Steve: And I said here I am sitting in the chair, five minutes after I learned that I have no more treatment.

Carlos: Did you still come back?

Steve: Yeah, I mean, I heard last week that my scan was clear and that was – I was in shock. It was a wonderful experience.

Carlos: Fantastic. So, you’re leaving Valley Cancer Institute, right?

Steve: Yes, I’m leaving tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon, when I get packed, I am tearing up the road to a little town called Tuttletown.

Carlos: What is it?

Steve: Tuttletown.

Carlos: Yeah, but which state?

Steve: Oh, it’s in California. It is north about 350 miles and that’s where I’m headed.

Carlos: So, it was a long journey over here in Los Angeles.

Steve: It was a long circuitous path. I went first to San Francisco. Actually, yeah, first I went to Palo Alto to Stanford where the doctors gave me their vision of what was going to happen. Then I went to San Francisco where the doctors there gave me their ideas. And then, my wife, what can you say? Thank you, thank you, my beloved, very wonderful wife. She said, “Okay, I’ve been researching this and you’ve gotta try Valley Cancer Institute. You’ve got to go there.”

Carlos: But didn’t – go back a bit before when you were diagnosed. What did you feel at that time?

Steve: When I was diagnosed. Well, when I was diagnosed, I think part of me already knew. It was not a shock. I’d had a cyst in my neck for four and a half years. It just kept getting bigger, which is what they said it would do – slowly, incrementally get larger. But I really didn’t have to do anything about it, because I’m a singer and they said that if they took it out, it might damage my vocal nerve. You hear that once if you’re a singer and you don’t want to surgically remove it right away.

But then I had a few other symptoms and these symptoms could be quite alarming. I actually had blood in my mouth a couple times after waking up in the middle of the night. So, that led me to go to the doctor again. The doctor eventually found out there was indeed now cancer in this cyst where there wasn’t before years ago. And, so when I found out, I learned – well, I guess I learned something I already knew at some level that I had cancer. I think that somewhere, somehow I already knew that, because it wasn’t a shock as I said.

But what it was an opportunity to look at mortality and my life up ‘til then. It’s a great gift. Very great, great gift that if everybody could do that, it’s a really good thing to do, when one reorients oneself. Now that opportunity hasn’t stopped, you see, because we all have that opportunity. As I went through – I don’t know, that was nine months ago. I went through this nine month process. I have jumped into that. You’re never out of it. Really, as a living person, you never really should be out of the idea that this life is a gift and a short flash.

Carlos: So, you appreciate that gift more than ever?

Steve: You appreciate what you know is ephemeral. It’s like a flower.

Carlos: And then when you were diagnosed, what choices did the doctors offer you?

Steve: Well, the diagnosing doctor, his first – it’s at least maybe two or three stages here. The first affair is to find out where this is, where it’s coming from, what is it? So, there’s the initial stage and he, to that end, did a biopsy on me very thoroughly in an operating room and I had cancer in my tongue and in my throat. So, they were looking for this – it’s like searching for the Holy Grail in the intro of cancer, the primary tumor and it’s sometimes difficult to find, and they never did find it. Now he put 16 or 17 holes in my tongue and the first thing they did was take my tonsils out. Later, when I healed up, they put 16 or 17, as I said, mining for the primary, holes in my tongue.

At any rate, they never found anything. I went to Stanford and the doctor there, a very competent, intelligent person, said, “Look, I think I feel it” after examining me. I think I feel it. I can get it right now. If you’re not squeamish, we can do it right here, right now, in the chair. Just right here in the examination room. He said we don’t really need an operating room. You’ve got the right color shirt on. I was wearing a red shirt and he was making a joke. I had to laugh. I said, “Okay, I’m not squeamish. You challenged my manhood. I’m not squeamish. Bah.” So, they laid me back and they gave me some Novocain, just like I was going to the dentist.

And then, the other guy held me down – his intern held me down, and he kind of got on top of me and he said, “No, you do it”. So, he handed the scalpel to the other guy and he held me down, and the student doctor was allowed to have his way with my tongue. He said, “Go in as deep as you can”. So, he took that scalpel and I thought he went all the way through my tongue. I lifted out of the chair because it was an extremely shocking experience.

And then he pulled out this plug and he said, “Boy, he got a lot of it. That’s great. Good job.” And, he said, “By the way, there’s another one over here. I didn’t Novocain this, but can you take it?” After that I said, “Yeah, I can take anything. Go ahead. Whatever. Just don’t take quite so much this time.” I couldn’t really talk. He came over on the side and that didn’t have any painkiller on it. It was just taking a hunk out and it felt like you might imagine it would feel. I jumped out of the chair again.

My wife was sitting next to me the whole time, holding onto my hand, and she was writhing in pain because I was squeezing her hand so hard. Alright, well, that’s kind of what it was. A week later, I went back and I was hurting. I couldn’t eat. Of course, that’s the thing, when you have your tongue operating on or your tonsils taken out, you don’t eat. You can’t really. And I mean, it was morphine, pretty much. For the tonsils, it was morphine and it is a very painful experience. The tongue didn’t hurt quite as bad as the tonsils.

But they were negative – all these. Then, when I went to San Francisco, he said we should do another biopsy. I said, “No, man, my tongue has been more cut up then any tongue in America, okay? When is enough, okay?” They can’t find it. These guys, they thought they knew where it was. At any rate, they all laid out the basic program, which is the standard protocol for – it’s the standard way of doing things in this state and maybe in the whole country, which has been the same way for 40 years basically.

You have a program and the program is we operate and then we do radiation and then, if we do that, we don’t need chemo. Or, we do chemo, radiation, and then we operate to clean up. Now, operate means, in my case because I had bilateral metastasis, I had little lymph nodes on both sides that had cancer in them. They wanted to do what is called a bilateral neck dissection, full dissection, which is to basically take everything out – all the glands, all of the lymph nodes, everything that has ever historically become cancerous. That’s what they wanted to do.

So, the basic program everywhere is to do this, either you start with the – I don’t know where we were when we left off, so let me just… Ah, yes. The basic program in this state is to do surgery and then follow that with radiation, in which case you don’t need chemotherapy. Or you do radiation with chemotherapy and then clean up with surgery. Now, the surgery, in my case, would have been bilateral, because I had metastases. I had little lymph nodes on both sides, plus I had the cyst that had apparently had cancer in them.

Now the problem is that the surgery was complete. It was a full neck dissection. Now, what a full neck dissection means is everything comes out, all glands, all lymph nodes and anything else that is historically shown possibly to get cancer is removed. That, after radiation, is problematic, because the healing after a full dose of radiation is not quite the same as healing the normal tissue without radiation.

At any rate, I was asked – I asked them, the doctors, so, what can I expect when this is done? And he said, “Well, the best case is a cop, who now its three years later, and he said he’s just about 90%.” This is three years after the operation and he said he’s back to wherever he’s going to be, but it’s about 90%. And that’s the best case. So, I said, if that’s the best case, what’s a kind of normal case? He said, “Well, you know, it’s better than 50%. You’ll probably be able to talk and you’ll be able to swallow.” I said, “Well, in the course of the treatment?” And he said we’d put a feeding tube in. This is at Stanford.

In San Francisco, at UCSF, they have a policy of really not putting feeding tubes in and doing everything they can do to not have feeding tubes go on, which I think is good and an improved policy over the feeding tubes. However, I did have a friend of mine, a couple of years ago, go through this and he had to have a feeding tube, which is a difficult thing. Your muscles forget how to swallow, so reeducating the swallowing process is a serious problem. Some people have a tube in for a couple of years, just because they haven’t been able to learn to swallow again.

Others, who can swallow, have their esophagus that has shrunk so much that food just won’t go down. It’s not used for anything for a couple of years. It loses its elasticity. So, in my case, I have had to have liquid food for, I don’t know, a couple of months out of the six months that I’ve been at Valley Cancer Institute and that was in the midst of the toughest part. They say that head and nose is a difficult cancer to treat.

Carlos: But after being in San Francisco, you wanted to do something else. You had seen…

Steve: Oh, we were both – it was after going to UCSF and having them basically just tell us the same thing as Stanford did with a slight twist, which was singing will probably not happen, but maybe. There was a – I’ve got the sense of a 20% possibility that I would sing, but it’s possible that I would have. I just felt it in my heart of hearts I wasn’t probably going to be able to resume my life anywhere near the same way. So, my wife and I just made the choice really that the quality of life is as important as the duration. We looked for something that possibly could offer us a higher quality.

Carlos: How did you find us?

Steve: That’s all my wife. She – I said we looked. We didn’t look. She looked. And when she saw something, she brought it to me.

Carlos: Did you find us on the internet?

Steve: She found you on the internet. That’s true. It was not the greatest of all the websites. Let me just tell you, if you go to Stanford and you walk into the oncology temple, this beautiful facility, this gorgeous cathedral to appealing. And you walk into this massive foyer with literally, not just a nine foot Steinway grand piano in the foyer, but a woman playing beautiful classical music all day long, or different people. I don’t know. There were two different people on the two times I was there. A balcony over looking it, it looked like a ballroom. Then you go in to the waiting rooms where they have full screen ambient TVs showing nature with running water, huge television screens, and you have two or three of them just like that. This is just for the cancer department.

Then you go into the examination room and they’re just like every other examination room. There’s only so much you can do to a doctor’s office, although, dentists, I just say in general, really dress them up pretty great. But Stanford is obviously, it was like almost dying and going to heaven just to walk into the waiting room.

