Stories of Hope, Stories of Healing: Surviving Aplastic Anemia and Creating Skin Sips

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode. Hello everyone, Dr. Stillman here again, joined today by Mary Rankin. Mary and I have been friends for years now. She is the founder of Skin Trends, creator of SkinSips, one of my favorite products, and one of my patients and newsletter subscribers. Favorite products. And today we are here to talk about Mary's story, how she created this amazing product, what it does, how it works. And I think her story is very compelling, so I'm excited for her to share that, I think for the first time publicly, of recovery, because this is a, this is a Stories of Hope, Stories of Healing podcast episode, but it's also about how that turned into her creating a great product. So Mary, thank you for joining me.

Thank you.

I like to start by asking everyone who they are and where they're from.

I am Mary Rankin. I am from Dallas, Texas, originally from Michigan and Ohio. Went to school years and years ago at SMU, ended up staying here, had a family here, and spend most of my time here between here and Cabo San Lucas. But yes, and have two grown children and boy and a girl. So here we are.

And how did you wind up creating a line of— it's actually, I think it's— how do we characterize it? Is it a functional beverage? Anyway, how did you wind up—

it's a nutraceutical powder stick pack that you add to water.

I've got mine right here on my desk.

Yeah, I've had 3 today. It's probably why I have endless energy.

So tell us how you wound up creating this product, because you don't have a background in health and wellness previously, do you?

No, my background is not in health and my background is actually very diverse. Did some private investing, did actually did some movie investing. I'm probably one of the few people that actually invested and made money in the movies as a private investor. But anyway, I about 5, 4 or 5 years ago, 4 years ago, I was formulating a product. I was very intrigued with actually friend, colleague of yours in, in New York, and integrative health doc. And she and I became friends, and we wanted to create a product that you could use for hangovers, people that overdrank, because the inflammatory effect of alcohol. And we started creating this product, and She had the, she had it down. The formula was amazing, but there was one drawback with the formula. It was going to have to go through FDA approval. And I was like, okay, this is going to be a nightmare. And who knows where it'll be in 1 year, 5 years, you know, that drill. So I ran across an ingredient when I was doing all this research. And at the same time, it was right after the vaccine came out and I had one shot and I felt a lot of social pressure because I didn't want to have the vaccine. And this doctor I was working with out of New York, Dr. Nemovar, was pleading with me not to have the vaccine. And I went ahead and had one injection and went back from— this is an interesting story— I went back to get my second and I was having like horrible anxiety. About it. And so I go back, I check in, and I ask where the ladies' room is. I go to the ladies' room, I go, 'I can't do this,' and walked out the door. Now, my chart today— this shows you about our system— my chart today says that I had both injections, and I did not. Now, I just checked in, they didn't follow up, so they— that's how my chart is listed. And it was listed Probably within— I remember it was within a couple days, it said I was fully vaccinated. So anyway, I would say it was 2 to 3 months after, maybe not even that long, I went to my concierge doctor. I was having my blood work done for like annual checkup. Usually my blood work was pristine, and I know this MD very well, and he called me up and he said You gotta come in. And he said, your blood work's terrible. I said, what do you mean terrible? He goes, how are you feeling? I go, I'm just super tired. And he said, your white cell, red cell, platelets are just off the chart bad. So I was like, what does that mean? So we, I go back into his office. He said, I need to send you to a, hematologist-oncologist. I go to this doctor, I'm not going to mention names, but I went to this doctor and they said, "Do you take supplements?" I go, "Yes, I do." And I started listing them and he said, "Are you on hormone replacement therapy?" "Yes, I am." "I want you to go off all your hormones and all your supplements." And I looked at him and I said, "You're kidding, right?" And he said, "Look, Mary, I do this every day. I keep people alive. You've got to go off all supplements." If he goes, if I had a supplement line of my own, I'd be making millions of dollars. And he said, and it progressed, the conversation progressed into the, I had to give my mother-in-law the end of life speech. And I went, stop. And I said, you and I are not gonna get along. And he said, why? And I said, first of all, I'm not gonna go off. My mother was at the time was 96. I said, my mother's been on estrogen her entire life and had 7 children. So she was on and off of it. Felt terrible when she was off of it. And I pretty much parallel my mother, and I'm not going to do that. And I don't agree with what you're saying. I said, in, in the best of worlds, if I lived on a farm, could raise my own— if whether chickens, beef, whatever— and my own vegetables, organic gardens, fruits, whatever, maybe at that point I could do that. But I'm not going to do that. We don't live in a world like that. So he said, "I'm going to send you to one of my colleagues, and I want him to talk to you." I go see his colleague, and I told him how bad I was feeling. I went to see his colleague who's director for bone marrow transplant at Baylor Hospital here in Dallas, and he was like, "You're not dying, but you have a very serious problem." So the long and short of it, we went through, I had to have blood transfusions, a lot of stuff going on. And I just, I felt so bad and fatigued. And I went to him for several months and then I ended up going to, through a friend of mine who's a doctor in Houston. And he said, you need to see one of my colleagues that trained under me. And he's now the chairman of MD Anderson, leukemia, Dr. Hagop Kmtarjan, who to this day I believe saved my life.

