna try and work to be empowered today. I'm just gonna be me today. And today sucks. And you know what? That's all right. That's just the way that it is. Or physically, maybe you don't feel well today because of the cancer, because of treatments or whatever, or you're just tired, you know, and you're trying to work and dealing with doctors and all this stuff. And I'm on these pills I've never taken before. Geez, you know, it's just, it's okay. And the 6th and final okay is it's okay to want to give up. That's kind of common. When you are dealing with a process as deep and as heavy as a diagnosis of cancer for you or someone you love, there are days where it's not only a bad day, it's just days where you want to say, you know, the heck with it and give And the point of all that is sort of like with the bad days. It's not that you want to give up and, you know, just quit and pack it in or, you know, do yourself in or whatever, because those are all normal thoughts people have. But it's okay just to, you know, just to have a bad day and decide this is overwhelming. Not every day you are going to have the total wherewithal to power through everything that's going on. And you have moments where you just, you just want to quit, you just want to check out. And the important part is that's human. That's part of being human, that's part of processing something heavy and big. But it's also part of moving on. And so sometimes, you know, the better part of valor Is wisdom, and the wisdom to say it's okay. I'm just going to pause for a little bit. I'm just going to be me. I'm going to maybe do some things to help get some energy back into my system. I'm going to do some things to help just kind of clear my mind out. Maybe I'll talk to someone who's helping me, my therapist. Maybe I'll talk to a friend that's very supportive. But I'm just going to put everything else on pause and realize that my desire to quit doesn't mean I'm actually going to. Quit, but it means that I'm in a real fragile place. And that's okay. It's totally okay. Now, aside from the questions that were sent in, because we're winding down for our hour here, and we'll have more shows, we'll have another show next week. But aside from that, we only got through 3 of the 10 chapters that are in here. So we'll have more to talk about as we move forward. We, we talked really a lot about the first 3 chapters and kind of how, how the book is set up, etc. So just as we go through the last few minutes here, I wanted to give a couple pieces of information. So first, there's the book. It's called Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment, and it's by Lioncrest Publishing. books out. They published a number of books, but some other books that are currently sort of viral out there in the marketplace, not about cancer, that Lioncrest has published. They've been a really wonderful publishing partner. So Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment, that's out there. And it officially comes out on the 6th of October. So if you're listening live or in the few days around it. That's just in a few days from now. It will be on all of the online book ordering platforms. So you can get it from, for example, Powell's Books, you can get it from Barnes Noble online, get it from Amazon, and get it from Amazon US, Canada, etc., any, any way from Amazon. As I said, the first 2 forms are going to be the physical book that you see right here, and also a Kindle for version that's going to be available. One thing I will tell you, because this is how they do the book business, is they're going to come out with a heavily discounted Kindle version on the launch day, so on the 6th of October, in just 5 days from now. And what I don't know, because these are decisions made by people other than myself, is I don't know how long they do that initial Kindle version on the sale, but if you're interested in the book, and you don't want to, you know, order a paper copy, but you really want to look at the material, they're going to have, I believe it's a $0.99, you know, it's a really, really cheap version of the Kindle that'll be available that first day or the first days that the book launches. So I think that that's going to be a very important way to get ahold of the book. Most people use Kindle. And that's one way, of course, The physical book that I'm holding here in my hand. So it does exist. The physical book will also be available from all of those outlets that I just mentioned. Some people have asked if, because Outside the Box was in some, you know, bookstores, and it still is when it gets restocked, is this one going to be in any physical bookstores? As we come out with it, it may be later. But unlike Outside the Box, this one is mostly going to be You know, sold either through Kindle or as the physical copy through one of your online booksellers. And we may work backwards toward getting into bookstores later, but it's just a lot easier. There's a lot less excessive printing. The other thing that we really did with the publisher is the physical copies, if you order them, are done through printing on demand. So we're not burning up resources and paper and all that that are not needed. Because that's, you know, that's something that everyone's trying to, you know, be good about. And again, if you're listening live and you're in the world of COVID-19 and you may not be going out to a lot of stores or minimizing contact, again, you know, Kindle, there's no contact, it's going to download to your Kindle, or the physical book will come in a package that you can open up carefully and not have any direct person-to-person contact if that's that's important as well. But we're just about out of time, and I just want to thank everybody who's helped to get the book to this place where it's just about ready to drop on the 6th. Again, Amazon or any other online seller will have that for you. First day, there's going to be a big sale on the Kindle version if you just want to try it out. And again, the title is Cancer: The Journey from Diagnosis to Empowerment. I'm Dr. Paul Anderson. I'm the author. and I'm also the host of this program. But we are out of time for today. This has been Medicine Health with Dr. Paul Anderson. I'm Dr. Paul, and I will see you all on the radio or somewhere else soon. If you're looking for me on Instagram, it's just @draonline, Dr. A Online. Same on Facebook. But I'll say goodbye for now. See you all in a week.