And then you come to Valley Cancer Institute, which has no frills. It’s sort of like going from Paris to Havana. It is like sitting in a Rolls Royce and then you get out and your next ride is a taxi, okay? But you’re still going to get there. You might bet there faster in a taxi, who knows, but you’re going to get there.

So, I figured, hey, I’m comfortable with Spartan accommodations. That’s not an issue for me. What’s an issue is competency – can the people do what they’re doing or not? Now, in the case of the finest – and I have to say I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for Stanford in particular because – excuse me – as a teenager, I had retinal detachment in my left eye and when I was 20, I had it in my right eye. And they took care of me at Stanford, and I would be blind right now if it weren’t for Stanford University Medical Center, and a particular doctor, Angelo Delaporta who was a genius and just did it for me.

Now, having said that, there were some serious mistakes going down the last time I visited Stanford and we’ll just leave it at that. So, every place I’ve been, people are people. Human beings are no flawless. Everybody makes mistakes. This is something I saw right at the very top and I’ve seen it all the way down. Now, the question isn’t making mistakes because everybody does and every patient has to be responsible for their own care. It’s helpful if you have a partner like I had who is more on top of it by far then I’ll ever be, but still – it comes right down to where the rubber meets the road and where you’re standing as a patient, because you only own in this life the square yard of turf you’re standing on. The rest of it, people are looking out for their own interests. They have many interests. People have many patients. You have only got just one if you’re in my situation. At any rate, when I came here, I found competency, I didn’t find sumptuous surroundings, but I found a level of communication that I didn’t find in other places.

Carlos: Now, if you could explain a little bit that level of communication you just said.

Steve: It’s – having worked in groups a lot in my life, I’m a musician. I play in bands. I’ve played in bands since I was little, 13 when I started playing in bands. And musical communication is of a very high level. You have to have a really good communication. On stage, it’s almost telepathic. You have to be able to feel and know what people are doing, but still, it’s not always that good and when you’re sitting around a room, with a table like this one, having a conversation with the people in the organization, and there’s bands and there’s managers and there’s road managers and there’s roadies and there’s all this. So, a band of four people might have nine people sitting around a table and that kind of communication is just not quite that telepathic, but what I’ve noticed is the rule of thumb is over-communicate. The rule of thumb is to keep the channels open, even if you have to have five different things communicated to get the right communication down. It’s much better to open the communication and keep them open.

And I’ve seen a lot of that. People will communicate around here and they’ll say something and the other person will say, “Let me check on it”. I don’t know if that’s real. They’ll check on it and they’ll be right back to the other person and they’ll say, “Yeah, that isn’t quite what it is. It’s this and this and this.” Okay, so I talked to that person and I’m back. I talked to that nurse and there’s been a change. Things change around here quickly and there’s a lot of fluidity and a lot of ability to take into account other peoples situations. So, patients, for instance, find this very helpful because if I’m scheduling, there’s a tremendous flexibility on the part of the staff to accommodate me as a patient. This was a good thing. I could call in and reschedule because I was not feeling particularly well and they would push it back a little bit if possible. They would tell me when there was an opening. They would call me. The people in hyperthermia, especially the people I dealt with in scheduling most, and they were really very helpful.

But, in general, also, communication is there plus there is communication there about my situation which is good. I want to know. I want to know and I did. I felt like I did know most of the time. When I didn’t know, being a proactive person who’s been beat up a little bit in the course of his life for mistakes and having mistakes made upon me by other people, I’m very cautious about what I have done, so I’m checking all the time.

Carlos: Before you started the hyperthermia…

Steve: Oh, yeah. When I came here, my wife was – this is how it is in marriages often or in life. My wife was completely, had total faith, 100% faith that this thing – that I’d be sitting here right now saying these things.

Carlos: How did you feel when you had your first hyperthermia treatment?

Steve: Very relaxed. It’s a relaxing experience.

Carlos: Relaxed, yes.

Steve: It was relaxing. I was lying down for an hour with a warm feeling on my neck. About 45 minutes later, somebody woke me up. That’s what it was like the first time I did it. And subsequently, it was like that. Hyperthermia is a very relaxing treatment for me.

Carlos: Was there ever a time where you doubted that you were not going to be getting well?

Steve: Oh yeah. Oh, no, no, no. If you don’t doubt, I don’t think you are a human being. You don’t have a mind if you don’t doubt. One of the things that brains are set up today is to survive. And one of the ways we survive is by doubting. Gee, I don’t know, is this the right thing? Is this the right thing? But doubt, at some point, I would see people who are doing what I’m doing right now, which is leaving with a clear scan, and having a program in front of them where there’s a sense of – okay, people aren’t just dropping me off. I have a sense there’s follow up involved.

Carlos: How would you describe in general your experience having had remained at Valley Cancer Institute? How long was the treatment?

Steve: I started really having – I came – my first day here was December 15th, but I really – there was Christmas vacation and holidays. Okay. January 1st, we’ll say, that’s when I started getting the full weeks of treatment in the total program and here it is June 10th. I’ve been here 6 months basically.

Carlos: But you were off a couple of weeks?

Steve: And the beautiful thing about it in my particular case, there is a – the standard of care, as it’s usually referred to, in places like Stanford and all around this country is 180 rads per day, five days per week for six or seven weeks. That’s as much as the body can stand at that level of radiation. This is different. There’s a stepped down approach, where the radiation goes for a while at 180, steps down to 150, let’s say, down to 120, down to 100, that sort of motif. And it may be not be exactly those numbers, but that’s the basic concept.

Plus, there is – so there is the sense that no, this basic assumption that it has to be applied hot and heavy as the human frame can handle or it won’t kill the cancer. That’s the basic assumption. It won’t kill the cancer if you don’t do it that way because the cancer will have time to regroup and you’ll never get a clear scan, because the cancer will actually grow if you don’t do that. Well, I don’t know, but I’ve seen it in other people and I’ve seen it in myself, that that isn’t the case. Here with the step down, first, they don’t offer hyperthermia in the same way. Maybe that’s the ancillary treatment to the synergistic effect of hyperthermia and radiation that the other institutions haven’t figured out yet. They’re never going to figure out unless they check it out.

So, at any rate, what we have here is that I started getting sores, but Sylvia, the person in charge of giving me the radiation downstairs, said, “you know, you can back off a little bit. If this is really hurting you too much.” “I can?” “Yes. You can slow it down a little bit. I’ll talk to the doctors upstairs and make sure we’re all in agreement, but okay.” And that’s what I did. I took days off. I stretched out a little bit more. When I was really – because as I said, head, neck or throat cancer is – there’s a lot of stuff happening here; a lot of processes like breathing. When my tongue swells up, it’s very difficult for me to breathe at night and sleep. My tongue relaxes, falls back into my throat and I can’t breathe. I can breathe, but it’s tough. That was only really exasperated to the point of a real problem during the peak of my treatment.

So, by not having such intense five days, if I went for four days and had a three day weekend, just that one change was sufficient to give me comfort and to heal my sores. And suddenly, I’m a new person, that one little change.

Carlos: And how can you describe your health improvement physically and emotionally?

Steve: Oh, well, I’ll tell you. Physically, I’m still in the midst of the effects of six months of radiation and for some people, that will go on from what I understand for a couple more months. The radiation hangs in the body and continues to do what it does. I lost some weight from not eating. And I started losing weight last summer when I had my tonsils out. So, that’s real. I’ve went down to kind of a plateau. I’m not losing anymore and I’ve kind of been gaining a little, but that’s kind of been hanging in there, but I’ve never really felt bad. I felt good.

I worked out the whole time I was here to some extent or another – walked, running, I was at the gym for a while, but I instinctively, I could do what I needed to do at home by just using some free weights, nothing big, but just to keep me in shape. Swimming in the ocean, I still go swimming in the ocean. It’s something that I do. I try to stay active and I don’t eat a special diet. I don’t think that’s particularly necessary. I do feel that – I don’t think it’s very wise for a person that’s losing weight to start dieting and, at least in my own case.

Carlos: And, you mentioned before in talking that you went to go see a much respected doctor here in Los Angels?

Steve: Well, this was a fascinating experience. But before you do that, let me just tell you about the other components, the emotional components. That has been a huge thing. First of all, it’s a very emotional experience to find out you have cancer, even if you thought, like I did, somewhere deep inside that you might have cancer. It’s a very emotional experience to confront your own mortality. And the emotions are equivalent to the intensity of your living. The question is then how does one come to grips with things, the intensity of life and the intensity of your emotions. And, I guess, maybe the biggest breakthrough I had in this process occurred in the midst of it when I was able to confide in my wife some parts of myself that I had never shared with anybody.

This was a huge experience of confronting some inner demons and letting go, so that created a whole amount of psychic and emotional space. And I do feel that – also, you asked me a question about if I doubted. Yes, doubting, but at some point, one changes one’s thinking, that’s important too. Emotional space and open mindedness, because as ones becomes the other – I had to be, not just willing, being able to conceive and think of myself as completely healthy and cancer free, and hold that as a reality in my thinking and the possibility of it, the reality of it, and that started a couple of months ago and it came out of one conversation with one person. Just out of that conversation, I allowed my thinking or somehow opened up my thinking to include the possibility of health and well-being as reality.

Carlos: That’s fantastic.

Steve: Yeah. And that’s the biggest thing for me. Now, as far as this other doctor, he was a great guy. We had two doctors’ appointments and that was about a month ago with my wife and me. It was getting to a point where I know I’m getting close to the end. Okay, so I wanted an opinion. I wanted to be looked at by the best ENT I could find, so I found a much respected surgeon from Cedars Sinai, who also had one day a week as a private practice, so I was squeezed in with 26 other patients on her one day.