And can we clarify a few things quickly?

Yes.

So your white, red, and platelets, those are your blood cells. By the way, for those not listening, not familiar with these lab markers, your white blood cells fight off infection and are essentially your immune system. Not all of it, but a huge part of it. Your red blood cells carry oxygen around the body and are responsible for facilitating oxygen transfer so you can make energy, so you can live. And your platelets clot when you get traumatized, your skin barrier gets broken or blood vessel breaks. And so they prevent you from bleeding to death internally and externally. And what people need to know is that these are some of the most important markers that we track. Because when they become deranged, they're going low, they're going high. It can often be fatal. And that's why doctors were telling you, you have to take this seriously. This is not a, let's check again in 6 months or call me in 3 months or 6 months, or if you have symptoms before then, it was a, this could rapidly develop into. And when you don't know, when you don't have more data than just that it's low or high, in this case it was all low. It can be anything. And a lot of the time it's some kind of cancer. If it's not a cancer, it's some kind of, often some kind of horrible autoimmune disease that ends up being life-threatening or life-limiting depending upon the clinical course. So this is the severity and acuity of the case at the time that you then got referred down to MD Anderson. Did they make that clear to you in the office or did they sugarcoat it a little bit more than that?

In the office up here?

Anywhere.

Dallas? Yes, they did. In fact, I still am monitored. I'm still monitored in Dallas for Dr. Contargen in Houston. I see Dr. Contargen again in June. But the thing is, the normal— and you can correct me if I'm wrong— the normal platelet count, which you just discussed, the normal platelet count for a woman is 150,000 to 400,000 being the high, and mine was at 40,000, and it was bouncing between 40,000 and 60,000.

And we have a rule of thumb, because it's not a very good rule in the sense that it's not very predictive, that under 50,000 platelets, the patient can spontaneously bleed out at any time and bleed out, die. Often the bleed is into the brain because you can't bleed into your brain much without creating what we call mass effect, which basically means that your brain, that is you, runs out of space to exist because blood is coming into the cranial vault. And that's a neurosurgical emergency. So the crazy thing is, and I've seen this in the ICU, is that you'll get people in who have a platelet count of 1 or platelet count of 0, and somehow they're not spontaneously bleeding, which is just one of those sort of miracles of human physiology that all of us wonder about. But then you'll get people who just drop to 40,000. All of a sudden they're spontaneously bleeding, bruising, having nosebleeds, things like that. So it's a very, it's a very tough thing to manage and a bit of a scary one for both the doctor and the patient. Do you wish that they changed anything about the way that they communicated with you through that process?