She examined me very thoroughly and said, “Yes, you’re doing great. Considering what you’re doing, you’re doing very well. And, by the way, those bleeding events that you had that got you, the throat and the bleeding in the throat you were talking about, that may have been the primary tumor being fractionating by your body. There may be no primary tumor. There may just be nothing and it was basically broken up by your body, but we don’t know.” And so then she went on to tell me – I said, “So, what if I get a clear scan and I’m all done over there and I’ve had all my radiation and there’s nothing there?” And then she said, “Well, then, come over to me.”

I said, “Well, what will you do after I’ve got no cancer, I’m cancer-free?” “Well, then I’ll give you a neck dissection on both sides just to make sure, to make really sure that this is never coming back.” I said, “Well, but isn’t that really kind of a lot of risk and torture for what? I mean, will that expand my life? Is there statistics about how that will do it after what I’ve done, because I don’t think you have statistics on the effects of this sort of things on people who’ve done what I did?” She said, “No, but then, by the way, if you didn’t – since you never found the primary tumor…” and I said, “yes? But it’s not there. They did a scan on it. There’s nothing there.”

She said, “Yeah, but we’ve never found it. We don’t know that for sure. I’d want to biopsy that again.” And I said, “Well, how would you do it? We have the idea that it’s way down at the base. It’s three inches down from the top of the tongue, way back in my throat way at the base and very hard to get to.” She said, “Oh, I have a way. I’ve got a drill and at the end of the drill, we put a core and we just core right on down.”

And I said, “Core?” And she said, “Oh yeah. Three eights of an inch or something like that.” “About how far?” and she said, “Oh, about four inches. We’ll go all the way down.” And then I said, “What if you don’t find it?” “Well, we’ll do another core.” “You mean right next to it?” “Yeah, we’d do another core where we thought it was.” “And if you didn’t find it again?” “Well, maybe one more. I think that’s probably all you could take.”

And I said, “Okay. Then what would happen if you did find it?” “Well, then at that point, we’d just to be safe, we’d want to take your tongue out.” And then my wife said, “Well, could he sing? Then what would he do? Could he eat?” And he said, “No, we’d take some of your leg muscle and we’d put it in and fashion you a new tongue.” “Could he sing?” and then she said, “Different.” And then she turned on her heels and walked out of the room. I gotta go. Good bye.

Carlos: How did you feel at that time?

Steve: As she was leaving, I said, you guys, you would just do this to me? I know what this is light. You’ll likely say you’re going to drill two holes in your tongue? I’ve already had 18 holes poked in my tongue. I know what it is. How can you say that? And then she split. I went to another doctor that morning or later after that appointment who was a wellness doctor and approached the thing much more like the way Valley Cancer Institute approached it, which is there’s a way to treat people that is humane as well as protective. You don’t just have to have one or the other.

Carlos: So, you said it was a long journey, but was it worth it?

Steve: Oh, yeah. Well, right now, you’re sitting in my chair asking me that question. No, there’s no question.

Carlos: If you had to tell somebody else about your experience at Valley Cancer Institute, what would you say?

Steve: Well, the first thing is, as a cancer patient, the thing you want to see is a clear scan with you not having any cancer. That’s kind of like the point in a way. Now, if they can clear – if this program can clear you out and keep it clear, it’s got a good non-return rate and Valley Cancer Institute was actually higher statistically in the studies I read on it then the standard care treatment is for throat, head and neck at least. That’s the one I checked out.

So, if you can have it go away and your chances of having it come back are better than if you went to places like Stanford or UCSF or any of these other places that are using the standard of care, then you say, well, great, what’s the downside? Now the downside has to be that you’re here for a longer time because some people have – but it’s only an apparent downside. You’re here for a longer time, but I’ll tell you what. I saw some of the patients that were released from the standard of care after they were only there for five weeks and they took months and months and months of recuperation at home. Where, as you can see, my recuperation happened during the time, while it was happening.

I’ve been recuperating. So, right now, I’m going to go ride my bike when I’m done here and I’ve already been on some of my weekends, going up to work. I worked. I took four or five days off from radiation – no, I did. I took five days off from radiation, so I could work five eight-hour days outdoors. What I do is landscaping, so I was actually installing a water feature in someone’s front yard. We did what we needed to do and we got the job done and it felt great to go back to work in the middle of having this process.

Carlos: I really don’t know this, but I’m asking it. We’re not pretending you have 100% of your voice to sing, but how do you feel about that?

Steve: I don’t have 100% right now, only because it’s not so much my larynx, my vocal cords. They’re in great shape. It’s just that my tongue is still swollen and because the radiation hangs on for a couple weeks or months, that’s going to keep – that’ll be there as long as the radiation’s there. I’ve done five really nice singing engagements while I’ve been doing this. Yeah, yeah, I have. I’ve got one coming up next weekend. Not this weekend, but the weekend after that. Previous ones – almost all of them were in the Napa Valley. That’s where I usually work, at wineries and weddings and I haven’t had any problem. I haven’t been 100%, but I’d say that right now, even during the treatment, I’ve been around 90%. I haven’t had any problems of not being able to complete the gig, like stopping because, oh, I can’t do this. No, I was able to do them all.

Carlos: It seems like you have signs of normalcy. Like you’re not…

Steve: Well, I’ve never been normal. Let’s face it now.

Carlos: Close to normal. Steve, is it possible for you to sing us just a little bit of your singing? Just any time.

Steve: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I can sing you something, but you’ll have to do something – give me a copy of this, so I can put it on my website, too, because that’s going to be humorous for me.

Carlos: Let me hear. Steve, I really appreciate you talking to us. We feel as happy as you, and it’s so nice to meet you as you are leaving. I wish I would have talked to you before, because I really enjoyed talking to you.

Steve: Yes, it was very enjoyable talking to you, Carlos. Thank you.

Carlos: And since you are leaving and I won’t see you again, I want to give you a hug.

Steve: Can I sing?

Carlos: As you go. But it was fantastic talking to you. I really appreciate it. I like very much the color of your shirt.

Steve: Whatever this is?

Carlos: I have a red shirt that is very much like that.

Steve: Yeah? I feel like I’m going boating whenever I wear this.

Carlos: Thank you so much.

Steve: Great to be here.

Carlos: Are you a tenor?

Steve: Well, actually, they would call me a baritone. That would be the…

CDC: If it’s okay with you, I will ask you some questions.

L.C.: Please.

CDC: Okay. Larry, I am very much interested knowing how your story, how were you diagnosed and what was the impression that you had when you were diagnosed.

L.C.: I was getting ready to go to work one day, shaving, showering and shaving, and as I was shaving, I noticed a small lump, which at the time -- in my neck -- and at the time I thought, well, maybe I have a little cold, fever. You know, it will go away. And it didn’t go away. And after, you know, maybe 10 days, 2 weeks, my wife said you’ve got to get this checked out. You know, it’s not just a cold. And of course I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted everything to be normal.

So I made an appointment. I went to my doctor. And he immediately referred me to an ENT, an Ear-Nose-Throat guy. And I made that appointment and I went in and he did an exam, a full exam. He went down into my throat and looked at everything. And he said we need to do a biopsy. I’m not sure I would do that again today; it would be questionable. But at the time, he’s the doctor.

CDC: Why wouldn’t you do a biopsy again?

L.C.: Well, I’ll you what. I had the biopsy done and the tumor grew. Almost immediately. Within 48 hours, it was twice the size. It was a I mean something is wrong. My body’s trying to tell me something, and something’s wrong. After the biopsy, it really began to grow. And we did the test.

The doctor called me in a couple of days later and, you know, in our society, the most feared disease, the most dreaded words anybody could hear. The test came back positive. You have squamous cell cancer. And I knew I had something. I knew it was a tumor of some sort. I was hoping it was benign. It wasn’t; it was cancer.

And for me, I just -- it was overwhelming. It consumes your breath when you first hear it, because cancer in our society, it’s a death sentence. I’m not a doctor. I know -- what do you read? People dying of cancer, you know, chemotherapy, the pain. Everything happens and your life flashes right in front of your eyes.

 I have a lovely life. I have a great family. I have two young boys and that’s what flashed in front of me instantaneously, were the boys. This can’t be happening to me. And so you go through the denial. You go through the anger. You go through fear. You go through anxiety.

And the doctor began to tell me my options, according to him. And my options according to him were surgery, chemo and radiation. And he wanted to do about a four or five hour surgery, open my neck, and do exploratory because he wasn’t sure that this tumor here might be -- this may not be the primary. I may have another tumor somewhere else. And that’s what he was going to do. And he began to tell me I very possibly will have nerve damage in my face or in my neck, be on a feeding tube and began to tell me the conventional medicine story of what might happen.

CDC: So what was your reaction to that?

L.C.: Well, my father was a physician. And so I learned a long time ago nobody has all the answers. And it’s your responsibility to take care of your own healthcare, to manage. It’s you. And I don’t just blindly follow, you know, something like that. I knew there had to be another way to do it. I just knew.

CDC: So from the beginning you were looking for something else?

L.C.: The day I was diagnosed, I got on the Internet and I went to the library and I read about my disease. But more than anything, I was searching. I knew there had -- I knew there were alternative things out there, but a lot of what I read over the years, they were a little unusual. I wouldn’t consider drinking baking soda and a treatment for cancer that I would be willing to risk my life and my family’s future on. I didn’t want to do that. There had to be other ways.

And so I spent two months researching. I stopped everything, and that’s what happens because it’s so consuming.

CDC: Two months of research?

L.C.: Two months. Day and night. Fourteen, fifteen hours a day.

CDC: You were actually working?

L.C.: Yes. I was working. You know, when you get diagnosed with cancer, nothing matters. I mean what matters is your family. The things you own, the clothes you have, the jewelry, the cars, nothing matters but your family. I didn’t want to never see them again. It couldn’t happen.

 So I spent months researching, and during that time, and that research and investigation led me to a short list of what I felt were reasonable and logical options that I wanted to pursue before I was willing to go the conventional route and go through the surgery and the chemo. I needed to pursue this for my own benefit. And I pursued. I called everyone. I called Valley Cancer Institute. I called all the other institutes. I could have gone anywhere in the world. I could have got any treatment in Germany and London and Mexico, anywhere. And I really -- you don’t know when you’re on the phone. You don’t know who you’re calling, who they are. You know, if they have the right intention.

And everything’s expensive. And when I was diagnosed, just to let you know, I had health insurance. And the third appointment with my ENT guy that I was just explaining, I came into their office and their accounting guy came out from the back and he said you’re going to have to pay cash. I said what are you talking about? I have my insurance. You have my information. He said they’ve dropped you.

CDC: The insurance dropped your case.

L.C.: Yeah.

CDC: Unbelievable.

L.C.: You know, anyhow, that’s a whole other story. So I could have gone anywhere. And what happened was the list got shorter and shorter and shorter, when I wasn’t comfortable with the information I was getting from one institute or a certain treatment or the people I was talking to. And one of the gentlemen I talked to was at a hospital in this area of California. And I had many good conversations, and he was the only conventional doctor that would consider, because I said I don’t want chemotherapy. I don’t want surgery if I can avoid it.

CDC: May I ask you something? I’m sorry to interrupt, but you have this strong belief that there is an alternative to the conventional type of treatment. Did you lead a special kind of -- a healthy life that--?

L.C.: No. The reason why I held that is my father was a physician for 40 years and I grew up with a doctor, a family of doctors. And when you grow up with them, if they’re good doctors -- and my father was a great doctor in his day -- you learn they don’t have all the answers. They don’t know everything. And you often have to question and ask questions. I was taught very young to ask questions. Get the answer. Find out. If you’re not comfortable, then listen to your body not being comfortable. Something’s wrong there. And no one has all the answers. I’ve never met anybody that does yet.

 So each doctor I went to in New York and Chicago and California, Arizona, each conventional doctor remarkably said the same thing. We need to do surgery, chemo. It was a mantra -- surgery, chemo, radiation, surgery, chemo, radiation. And so I was talking to my wife and I said, you know, how unusual that the same advice that was given 50 years ago by doctors that whenever it was cancer, it was the same thing. So I said to one of the specialists at Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale where I went for an exam and consultation, and he said surgery, chemo, radiation. And I said, you know, it’s funny. Shame on you. I said your business has not changed. The only thing that’s changed in 50 years is how you deliver the drugs. That’s the only thing that’s changed. You deliver them better. You’re much more efficient at delivering those drugs. But you’re doing nothing different. Nothing has changed and the trillions of dollars this country has poured -- and the world -- has poured into research, and you’re saying the same thing as you did 50 years ago. That’s unbelievable to me. That is unbelievable.

And I said to the guy at Mayo, I said, you know, there are three Mayo Clinics. One in Rochester, Minnesota, one in Jacksonville, Florida, and one in Scottsdale, where I live. And the main one in Rochester, the original one, they have a hyperthermia machine there, an old one, and they do it. And I said to the specialist at Mayo in Scottsdale, I said, you know, I’ve been reading about hyperthermia and some of the benefits of it. What can you tell me? And he said, well, we don’t do that here. I said what do you mean you don’t do it here? You do it at Rochester, and that’s Mayo Clinic. That’s your headquarters. I don’t understand. Why would you try to steer me away?

And I began to realize that each doctor was a surgeon. If I go to a shoe maker, what’s he going to tell me? You need shoes. You need new shoes. They’re worn down. What’s he going to tell me? That’s what he’s going to tell me. And I quickly learned the same thing from each and every one of them.

CDC: So do you think that the intention of the doctor was just doing his business?

L.C.: They’re trained that way. The medical training, this is all they know. And I won’t get into my belief of the pharmaceutical industry. You know, it’s sad that this is where we’re at after 50 years. We should be much further along.

So I furthered my research, and it was between another organization and your organization, and I had only talked to people here on the phone. And it’s scary, you know? I’m there. You’re here. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Even though I grew up with a doctor, I’m not a surgeon. I’m not a cancer specialist. I’m a business man.

 And I said to one of your employees here who I’ve spoken with many times, they said would you like me to have Dr. Wolfstein call you and talk to you? And to my amazement, because it doesn’t happen too much any more in this world, I got a phone call from Dr. Wolfstein shortly thereafter, where he spent a good 45 minutes with me on the phone. I couldn’t get my ear nose and throat guy in Scottsdale to spend five minutes with me on the phone.

So he held my hand a little bit, and when you get diagnosed with cancer, you need your hand held. It’s consuming. It’s overwhelming. You’re helpless. I mean you’re at the mercy of all this information. You don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. Dr. Wolfstein spent a fair amount of time with me on the phone, inviting me here to Los Angeles. A couple of days later, I came. I saw him. He examined me. We spoke at length about where I was in my research and what I thought I was going to do. And it was after that meeting that I asked him when can you take me? Because now I was here, I saw -- he walked me around and I saw everybody, different patients. And I spoke to a couple of patients in the waiting room when I was waiting to see him. And it was very enlightening. It made me feel better. And then I went back home and the anxiety and the fear -- it’s cancer, you know. It’s a death sentence for most people, including me. And the fear sets in. You just don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know. I hope it works out. You just think positively.

CDC: So just let me ask you. Do you think you have to -- it takes some courage for you to make a decision where to go? What is it?

L.C.: You know, considering that you’re in this helpless state, you’re in a state of paralysis, you’re in a state of shock because you have this cancer, the deadliest disease that we know right now, it’s remarkable that I was able to make any decisions, let alone one that affects not only me, but it affects my family tremendously. It was very difficult, but you have to do something.

When I left the specialist at Mayo, I remember this. I’ll never forget this. And he knew, we talked about hyperthermia, and he talked to me. He said, you know, he thought it wasn’t the way to go. And I said, well, have you read this study at Duke University? They have been doing it for I think 11 years now and the president of the Cancer Institute there says in 5 to 7 years there will be no chemo. It won’t be around because hyperthermia with radiation, the results are marvelous. And he said, well, you don’t have to tell me about Duke University. I went to medical school there. I said well, then, shame on you. You should be telling me! Why am I telling you?

CDC: Amazing.

L.C.: You know, you live and you learn. But you have to take responsibility for this disease. And it is not a death sentence. It doesn’t have to be. And I knew that in my heart of hearts, that I would somehow be able to get through this in the best way; the best way possible for me, for my family, and all the way around. And so I came to Valley Cancer Institute.

And I remembered I stayed at a hotel. I’m staying there now. I stayed at the hotel right down the street, and wonderful people. I know the owners of the hotel. They’re like a second family to me. I stayed at that hotel for nearly four months of treatment here. And every day I came. But the very first day of coming here, the fear just -- because you just don’t know. I still didn’t know the protocol, what was going to happen. I’m thinking, you know, something’s going to go wrong. It doesn’t work. And I was very nervous coming in; very, very nervous. And I don’t like needles and I don’t like any of that. And I got here and everybody was very, very nice. And I got through the first couple of days. And I thought, okay, I can do this. Worst case scenario is I’m going to have some side effects. But I can do this. And much better than the scenario that was painted for me by many doctors across the nation.

And the days, the protocol got easier. I got more comfortable with it. It’s a little difficult not being with my family. But I went to see them once. I took a week off. They came to see me near the end. So in that way, it was good. But I was alone, you know, with cancer. It was tough in many ways -- emotionally, mentally, physically. And the hardest thing was, as the days and weeks went on, I’m looking at my tumor in my neck every day, and it wasn’t going down.

CDC: It wasn’t going down? How big was it, the size of a--?

L.C.: A golf ball.

CDC: Golf ball.

L.C.: It started as a marble, and after the biopsy it became a golf ball. Every day I’m looking at it in the mirror when I’m getting ready for the day and I almost try not to look at it. But it’s there. Other people notice it when I’m out. And I would look at it and my wife would ask me, well, is it going away? I mean how do you feel? And I would almost not want to tell her. But I would say, you know, I don’t see much change. And there were some days where I said I think I may be going crazy. I think it might even be getting bigger.

 So I was going back and forth and this and that, and then Sylvia, who does the radiation, who is an angel. She said we’ve done a lot worse than this. Just hang in there, and I will take care of this. This is my job. I will get this out of your body. And within a week, it started to disappear and just go away. It was a miracle. I mean it’s nothing short of a miracle. I should be a statistic in cancer, and instead I’m a survivor. And it’s because of Valley Cancer Institute. And I am an advocate in the biggest way of what you do here. I saw it work for other patients who were far worse off than I when I came in the door.

You know, people are entitled to have this input, to know that this institute -- and others, who have other treatments that may -- one treatment may not work for everybody. But I can only speak for myself, but people need that information. And my conventional doctors did not offer, share any of it, give me literature, research. Shame on them. Shame on them.

CDC: So it took you a long time, about four months. What can you say to a patient that it’s difficult for them to move over here and stay for such a long time?