I would say that doctor, both the doctors, the hemocs that I saw here in Dallas and obviously Dr. Contarjan, they, They really did a good job communicating with me. Obviously the first doc did not, but he really did. And when I told him I want the doctor here, Dr. Purnell, that I wanted to go have a second opinion with Hagop Kantarjan, he was like, great, I know who he is. He's a god. And this, he's, he said he's helped millions of people and he's helped us as doctors. And when I went down and saw him, he immediately said, look, because I had— it was odd because my platelets were really low. I was not bruising excessively. It was bizarre because I thought I'd be bruising terribly. I was not. But yeah, but my fatigue levels were rising. So that being said, when I, when I did see him, he immediately said, I want to do we're going to do what is called ATG therapy on you. And it's an inpatient 5-day, you're inpatient. And I had no idea what he was talking about. And he went through and explained it. And so did his nurse who's been with him for, one of his nurses for 25 years. And told me it was a type of horse serum that is in, it's injected, the lymphocytes are injected into a horse. Where it then formulates antibodies and then it's brought back out, purified, and injected into a human.

Question: At this point, what had they told you about why this had happened?

They weren't sure, but he had told me that he had seen— he said, obviously we can't be positive. And he said, making a statement, if I look, if doing what I do, if I lived in, say, California, in telling you this, they would try to shut me down, but I'm, I'm seeing a rise in blood issues from the vaccine. I'll just tell you that. And that was before people are coming out with, with more and more issues on clotting. And mine was the reverse, but he said, I'm seeing a ticker going up due to the vaccine. And so he said, just know you're not having any more vaccines.

How do you think he would feel about you sharing his explanation to you publicly on a podcast?

I don't know. I'd have to, I'd have to ask him, but he's, he's pretty forthcoming and I, I could ask him, but, and he wasn't definitive in his, with his answer. He was careful, but yet in the same, because I think because of who he is and what he does and what he has done. And I know now a lot of what he's done, like he, there was a drug taken off of the market. For leukemia that has been around for 20-some years, and it really did help patients. And he didn't tell me this story. Two other hemocs told me this story and said that he was instrumental in going around the world and getting signatures about why they needed this drug back on the market. I guess Big Pharma wasn't making enough money off of it, so they pulled the drug. And it's now back on the market, but they needed these hematologists, oncologists around the country, the world, wherever, needed this drug for their patients.

So he was very, I'll say reserved. And I have to say it's very interesting being a clinician and having direct contact with patients who give you a signal for, and it's not necessarily in my world safety data on cancer drugs, because I'm not a cancer doctor or hematologist, but it is I'll have patients who try, say, supplements, not gonna name any names or products, but they did— don't have a good experience. They feel worse. And so it's really interesting because you don't want to throw a product under the bus that doesn't deserve it, but then you have to balance that with your duty to inform the public, regulatory agencies, et cetera. The regulatory agencies are often so slow to move as to be almost not helpful to notify. And that's part of the bureaucratic process. But how do you think, because this was now what, 3, 4 years ago that you would've had this initial conversation with him?

Yeah, it was almost 4 years ago.

And his suspicion at the time was high enough based upon his anecdotal experience to tell you not to take any more of them, correct?

Correct.

And he was unequivocal about that?

Yes. And he was, he told me that his nurse told me that, and I'd already told him, I said, I'm— there's no way that I'm having another one.

Did, did he become more forthright and convicted of this as you went on in your relationship with him as a patient over the last 4 years?

No, I would say that we had minimal discussion about specifically the vaccine because I was where I was and what he needed to do was treat me to try to get me well.

Sure.

And that's where we were. He's, this is where you are and we've gotta get you. And he, he wasn't sure at the time, but he said the ATG, he had so much response to, and you know, there's bird serum and there's horse and he tests you for each one. And so he had so much response and he said, I have to put a label on you that you have acquired aplastic anemia. Anemia. But did he go back into that? No. But I bet you if I asked him today, I would have— he would have a stronger feeling. I've just— I've looked at everything that's happened, and I'm sure he has too. You look at what happened to Peter McCullough. He was almost crucified early on, and now he's speaking to everybody. About the problems with the vaccine.

Absolutely.

But that said, I was treated and it did, it took a while. I did see my numbers start to elevate and, but I still had the fatigue issues. And it's interesting that I started formulating this product because I read about the main ingredient in it. And I asked Roxana, Dr. Nemovar, I said, can you get me the white papers? On this because I read, I went to the website and read about it and then I got the white papers on the SOD out of France.

That's superoxide dismutase for those who don't know what SOD is.

Yes. And I started reading on it, I was thinking, why don't we have this here? Because we grow melons here and the minerality in the soil is just so completely different because My family has a vineyard in Napa, and they're like, my brother said, I can grow this. He couldn't.

Interesting.

Because his minerality and his soil by his winemaker was the closest to Provence, but the minerality is different. It was really fascinating. And they did the clinicals on this particular ingredient that I used. That it showed all this skin benefit, okay? They just came out and how women after 30 days of daily use on 40 milligrams of this particular ingredient, the SOD, they developed smoother skin. And after 60 days, they saw 100%. So it just, I was like, okay, but if it's super high in antioxidants, I knew enough about it to go, okay, antioxidants fight free radicals in the cells. So I'm going, okay, this has got to improve energy. So what I did was I went to my formulators and I said, I want to create this product. And the first time I was like, I want it to taste like Country Time Lemonade. I don't want— I was like, here's the Country Time Lemonade. I want it to taste like that. And they did the two guys that were formulators or scientists and they were just looking at me and I was like, no, just try because everybody loves Country Time Lemonade.

Back up for a moment. What about this product convinced you that it was worth investigating at all other than the clinical results? You talked about a lot of products, a lot of things.

It's the high antioxidants. And I also knew from this company when reading it, they encapsulated it, the SOD. They encapsulated it for bioactivity. So in other words, so it'd be absorbed into the system and where you're going to absorb the majority of it into the system, you're just not going to eliminate it. So you're going to get the benefit of it. And I was very intrigued with— and I look, I'm not a doctor, don't claim to be a doctor, but I can— every— all the data I was reading on it, was just— it was higher in antioxidants than anything we have here in the US. So that was where I wanted to formulate then.

How did you get your hands on your first samples to try?

Through these two gentlemen that they work with one of the labs here, and what we did is I said I want minimal ingredients and all the flavoring has to be non-GMO. And I didn't want— I personally do not care for stevia. That's a personal thing. Excuse me. But I asked them to do it without sugar as well. So I said, use your sweeteners, but you— I don't want— I don't want— he said, what about if I told you could use less than a gram of organic cane sugar? And when it goes through fermentation, it goes to zero. I said, try it if it's less than a gram. And that's what we did. Amazing. And then we also use another sweetener from Fig Raisins. But it's— and it's— but it— the formula was amazing because it came out tasting like Country Time Lemonade.

Love it. I love that you picked that.

Yeah.

What was your initial experience with the product? You got your hands on it and—

I got my hands on it. I said, I want I want around 10,000 samples. They gave me 8,500 samples. I sampled it out for 6 months. I had one negative.

Who did you sample it out to?

Friends, family, anybody that would— said they would do it on it because all the clinicals and backup, all the clinicals were based on daily use. So I knew it wasn't a one-off product.

Smart.

So the antioxidants in it, which was explained to me, had a compounding effect, which obviously it meant when you used it over time, you were gonna reap the benefits. Yes.

And that's a very important concept that I really stress with patients because they don't readily perceive it. But the analogy I always draw to them is if you double a penny every day for 30 days, it's something like over $5 million. If you double a penny every other day for 30 days, it's only $163 and change. Yeah, so every day versus every other day is the difference between a steak dinner— maybe it's 2025, check back later, steak dinners may have gone up by the time you listen to this episode— but, and a lot of money. So I really— and patients need to hear that because if you are consistent with all the daily habits that are critical, whether we're talking about supplements or LifeWave patches or SkinSips or going outside or going to sleep at the right time or wiggling your toes in the sand or taking a walk, it compounds. And that lack of linearity, people just, they don't get it intuitively. But when they start to actually experience it, and that's something we always look for in patients who are not doing well, are you not doing well because you're only being every other day, not every day, with what we recommended that you do? And it's very consistently the case.