L.C.: You know, it was the staff here, that because they had seen over the years much worse, much worse, you know, and they all assured me give it time. It takes time. You didn’t get cancer in one day and we’re not going to get rid of it in one day. It’s not how the world works. Relax. It was hard for me. I’m a Type A personality if you haven’t noticed. Difficult, sometimes, to relax. But I gave it time. I had to have faith somewhere. I had to have belief that this would work. And I knew that I had to keep a positive -- as positive frame of mind as I could. I didn’t need any more stress or negativity. I believe that has something to do with cancer. I’m not a doctor, but I think it has something to do with it.

So I put my faith -- what else was I to do? -- in the treatments here and in the institution. And slowly but surely, it went away.

CDC: And how long ago, now it’s generally--.

L.C.: It’s about a year. It’s a year.

CDC: About a year. Oh.

L.C.: About a year. About a month short of a year.

CDC: When you came or when you left?

L.C.: When I first came. When I first came. And so it’s a year later. I almost don’t like to even verbalize how well I feel. The new lease on life. I see the world differently. I look at my family differently. I had different priorities, and it’s very grounding to hear the words, “You have cancer.” Very grounding. And you have to take responsibility. It’s each person’s -- they have to be responsible for their own health care. And I was taught that at a young age by my father, the doctor.

CDC: Let me tell you something. I think you are a perfect example of an informed person that at one point you may have to rely on an insurance, because the insurance dropped you. If you dropped insurance, and because you don’t have any insurance I’m not going to take care of you, what do you think of that idea?

L.C.: Well, insurance is -- because I was in the business for a few years, I’m amazed that they would pay, cover--. You know, when you are given this diagnosis, and you are told by a specialist at Mayo Clinic, one of the most revered institutions, medical institutions in the country, and a guy says to you, whatever you do, make sure you take care of this because if you don’t, it will kill you. Those are some powerful words that I never forgot. And when you’re at that doorway of mortality and you see your mortality and you understand what’s going on, it’s very important that you -- I don’t care if you have money, you don’t have money, you’re successful, you’re not successful, it’s a life and death matter. And you need to do what you need to do. And this institute, I know, has worked with many people over the years, including me. You know, I came in and I was a cash-paying customer. And the money doesn’t matter. It’s life that counts, you know what I mean? I would have done anything. Fortunately, I had the means, but none of that mattered anymore. I had to make sure you guys knew what you were doing.

CDC: But it is important to me that you wanted to take care of yourself. You didn’t need the decision to your doctor, to your insurance. So you started your research and you did what you thought it was best for you, not knowing anything about it.

L.C.: I had two young sons. At the time, they were 9 and 11. There’s my motivation.

CDC: Of course.

L.C.: Am I going to fail them and not do the best thing possible? No. I mean it’s my job to do that research. I have to. It’s my life. But it’s their life, also. It’s so important.

CDC: Larry, I thank you so much for sharing this with us. I wish you my best regards.

L.C.: Thank you.

S.Hello Allan and Peggy.
P.Hello
S.How are you doing today?
A.Good. Good
P.Very well
S.Are you ready for our interview?
P.Yes.
S.Excelent
P.This is an exciting day for us.
S.Wonderful. That is what we like to hear.
P.(laughter)
P.So this has turned out to be just another bump in the road.
(laughter)
S.How can you describe your health improvement physically and emotionally?
A.Well physically, just the idea that there is no cancer in my neck, is a fabulous emotional high. When we got that information today, I expected it…
P.I can’t wait to go back to the oncologist who was giving us all these bad, terrible side effects, that he tried to make nonchalant conversation about and say ‘See? What has happened here!’
S.Will you actually do it?
P.Oh yes. Oh yes.
P…but the conventional treatment would have made him a sick person for the rest of his life
A.That’s right. Oh yeah.
P…and THIS has not done that. This is… this is our miracle.
A…and they both pretty much said the same thing. Very curable, small… It was n’t anywhere else. There was no other activity, and I would be undergoing a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. They fully explained the process and the side effects, which would be quite severe.
A.They said that the throat would be so sore, that I probably would have to have a tube for feeding during the time, because I would n’t be able to swallow. It would be too uncomfortable.
That the inside of my mouth would certainly be damaged, that potentially some teeth could be damaged. Those were the major things.
Peg, was there anything else?
P.A possible thyroid upset, no problem they said, he could take synthroid, and then there would probably be some jaw problems.
So as we are sitting and are listening to this, when you are in your 70s, you are looking for a quality of life and this just seemed like a horrific process to go through at his age.
I immediately got on line for alternative cancer therapies and I found the Valley Cancer Institute website and I called and I talked to Nash, who told us what the situation was here, and all the wonderful things to see in Las Vegas.. I mean Los Angeles.. (laughter) We tried to get to Las Vegas but we didn’t quite make it.. Los Angeles, and we felt that this was what we wanted to do, and the fact that he could come out of this as a whole person and we could go on with all the retirement plans that we had… (smiles)
S.That’s wonderful.
A. The thing that was dumfounding, was that this was an FDA approved treatment.
P.The initial introduction was all the wonderful, intelligent people, who we met in the waiting room, that were here for various reasons. Some of them, a last chance, a few of us, first chance of doing something alternative and we have enjoyed their company, their suggestions, the community that we found here.
A.People here really take a personal interest, they really make you feel good, they make you feel relaxed, they make you feel like they are interested and that they don’t want to hurt you.
The treatment never made me sick. The treatment in itself, with the head and neck cancer, all the treatment is in the upper.. above the shoulder, so the rest of my body was not involved.
A…absolutely.
P.I have been walking on Venice beach. I am in heaven on that beach.
A.And being on the West side of LA, we were just lucky we were here and not in East LA, where we would n’t have all those options, and we ended up only a couple of miles from the ocean. The fresh air here is wonderful and we’ ve been walking miles.
P.We went to the Getty and we went to the Aquarium..
A.Yeah, we’ ve been all over.
S.So you were able to continue your normal lifestyle, even though you were undergoing the treatment?
P.Oh yeah.
A.Absolutely. Really there was no.. I really never got terribly tired, so we were able to do anything we wanted to.
P.So the low dose radiation eliminates a lot of problems. One of the side effects of radiation to neck cancer is something called Trismas, which is a heightening of the muscle, structure from the high dose radiation and... here at the Valley Cancer Institute that does not happen with this low dose and Hyperthermia treatment. And that Trismas can be very much a problem.
So the benefits of being here and what it has given us… Wonderful!
S.Let’s just say you are happy.
P.Yes.
A. Indeed.

CDC: I have the previous interview patients who are living like you, but I always meet them where they are living. It’s a pity, because I like to talk to people like you. Could you please tell us, how did you find us? How did you find Valley Cancer Institute?

Patient: Well, basically, through a friend. We had a friend that was looking for a treatment for his wife and he talked to Dr. Wolfstein, and happened to mention that he had a friend that had my prostate cancer, and Dr. Wolfstein said, “He should call me, because I think we can help him”. So, that’s basically how we found the institute.

CDC: And, when you were diagnosed, what did you do? Did you go to your primary doctor for?

Patient: Yes, when we first found out that my PSA had risen, it was through my, through a regular physical. I had a PSA and it was quite high. It was in October and it was a 7.8, October of 08. So at that time, he suggested that we contact an urologist and have it checked out.

CDC: I see. We have the pleasure to have your wife here, too. I know that this is a little personal, but what was your reaction when you knew that your husband had prostate cancer?

Mrs. S: Well, he had always been so healthy. We had no idea that he had cancer. We were both shocked. So I started, we talked to the doctors and got their opinions as to what they thought was should do, and then I went on the internet and I started examining and all of that. Then after we talked to Dr. Wolfstein, then he told me where to look on the internet and I looked up the website and I got the information from that. I started examining hyperthermia on the website, and we never had considered alternative medicine before, because we were very traditional people in our medicines. We didn’t go into health foods. We didn’t look into any of those things. We knew people who did and we weren’t against it, but it just wasn’t what we had done. But we heard about all the side effects that come from the traditional medicines and neither one of us liked any of those side effects. So we thought this sounded very interesting.

CDC: And then that’s what primarily decided you to come here? Did they say the effect of hyperthermia was what made you decide to come here?

Patient: Yes. We thought this would be a very interesting, very use of radiation as well as hyper therapy. It would be a low dose, so it would take a longer period of time, but it would not be, like my wife said, as many side effects. So that’s really primarily why we decided on the institute here.

CDC: And it was the very first time that you heard about hyperthermia when you came to our website?

Mrs. S: Yeah. I had never heard it. I had heard of it, but just kind of off for other people. I never considered it for ourselves, but like Patient said, the combining of both the hyperthermia with the low dose radiation sounded very intriguing. It sounded like maybe this, and it’s being used in Germany and in Europe.

CDC: And you knew that?

Mrs. S: Well, not until I started looking into it, not until Dr. Wolfstein told me about it. I researched it in Europe to see what they were doing there and I know that the FDA keeps people from getting things as readily here as in Europe. So I figured, hey, if it’s there and it’s valuable. I need to look into it.

CDC: So you said that it was very intriguing, but were you, did you also do some research on the treatment results of hyperthermia?

Mrs. S: Yes. That was what was convincing, because we didn’t want side effects, but we wanted a cure.

CDC: Of course!

Mrs. S: You know, it wasn’t just the side effects that made us choose this.

CDC: So you, from the very beginning, you found our place. Did you go through the alternatives that your primary doctor gave you? What did they offer you?

Patient: We actually visited probably four to five different things that we could do that would be available to us. One was surgery and one was, of course, the radiation, and then there was a chemotherapy, which we decided against. So, there were a number of things that was open to us, but after investigating them all, we decided that they all had very strong side effects that we would like, not like to have. So anyway that’s really one of the primary reasons we decided on the institute here.