And yeah, I had— you're gonna, with any product, you're going to have some naysayers Sure. And look, I knew my product was clean. I experienced it myself and was continuing to experience it. I was like, holy crap, this works. I was on it for 30 days and all of a sudden— and my doctor here said, what are you doing for your fatigue? I go— and I know these Hemox are in their tight box and they're very smart, but they're in their tight box. And I was like, okay. And I have a very good relationship with this doctor here, and I was like, okay, I developed this product, and I was like, oh, he's going to just crucify me. And here it is, and it's got 6 key ingredients, and that's it. It's very high in antioxidant. I showed it, he goes, holy crap, my wife takes that. I was like, what?

Funny.

Yeah, but I just had an amazing response to it, so I thought, if I'm going to have this response and I have a serious problem. I would love to help whoever I can. And great, skin is a benefit because everybody, hey, we all like our skin to look better. And look, I'm in my 60s and people ask me all the time, how is your skin like this? And I said, I really take care of it and I drink this. And they were like, how do I get this? I want to have skin like yours.

So what was your experience with the product? Walk us through, give us a clear— and I like to start by asking How severe was your fatigue on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being unable to get out of bed and meaningfully have a life, and 10 being 5-year-old levels of energy?

I would say that back when I started going, I wouldn't say I was a 0, but I started sliding that way. I was probably a 3 to 4, but I was sliding backwards. Yes. And now, depending on the day, 9 or 10.

And this, it sounds, was the main symptom that you were dealing with, struggling with, wanting to make progress on over the course of your journey with aplastic anemia, which is interesting because it's, it's one thing to treat the disease in the numbers, bone marrow, blood counts, et cetera. It's another thing to address the symptoms going along with that. A lot of the time, the complaints I hear from patients about the conventional medical system is everyone is worried about my disease over here. Is it in remission? Is it not in remission? But they don't feel seen. They don't feel heard because a lot of their symptoms are not being treated. Now, part of that is because a lot of the drugs we have don't treat symptoms well. You look at antidepressants, they don't outperform exercise. You look at things like Adderall, ADHD medications, they control the disease, give people relief, but they have all these unintended side effects, second order effects, things like that. So this was remarkably effective for dealing with the fatigue. Was that the main symptom that you were looking for relief from?

Yes, that was what— because I was also, after I had the ATG therapy, I was put on immunosuppressants, which have a— you name it, they have every— it has a ton of side effects. And I was worried about being on immunosuppressant therapy and a growth factor for red cell that I was like, okay, how am I going to feel on this? But to be honest with you, I made it through. I'm not on immunosuppressants anymore, and I haven't been for over a year. But I can tell a difference if I miss the skin sips in I did that for a couple days and I don't know if it was a placebo effect or what, but I was like, wait, if my energy is not this high, I'm going back on it. In fact, I have people that I know and so does Dr. Niamovar that has given it to some patients for Lyme's disease and there's no claims on Lyme's disease, but they— it's the one thing that helped them. I know a woman that has been to every doctor and lives in Southern California, and she drinks probably 3 a day because you can't OD on this. It's melon concentrate. She has really struggled with Lyme disease. She's in her mid-40s. She went off of it because she had a subscription for, she said, a couple weeks. She said, I'll never ever do that again. Because she said, I was sitting in my car going, what is wrong with me? I'm starting to have the same symptoms back and I feel terrible. And she said, Mary, all of a sudden it dawned on me, I, my, I didn't do renew my subscription. And she said, I'll never do it again.

So your energy was 3 to 4. And between everything that you did, because you did more than just skin sips, you took supplements, you mentioned hormone replacement therapy, between everything that you did, Where's your energy now? 9 or 10. Who gets the credit for that improvement?

I think it's a, I think the SkinCepts has a lot to do with it, but I also think the supplements I take and you've adjusted those, which is amazing to me, especially I would say for my, for overall my gut health is incredible. Somebody asked me the other day, they go, do you ever get indigestion? I go, no. No, not since Dr. Stillman has adjusted my supplements and tested me.

We hear that a lot from patients. And sometimes it's interesting, sometimes we'll start them on things and they'll get more GI symptoms, but that's usually because things are getting worked out. And so long as we keep going and we add the right things in, those symptoms will pass and then people will have best digestion they've had sometimes in years or decades.