Mrs. S: He had scheduled surgery. He was scheduled for surgery about four days after we visited here. So, we had to cancel the surgery, but we had a friend who did have the surgery and nine months later the cancer came back, plus he has to live with the side effects for the rest of his life. We figured, boy, we’ve got to give something else a try.

CDC: That’s very interesting. Now that you have been through the treatment, how can you describe, if you had to talk to someone who never heard about hyperthermia, how is the treatment? Was it comfortable? Was it hard to take?

Patient: No, the treatment actually is painless. The radiation is painless. The people in radiation are very thorough. The hyperthermia takes 45 minutes and it’s done through a heat treat that does no pain to it. So there’s no pain to the treatment at all. It just takes time and, of course, if you have the time, it’s very good.

CDC: Because I hear from other patients and other people, they say when you go through the standard care of treatment, which usually is chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, after the procedure itself, you don’t feel very well. So, the contrast with hyperthermia, how do you feel as the treatment progressed week by week?

Patient: Actually, I had no illness at all; except it does make you a little more tired by the end of the day, but that was, actually, the only thing I ever noticed.

CDC: That’s fantastic. You just finished the treatment a week ago, last week.

Patient: Yes.

CDC: Do you have any side effects?

Patient: No, not at all.

CDC: That’s fantastic. You mentioned already that you didn’t’ do any special diet. You were just regular people.

Patient: And, actually, we have never done any special diet. We’re kind of traditional people that, this is the first time we’ve done anything different other than the traditional way of doing things.

CDC: Do you know if I have any other questions?

Patient: Anything I’d like to ask?

Mrs. S: One thing is that the side effects from prostate cancer, the treatment that the traditional medicine uses, are, you can be impotent, you can be incontinent, you can have constantly diarrhea for the rest of your life, and who wants to live with that if you don’t’ have to? Everything is working just great, so we’re really glad, plus it’s gone.

Patient: Yeah, we’re very happy.

CDC: That’s very interesting. When you, you said at the beginning that the hyperthermia sounds, I don’t remember exactly the word that you used, but very interesting. Did you still have doubts about this kind of treatment or after the research that you did, you saw that it was done in Germany, the resources you had gave you confidence?

Mrs. S: When we first came here, we were still a little skeptical, but we figured it doesn’t hurt to try and see what happened. Then when we came here we started talking to people and all the good results people have had, it built up our confidence in it, and then, of course, getting the PSA results through the months, that continued making us say, “Hey, look! It’s going down!” So that’s really been proven to be the best thing we could have done.

CDC: Alright. Do you think you can describe how do you feel physically and emotionally now after the treatment is done, compared to when you were diagnosed?

Patient: Well, I’d have to say I was quite upset when I first found out that I had Prostate Cancer. That’s something that I knew a lot of men had gotten after they up in age. I’m 76 now and my father had it. Of course, he never had been treated. Since we have a family of longevity, I thought at 76 that we should do something about this, because I think I’m in good physical health, so I think we should do something about it that would be positive. This fit the bill just fine. At the end of the treatment, I’m very happy. I couldn’t be happier.

CDC: All right. Thank you so much for answering these questions. The main reason we are doing that is because some other people will see what you have to say and maybe we can help them.

Patient: I hope so.

CDC: Thank you so much.

CDC: After the conventional treatment, either radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy, when you finish that treatment I do not think you will look as good as you look now.

M: I actually have a friend who got diagnosed with prostate cancer while I was here. I told him about this place, and I told him, you know, very, very encouraged by my PSA, it’s going down fast, I feel great. He went with the surgery. He decided that he was going to go with the surgery. He felt more comfortable doing that. It was quicker, he didn’t have to, you know, give the commitment every day here. He could go in, be out two days in the hospital and be done. Since that happen, he is now dealing with the side effects, and he is not happy, and because we did it at the same time, he can see that I’m fine, and I fell fine, and my energy level is good. I’m very glad that I made this choice. Where he is right now he is not so glad, because he says he has a long road ahead of dealing with, how is the body changed. Right now to be honest with you I feel bad for him but I told him about this place.

CDC: I’m very happy you decided to be one of the few crazy ones that (laughter)

M: Well, you know, I’ll say it again, the videos of the website made the difference, because when I was checking I read a lot of those websites, and you don’t really you get the human part when you read it, and you get to see somebody talking about their experience, that sold me, and I am in advertising, and I know how to sell people and the way to sell people is with a human connection

CDC: Then I have a question for you, because if you are in advertisement, could you see that it was a genuine video? There wasn’t an actor behind the camera?

M: Absolutely, absolutely. In fact like that it was very amateur and rough looking and it wasn’t polish, because I believe the person talking because it wasn’t in a set, it wasn’t trying to make it pretty. I was listening to what he was saying more than looking at what it was all about. So I believed it, no problem.

CDC: So when we move to Beverly Hills I will do it more professional.

M: Please don’t! don’t, you should do it just like this because it looks more real

CDC: Thank you so much. One more question. It was a long journey, 5 months is a long time, but does your wife thinks

M: She saw me going through all the journey finding out all about this Prostate Cancer does to you, what your choices are. Right before all these started my brother’s wife died of cancer. So was, this is a bad time for me to find out I had cancer. We just lost him. In fact the day he died I found out I had cancer, the day I got the call. She, after seeing all the kind of treatment you can get, she was confused, listening to people who did not know about alternative treatments. People that trust doctors no matter what they tell you, instead of king of finding out for your self. After a while she just realized that together, if we both felt good about it, once we came out here, we had to have the consultation, and I met with Dr Wolfstein, after talking to him I felt 100% confident. I knew this is what I was going to do, and I was going to hope this was going to work, I’ve seen things working and for the most part, she just felt relief that we found a place that actually we could go to, that offered something that it wasn’t surgery.

CDC: I can tell that you are kind of lucky that your wife supported you all through

M: All the time, in fact to be honest with you I think that helps for the most part because, let’s face it you, you are driving to Los Angeles back and forth, between the drive and the actual treatment that I do, I will leave my house at 7:00 o’clock in the morning and may be get home about 2:00pm. So, that is pretty much an all day type of thing. Because she is there to support me, it makes the drive all worth it. It really does, because every time I get all those PSA tests, you know, it is like a report card, you did really well (laughter!) you know! And that is what we look forward too. Like every two or three weeks, just to see what those (PSA tests) were all about. Without the support it’s tough to do it by your self.

CDC: Do you have kids?

M: No kids. We decided not to have kids, we have carriers unfortunately

CDC: Are you coming back to work?

M: I start Monday

CDC: Congratulations!

M: I start Monday. They are exited to have me. I worked there for 11 years, and when I started this treatment the owner of the company had gone through breast cancer, and she said: “Don’t worry; your job will be waiting for you”. That makes a huge difference; again lower the stress levels, makes the heal faster.

CDC: Thank you very much M for talking to us.

M: Sure, glad to do it

CDC: Mr. R.

MR. R: Hi.

CDC: You look very good today.

MR. R: I feel very good. Thanks.

CDC: And I heard that you are leaving Valley Cancer Institute.

MR. R: Yes. Tomorrow I fly out.

CDC: Where are you coming from, or where do you live?

MR. R: Honolulu.

CDC: Honolulu. Good for you.

MR. R: Thank you.

CDC: But do you live there, or you just want to have a vacation?

MR. R: Nope. That’s where we live.

CDC: That’s where you live.

MR. R: We’ve lived there now for almost five years.

CDC: Almost five years. And what is the reason you came to our institute?

MR. R: Well, the reason I came to the institute is about two years ago I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. And I went through two courses of treatment, BCG treatment. BCG is a drug developed for the treatment of tuberculosis. For mild bouts of bladder cancer, it has been relatively successful. And so you have — it comes in a little bottle and they put it in your bladder through a catheter through your penis.

CDC: But it’s a kind of chemotherapy?

MR. R: It’s kind of a chemotherapy, but it doesn’t go into your blood. It’s a very strong solution. You can almost smell it when it’s just going through the catheter. It has kind of a burning sensation. And you’re supposed to hold it in your bladder for at least an hour if you can.

CDC: Ah, okay.

MR. R: And they do that once a week for six weeks. And then after that six-week period, they do what they call a sistoscopy. And I’m not pronouncing it very well. Doctors can say that; I can’t. Again, they go through your penis, into your bladder. But they have a camera or an eyepiece that they can see in there. After the first treatment, they went in there and they still saw cancer. And they took a biopsy, which I had had before I started.

CDC: How long was that first treatment?

MR. R: First treatment was six weeks. And then they waited about two weeks before they did this sistoscopy. And they found still cancer. So I repeated it again. I did it again for six weeks. Repeated the test at the end, and they still found cancer. So only now the cancer they found was more serious.

CDC: Oh.

MR. R: It could not be treated by the BCG.

CDC: So during that time, you didn’t have any improvement with that treatment?

MR. R: No.

CDC: Oh.

MR. R: Well, I shouldn’t say that. Some of the cancer that I had in the beginning disappeared. But new cancer grew.

CDC: Oh.

MR. R: So I went to another urologist. I wasn’t satisfied that I had gone through all of this and I wasn’t any better off than I was in the beginning. So the first thing the new urologist did was send me for a CT scan. And in the CT scan, we saw the wall of the bladder at the bottom had a huge tumor in it, at least by my estimation.

CDC: You saw a picture of the CT scan?

MR. R: So he told me that the only thing that they could do would be to remove the bladder and I would wear a bag on my side for the rest of my life. He also offered me chemotherapy, which I’ve had friends take chemotherapy and die, not from the cancer but from the chemotherapy. He offered me radiation. Not IMRT, but regular radiation. And I have had friends who I’ve had to help treat because of the burns on their body from radiation. So I wasn’t going to do that.

And then he told me that the surgery was only a 50-50 chance that I would come out of that with no cancer. I asked him, well, if I do nothing, doctor, how long will I live. And he said two years. So after I thought about it for a few days, I called him back and said I think I’ll take the last alternative, because I’m more concerned with the quality of my life than the length of my life.

CDC: So which was that last alternative?

MR. R: Do nothing. Just by chance, a friend of mine — I’ve known him for 35 years — who knew that I was being treated for cancer and was just calling me to find out how it was going. So I told him what I just told you. He said I’m going to make a call and I’ll call you right back. That’s all he said to me. So he called me back in maybe half an hour, and he gave me the name of a doctor and a telephone number. He said I’ve talked to this doctor. He’s a friend of mine. I’ve known him almost as long as I’ve known you. And I want you to call him. He’s expecting your call tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock. His name is Wolfstein.

So I called him, and I told him everything that I just told you. And he said four words to me. I’ll never forget it. He said, “I can help you.” He didn’t say he was going to take out my bladder. He didn’t say he was going to give me any horrible radiation or chemotherapy. He said, “I can help you.” And he told me all about what you guys do here. He told me about the hyperthermia. He told me about the IMRT. He told me none of it would kill me. And he felt that there was a very, very good chance that — that’s the way I feel — that I would be out of here cured, minimum three months, maximum six. Well, he missed the six months by two weeks. I’m leaving two weeks early.

CDC: I’ve been working here 20 years and I’m crying because I’ve never heard a story like yours.

MR. R: I’ve had virtually no reactions to any of this therapy. I mean, yeah, I’ve had some bowel symptoms where I’ve had a little diarrhea. I’ve had sleepless nights, but I think that’s anxiety. I’m not sure what it is. But anyway, I’ve had very few, and in fact my check up that he gave me, my release, said it is remarkable how few symptoms I’ve had, how little problems I’ve had.

When I first came here, he sent me out for a PET scan and a CT scan. And the PET scan showed the only cancer was in the bladder, which was good news. And the CT scan showed the same as it did when I was with the doctor in Honolulu. He did the — he did a bone scan in November, around Thanksgiving, and another CT scan. And the tumor was still there, but the doctor thought it was dead. He didn’t say it in that many words, but he said I don’t think it’s active anymore.

But we continued the treatments through the Christmas holidays until last week. And I went again for a PET scan and for a CT scan. I had also been tested, or had my urine tested two or three times here with a very strange test. It’s called a FISH test. Very strange. But it’s simply testing a urine sample. The first two tests showed that there was blood in the urine. So that says the cancer was still active. The last FISH test I had, which was a couple of weeks ago, we got the results last week — negative. PET scan came back negative. The CT scan came back negative. So all the tests are negative. And so I’m going home tomorrow.

CDC: I am so happy for you.

MR. R: The staff here — the nurses, the doctors, and I’ve only met Dr. Bicher; I haven’t really had any consultations with him — is the best. You have the kindest, most professional technicians or nurses working back there in the hyperthermia section in the world. And you’ve got the brightest, smartest and sweetest two girls downstairs — Sylvia and Gigi — that do the radiation. They never did anything without telling me exactly what they were doing. They always asked me if I was having any problems. When I was having some few problems, they corrected the situation immediately. And I just have nothing to say but good things to say about VCI. I’m so glad I’m here.

The guy that called me? He cried when I called him.

CDC: When? Now?

MR. R: When I told him — afterwards, yes. Just a few days ago. The one who told me about Dr. Wolfstein He cried when I told him I was finished. He couldn’t believe it.

CDC: So I just have only one question. I understand you just told me that you were concerned about the quality of your life more than the length. Were you a kind of alternative type of person following a special diet, things like that?

MR. R: No.

CDC: Did you do anything else besides the hyperthermia treatment combined with low dose radiation?

MR. R: No. I was told that I should stay away from sugar. Eh, I had a muffin every day. A blueberry muffin most every day with a cup of coffee. That was my lunch. That was probably my biggest sugar intake the whole time I was here. But I didn’t eat a lot of ice cream or cakes or any of that stuff. But that’s the only thing. And then I didn’t eat steaks. I stayed away from pork and steaks. But that’s all. I ate everything else.

CDC: Nothing drastically.

MR. R: Nothing.

CDC: I am so glad. I really appreciate you telling me your experience here at the Valley Cancer Institute. I think I don’t have any questions because you have said it so well. I’m so happy for you.

MR. R: Well, I can tell the people who watch this is that if they feel — if they have any cancer, not just bladder cancer, any cancer — they should at least try this place. They should call and find out about it. Because I have seen breast cancer cured here. I have seen throat cancer cured here. I have seen prostate cancer cured here. And probably others that I can’t recall. I have met so many nice patients as well as the people here. We’ve talked about our diseases together and how we’re doing. And we’ve encouraged each other for almost six months.

Yesterday, Marilyn was going for her final PET scan, and I told her I had mine and it was all negative. She was as happy for me as I am. That’s the kind of people we have here. So give it a call. You can’t lose. You can’t lose.

I also want to tell people that there’s another special person here by the name of Nash who will help you not only with the payments — paying for your services — but she’ll also help you find a place to stay while you’re here. So I came 2,800 miles, so anybody else can come here. There’s not too many places further away than Honolulu.

CDC: I understand. Well, Mr. R, I am so happy for you. And I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity to talk to you.

MR. R: Well, you’re welcome.

CDC: Thank you so much.

Interview with Marolyn Teague, February 2009

INTERVIEWER: Marilyn, nice to have you here.

M. TEAGUE: Thank you. Glad to be here.

INTERVIEWER: You look very happy today.

M. TEAGUE: Oh, I am so excited. I am going home.

INTERVIEWER: Oh, you are going home!

M. TEAGUE: Yes.

INTERVIEWER: All right. This is very good news for us, too. And why are you going home now?

M. TEAGUE: Because the doctors released me and they said that all my tests came back cancer free. So I’m back to my 100% good self.

INTERVIEWER: I wanted to ask you some questions, like when you were diagnosed, what did you feel, or when did you realize that you had a health concern?

M. TEAGUE: Well, in July, I was just kind of taking a shower and realized that I hadn’t had — hadn’t examined myself in a while. And so I did, and I felt a really big lump in my right breast. So immediately — this was on a Saturday and the following Monday I called my doctor and the ball started rolling from there.

INTERVIEWER: And what did your doctors tell you?

M. TEAGUE: I did some tests and they came back saying that it was positive with cancer. Malignant — I’m sorry, I don’t know the name of it.

INTERVIEWER: That’s okay. And what options did they give you?

M. TEAGUE: Chemotherapy, surgery and high dose radiation. And I didn’t want any of those.

INTERVIEWER: But you didn’t want it from the beginning?

M. TEAGUE: Correct.

INTERVIEWER: All right.

M. TEAGUE: I didn’t know any other options out there. I was really just shocked that I even had it, because I have three older sisters and I thought out of all of us, it wouldn’t be me. But apparently, being the baby, I did get it. My mother does have cancer and she did through the chemo and radiation and surgery. And she’s had a very, very rough time of it. So I just kind of started looking for alternative things and came up with VCI.

INTERVIEWER: How did you find us?

M. TEAGUE: How did I find you? Well, I was looking into the high dose C and low dose radiation, and I knew that the low dose radiation was what I wanted, which is what VCI does. And came across a lady that helps you with insurance and was talking to her and she recommended VCI to me. And I was real excited. And that same day she gave me Nash’s number and I called and from there it just — I looked on the Internet under VCI. I checked into it. I went to my husband, gave him all the reports and everything. The next thing I knew, I was on the plane out here.

INTERVIEWER: All right. And how long was the treatment, for you?

M. TEAGUE: I’ve been here about five months.

INTERVIEWER: Five months?

M. TEAGUE: Mmm-hmm.

INTERVIEWER: Even though it was a long journey, was it worth it?

M. TEAGUE: Oh, definitely worth it. I was concerned about the apartment, where I was going to live and whatever.

M. TEAGUE: I was concerned about where I was to live, and VCI provided the apartment. And so I’m paying rent and stayed over there. It’s a really nice apartment. Not luxurious but, you know, it’s adequate. It helps you. And actually it’s cheaper to come here and rent the apartment than it would have to stay home and drive to my treatments there. So I was excited about that and it’s been a very wonderful experience. The people here are just wonderful. And they helped me along and of course they tease me about my Texas accent, but, okay, you Californians have accents, too. So when I came, I started the treatments right away. I had some preliminary tests done and that’s about it.

INTERVIEWER: Very good. And did you have any side effects?

M. TEAGUE: A little bit. Just losing a little bit of hair, but I knew I was going to. Not anything really drastic. I didn’t get sick. I didn’t get nauseated. I didn’t have any of the bowel syndromes. So every once in a while, I would have a headache, but that’s because I forgot to drink my water. So as long as I get my water down and do my walking and eating properly, I was great.

INTERVIEWER: And was the treatment itself uncomfortable or at least manageable?

M. TEAGUE: Oh, no, not uncomfortable at all. You just lay down on the table and let them heat whatever part of the body you needed. And you just have a little nap. The radiation took, what, 10 minutes or less and that’s it. Minimum hour and a half to two hours and you’re out of here.

INTERVIEWER: And besides hyperthermia, did you do anything else, like any special diet?