I think it's with everything, just hormones being adjusted, supplements being adjusted. I think there's a period that you have to look at that you're going to have a period where your body adjusts. And just because maybe the first couple of days, you know, oh, I don't feel this or I don't feel that, you got to give it a little bit of time for your system to go. Because your system could be going, what the hell is this?

On that note, I'm curious, I've been struck by the lack of feedback that I've received from people who use the product that they have any kind of negative side effects from it. And I think that's because of its unique mechanism of action. Does that agree with your experience and feedback? Because you've had more than I have as the founder of the company and the product. And if so, what is the mechanism of action? What do you think makes this really unique compared to, say, because people hear antioxidants all the time and they think, oh, I take C, I take A, I take I take this, I take that. I've already got antioxidants. I got that box on my supplement scorecard checked. I don't view this as equivalent at all. And I'd love to hear in your words what you think makes this unique.

I would say the superoxide dismutase is probably the biggest, the biggest thing because that's our, you know, our antioxidants, our first line of defense. But it's so high in antioxidants and then you encapsulate it. Encapsulate it with antioxidants. And it's tremendous to me for, because it's, I explained it to somebody who's, I don't understand that. I say, okay, think of vitamin C. It's an antioxidant. We all know it's great for you. But if it's not liposomal, what happens to it? You're going to eliminate 90% of it right out of your body.

We actually use a non-liposomal, but it's so well absorbed because it's so well made that it is remarkable the results people get.

But yours is compounded, correct?

No, we have an over-the-counter vitamin C made by a friend of mine named Russell Jaffe. It's— do you have it? Have you used it yet?

I don't think so.

I've got to get you some of it. It's so good. I actually— my afternoon—

people that buy these over-the-counter C's that are trash. They're trash vitamins.

Yes.

And I was just given a vitamin the other day. Then one of my doctors said, you need to take this.

And I was like, ah, yes, yes. I remember. Yes.

But it's a terrible formulation. I would say that is the biggest component of this. And it just, it's amazing. And they just came out with the clinicals on the superoxide dismutase in from France, from Rome, about muscle recovery and fatigue. And it was off the chain. They used athletes and they found that the recovery was incredible after, again, after daily use.

And to unpack this for people, so superoxide dismutase is an enzyme. This product has a tremendous amount of superoxide dismutase activity. It's derived from French melons. It's French melons, right?

It's a proprietary blend of French melon.

Remarkable. So they must have bred this melon to be super—

The story I heard was, and I obviously it's been passed down, but it makes sense. One of the founders of the company, I think at the time he was like 60 or whatever, in his low 60s, and he was a major athlete and he was seeing that he was doing these triathlons and everything. He wasn't fatiguing out. And he was like, There's got to be something because he was— had these vineyards and he was drinking this concentrate, juicing this out of his melons, which makes sense. And they own—

what a great story. Can I interview him?

And they own BioNerve Labs and they put the melon concentrate to the labs. They extracted it, put it through and thought, oh crap, this is so high in antioxidants.

I would love to interview this guy.

I, yeah, I'll ask one of the guys that I deal with. Great. He, it, but that's a, it's a really good story.

Yeah. So my afternoon mocktail, I actually don't know if we've talked about this, but I put the SkinSips in with our vitamin C and I may add a few other supplements here and there and it's so good. And I want to finish the point about the superoxide dismutase. So what I think is interesting about this is it's an enzyme that acts as an antioxidant. Your body makes it, you have some of it. But what happens as we get older is we run out of it, and we also run out of the means to run it, operate it. And so when you supplement the body with this enzyme— and people don't realize this, but enzymes have way more potential than like individual nutrients. You have one molecule of C, and that molecule of C neutralizes one free radical, which is great. I'm not trying to diminish the benefits of C, because it has lots of other benefits beyond that. But if you have an enzyme, it can make a reaction like that happen thousands of times a minute and even thousands of times a second, which I remember hearing in biochemistry in undergrad and thinking, your math has to be wrong, there's no way an enzyme can do this 1,000 times a second. But they assured me— and I don't know if it was a minute or a second, but it was something stupendous— like, how is it possible for something in nature, an enzyme like this, working the way that we think it works to do this much heavy lifting. But it agrees with the experience you're having in people who are using it, which is they're having results and success like they haven't had with other products, which is why we use it, recommend it, love it. And we have to get our— I've been meaning to talk to you about this, but I have to get our supply chain set up so we automatically ship it to people who join the practice. Because I, you know me, I want them all on the right things right from the get-go. And I want it to be very streamlined so that there's no 'I forgot to order that' kind of effect. You know what I mean?

Yeah, that's the— and it's interesting that people that, that will have reached out to us and said, 'I didn't order mine and I went off, and I just want you to know I'm never gonna do that again.' Yes, it's interesting how many times we hear that. But here's another, and I don't know I know this, and— but I'm going to tell you something that's bizarre, and I hope that nothing happens to me. I've been taking this product for religiously 2 and a half years, including the sampling. Okay, and they were very worried about me, like flying commercial, my immune system. Do you know I haven't even had a cold, and I've been around a lot of sick people? And I'm going, and family members that have been sick.

And you had an impaired immune system.

Yes. And I'm going, and I, I asked Dr. Panero, who's here at Baylor, I said, why aren't— and he goes, don't jinx it, Mary, just do what you're doing.

We would routinely have people who had what you have or had present to the hospital with overwhelming catastrophic infections, admit them for IV antibiotics, fluids, resuscitation. They might go to the ICU, they might not make it. There you had a real illness and obviously you know that, but for people listening, it was a very— and part of, we didn't unpack this really, but we might as well. Mary and I know each other because we're friends with Roxana Namovar, Dr. Namovar, and Roxana brought me into her practice pretty healthy because she wanted somebody with my skillset helping her people. And so when you told me what was going on with your health, when I believe we, we'd first met or we just recently met, right? I didn't do what I would normally do, which is say, oh, we can handle this with integrative functional natural medicine, what I do, partly because of the acuity and also because we have no frame of reference. If you give me the average person with abdominal pain, headaches, GI issues, allergies, autoimmune disorders, number one, we have an enormous amount of time generally during which we can figure it out without them having really serious problems, most cases. And even when they do, we can usually control them with over the— not over-the-counter, but very simple prescription medications that I'm very comfortable prescribing. But in a case like yours, there was enough acuity and enough severity that I didn't say just trust the supplements and the integrative functional medicine, because for all I knew, no amount of that in the world was going to get you better the way that going to MD Anderson would. It's one of the interesting stories from my career of, of where you, and there's, it's interesting taking care of the people I take care of. Some people I take care of are such purists that even if they had what you had, they would say, Dr. Stillman, I don't care. I'm not walking into MD Anderson. It's not who I am. I'd rather die. And I respect that, but it's such an interesting journey to walk with people as you weigh these risks and benefits and try and figure out the best course of action for them. And you've had, in my perspective, really a great outcome. You got the best of the hemocare that you got, and then you've gotten great results with skin sips as well as—

Look, I'm, I realize I'm very fortunate to have, to have seen this man. And saying that, I was, it's It amazes me because I would really like to, with this product, I wanted to help other people. In fact, his nurse down in Houston, he has a whole floor, okay, Dr. Kantarjan. I have to tell you this really quick story. His head nurse who was also training other nurses, okay, she was young but she was training, she had an entourage behind her training other nurses, very bright girl. I said, "You need some SkinSips." She looked like she was gonna fall over one night. I gave her, that's when I had all the samples, I gave her all these SkinSips and about 3 weeks later, she's, 'cause she had just recently gotten married and she said, "My husband said to tell you thank you 'cause you have made a new me. I don't come home and just wanna fall, do a faceplant into bed." And so for her next gift, when I came down to see Dr. Khatarge and I went up to the floor, she goes, what is inside a box? I go, here you go. And I gave her a box of skin sips. I said, give it to your nurses too. So there you go.

That's great. I love stories like that.

Yes, it was because she deserved it. She was great.

So Mary, any closing thoughts about your journey you'd like to share with people?

It's, it was rough. But I never gave up and I think doing this product, I think a lot of people have asked me, they go, "How did you have the, like, you had just an idea that this might work?" And I said, "Look, my whole deal is I don't care if you're 20 or 80. If you have an idea and you think that it could work, you gotta try it to see if it can work." And fortunately for me and for my health reasons because it works and I have a product that works and I'm not going to put a product out there that doesn't help others. There's— I've reverse engineered a lot of products on the market. There's a lot of crap out there.

A lot of crap. Yeah, we know. Because people come to us and they try our version of the product they bought from someone else and they get completely different results. It's really remarkable. And I love what you said there, that you— and let's, let's talk a little bit more about this before we sign off. Your attitude that I recall was always very positive, no matter how bad the news you were getting was. And it was very, I'm going to win no matter what. What would you say to people who are dealing with a diagnosis like yours about the importance of their mindset and their attitude and how they approach the kind of news you, you got more than once?

I think it's everything. And I can't tell you how important it is. I know someone right now that has a similar problem to me and she's got— I don't want to talk about it. I'm not going to talk about it. And I was like, I'm trying to help you here. Just, you know what? You got to go for it because this is life. You only got one chance. Okay. So just do what you can. Don't sweep it under the mat. It's not going to go away unless you get proactive with it. It's just especially something that serious.

So one of the themes that I hear from people who've recovered from something as serious as you dealt with is that they had a story that they were going to beat it and win no matter what. Would you say that described your mindset?

Yes, because they told me I was headed for a bone marrow transplant. I was like, yeah, I know what the odds are already on somebody that's my age for bone marrow. I think it's around 60. That's— those odds aren't good for me. I like to be up in the 90s.

So you got that news from the doctor and your internal dialogue was what?

No, I'm not doing that. We're going to figure this out. We're going to figure this out and I'm going to get to the other side.

And do you feel, because I don't know if you said this explicitly, but do you feel that everything you did between the supplements and the SkinCepts, things you alluded to already, do you feel like that's what saved you? Saved you from that?

Yes. 100%.

That's powerful.

100%. I think it does. And I don't think, I don't think I'm completely out of the woods. I know that my numbers are really stable. I know that my energy level is great, but I don't think, but I am stable. I'm not on a bunch of drugs right now. And they're, they just monitor me. I go in and have my blood work done. He's The last 5 times he's walked in, he's, do what you do, because it's working.

What did you do when you had moments of doubt or perhaps a negative?

Oh, you get those, definitely.

Sure.

I was like, I'm going to beat this. So I was really, I was determined to beat it. And if anybody came to me, I'd just go, keep keep a positive attitude. I am a big, like, reader on research. I'm like, what are they doing to me? And I'm going to read about it. Absolutely. Don't forget my, my new supplement I sent you that you're going to read too. I will. Because whatever— your supplements work.

Thank you. Take great pains in making sure that what we do works. Boy, we take a lot of energy and time to make sure it works.

Does work.

Yeah, I'm always, I'm always struck by this in every single one of these episodes. The person who's got a compelling story always says some variation on the same thing. I refuse to accept what they told me the odds were and what my likely outcome was, and I said I am going to have the outcome I want, no matter what you say. And I don't know how I'm going to get there, but I'm sure that I will find a way. And in a way, the universe will supply me with an avenue, and I just have to show up every day with that attitude, and I will make it happen.

Yeah, that's it. That's exactly it. And remember, I, I started out with a real negative from a doctor. Yeah, no. That's not me. We're not going to get along. And I told him that to his face and he just looked at me and I said, nope, you're not the— I said, you go treat who you can, but you're not my doctor.

I love it. Mary, thank you for joining me.

Thank you.

It's been a pleasure. Thanks everyone for listening. We look forward to hearing you or seeing you or you tuning into the next episode of Stories of Hope: Stories of Healing.

Absolutely. And try the skin soaps. You'll love it.

Try it. There'll be a link in the description and wherever you're listening to this, you'll be able to get.

Yes.

I think it's a discount or free shipping or something is a goodie.

Yeah, I think you have a discount. So it, and if not, we'll get that to you, but I'm pretty positive. I'll ask my assistant, but that works.

It's great stuff.

We're actually living proof.

I love it. Thank you, Mary.

Okay. Okay. Thank you.