M. TEAGUE: Not really. I’ve always been a healthy eater, so I — you all recommended no dairy, a little bit of meat. So I cut that out. And the cheese, cutting out that cheese was very hard. So I didn’t really do any special diet except for the exercise and the water. Oh, I did do a high vitamin C with it, but that’s about it.

INTERVIEWER: All right. So how would you describe, if you had to talk to someone else, how would you describe your experience at the Valley Cancer Institute?

M. TEAGUE: Oh, I would try to convince them 100% to come here. It’s just awesome, because you don’t have to go through the surgery, you know, all the sickness, the hair loss, the nausea. And just to be able to enjoy it, and relax, have your treatment, go party. Oh, and, you know, sightsee, go to the beach, do whatever you want. Your two hours once a day for the Monday through Friday and you’ve got to the weekends to yourself and just enjoy yourself. It’s been really relaxing.

INTERVIEWER: I’m happy to hear that. Anything else you would like to add? To say?

M. TEAGUE: Oh, man, if they could come, anybody who has cancer, I know you all treat any and everything. And mine was right breast cancer. And I’m 100% cured. It was Stage 3 when I came and it was a 4.5 centimeter mass. And it is now less than 1 centimeter. It’s dead. And I know that over time it will dissolve and go away, the lump. But if you could come, that would be great.

INTERVIEWER: I thank you so much for the opportunity of talking to you.

M. TEAGUE: Thank you. I enjoyed it.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you.

Carlos: Gerry, how long ago were diagnosed with the inflammatory cancer?

Gerry: Well, -- do you want me to look at you?

Carlos: Yeah, of course, of course.

Gerry: It was suspected that I had cancer; I started suspecting because I had a hard growth that started to get painful. Actually, I thought it might not be cancer because it was painful because I was under the impression that cancer sort of slips up on you and it is not painful. Anyway, back in December I stopped in and had an ultrasound.

Carlos: December two years ago?

Gerry: No, last year.

Carlos: Last year in 2008?

Gerry: Yeah, 2008 I had an ultrasound and it was determined that I had cancer. I was trying to determine what to do because I wanted to avoid the conventional treatment. Then some personal things happened and I just let it go. Then in May or June actually, my husband died. So it took precedence taking care of all the duties surrounding that and everything. My children who flew in from different parts of the world and they found out that I had breast cancer which I had been in denial. I was trying to pretend it wasn’t there and maybe it might go away.

Carlos: That is one of the reasons you didn’t believe in that is because you had a very healthy diet and you exercised,

Gerry: Compared to many women my age, I seem to be very healthy. I thought this was just a fluke. It couldn’t happen to me. Then when my children came in and they learned that I had breast cancer and I was trying to decide what to do about it, my son took the initiative and he found a doctor who would refer me to oncologist for all these for over 22 years we hadn’t seen a doctor. We teach fitness and nutrition and we thought we had all our bases covered. I thought that I could never come down with breast cancer.

Since then, I’ve been doing so much research and found out that although I run every morning and I have a relatively clean diet, strictly vegan, I never got out in the sunshine. So I run at 4:30 in the morning when it was still dark. I’m a counselor for the International Vegetarian Union and Vegetarian Union of North America and a few other forums. That took much of my time and I was behind a computer all day. So I was never getting any sunshine. Vitamin D is very much related to breast cancer. I also found out that I had a – my vitamin D level was down to number six but they say that’s the most deficient vitamin in America. Perhaps because of the pollution or because of the way our fruits and vegetables and our food is grown now with so many pesticides and everything, our body is not able to absorb the vitamin D from the sun.

I started taking supplements and then because my children were forcing me to go see an oncologist and they set up an appointment but the night before I discovered Valley Cancel Institute on the Internet.

Carlos: So you found us on the Internet?

Gerry: Yes, on the Internet.

Carlos: I remember that you told me something that caught your attention about – what was it?

Gerry: Yes, it got my attention right away because the body’s method of healing itself is through a fever. Exercise is creating an artificial fever and everybody knows how valuable exercise is. So this made perfect sense to localize hyperthermia which is an induced fever to the area that is diseased. So that just made perfect sense to me. At least I had a little bit of ammunition when I went to see the oncologist the next day. The first thing I did was ask him if he had heard of hyperthermia and right away he dismissed it. It said that’s a myth, that’s poppycock. Don’t pay any attention to all of those whacko's. Thankfully I had my son with me who was the one who arranged for this oncologist and he saw what a closed mind this doctor had. The doctor examined me and he said, oh yes, this is inflammatory breast cancer. It is very, very bad. It is very aggressive and this is acute. You are at stage 3-B. Anyway he said their method of treatment that I needed to get chemotherapy immediately followed by a complete mastectomy, followed by more chemotherapy and radiation up to two years and no guarantees.

Carlos: Oh, my goodness.

Gerry: Thank goodness I had discovered Valley Cancer Institute the night before. So we got on the telephone, my children were talking with Nash, back and forth conversations for three or four days. We tied up all kinds of lose ends so that I could rush out here. I’ve been here for almost a little over three months now.

Carlos: I remember when you came here you had very acute pain. You mobile, you’re coughing and you hurt.

Gerry: Yes, it hurt to walk. It hurt to breathe deeply. When I would go up to somebody I’d try to protect myself with putting my arm in front. Just riding in a car, a crack in the road, not even a hole, not even a –

Carlos: Big bump.

Gerry: Yeah, and I’d have to go around and I made myself run every morning because again, inducing that artificial fever. I would have to bind myself up with ace bandages to keep it so tight that there was no vibration. In the car I would have to ride like this. After about four and a half weeks, there was no noticeable improvement and my children are saying, “Mom, if they’re not helping you, you have to leave. We’ve got to do something else.”

Carlos: Not even any improvement on the pain?

Gerry: No.

Carlos: Oh, my goodness. How did you remain strong from the treatment?

Gerry: I didn’t know where else to go. I didn’t want to have a mastectomy. I didn’t want to have chemotherapy. Anyway, that night, -- the next morning, it was as though what they said struck fear into the cancer because the next morning there was a dramatic improvement and when I came to Doctor Alberson and he measured, it had gone from 8.5 (I think it was) to 4.5. It had reduced that much in those several weeks and the pain was gone. I can run without having to be all bound up. I’ve increased my running. I’ve increased my weight lifting to help strengthen my body and I’m being stricter with my diet. I’m feeling much better.

Carlos: According to your experience, what would you recommend to a woman with breast cancer inflammatory versus – doesn’t matter any kind of cancer regarding healthy eating and exercising.

Gerry: Well, first of all, the majority of our diseases are cause by the foods that we eat. Therefore, nutrition is one of most important things. Also, if you don’t eliminate the cause the problem is going to come back. A lot of women have had a mastectomy and surgeries that maim and disfigure them and the cancer just comes back in other places because they haven’t eliminated the cause. So it is very important to find out the cause.

If one is deficient in something and you can do all this through a blood test. But, inflammatory breast cancer is just completely different from any other kind of cancer. In fact most doctors don’t even understand it and therefore they misdiagnosis it and a lot of women die. It is very acute and very aggressive. When Dr. Wolfstein interviewed me the first time and then examined me, when he found out that I had it over a year he found it difficult to believe because I was still alive.

Carlos: You didn’t progress that much either for being a year.

Gerry: Right. We think that because of my exercise routine and my strict adherence to a vegan diet eliminate all these growth hormones that are in cow’s milk and cheese and in the animals itself. Fish and chicken are just as bad and turkey is even worst. They don’t get those big chests, those big breast through eating grass or chicken feed. They get them through growth hormones and then when you consume the animals, you’re consuming these hormones that do terrible things to your body.

So I would recommend especially for inflammatory breast cancer which is one of the worst to definitely continue in keep up and improve and progress with your exercise routine and if they don’t have one, get one and then learn all they can about vegan nutrition, eliminating milk, dairy products. Milk is liquid meat. A lot of people give up meat and they think they’re okay if they drink milk and eat eggs. These are all animal products and bi-products. They are not meant for human consumption. That’s my view.

Carlos: I understand and I don’t blame you there on the conviction and therapy. How can you compare the hyperthermia plus a low dose of radiation as a therapy with the other therapies?

Gerry: Well, the low dose of radiation with the hyperthermia will zero right in wherever the problem is whether it is pancreatic cancer or colon cancer, prostate cancer or whatever. It assists the radiation to work much better because it increases oxygen to the cells, gets them warm and more accessible. Then the exercise keeps the body nice and strong and then of course you’ve got to feed that body good things. The conventional treatment goes on and on and on. Most people, as I understand it, are healed – those who have not had too many conventional treatments done to them so their body just cannot response and that’s another reason why they think I have responded so well is because I didn’t have any of the conventional treatment so my body didn’t have all those things to overcome in order to accept the treatment I got here.

Carlos: Basically, the treatment itself, coming here for the hyperthermia and then radiation, is it difficult?

Gerry: The people are so loving and caring and so happy to assist in any way, everyone from the receptionist to your, Carlos, to Nash who introduced to this program and everything. All the technicians, everything from blood drawing to radiation—Sylvia down in radiation and Gee-Gee, they are so loving and caring and this positive attitude also helps a patient instead of being in a cold, inhumane, hospital and being jerked around. So it is like night and day.

Carlos: I really appreciate that. During the treatment, were you able to continue with your normal life even though you had to travel to another city?

Gerry: Yes, absolutely. I happen to have friends in this area and they were trying to take my mind off—I sort of had a double whammy since my husband of 50 years died. He was my whole life but being a completely different atmosphere is like you’re on vacation almost. They kept me from thinking about all these sad things that might have contributed more to the disease. So a positive outlook is very, very important. Although I believe I was more tired because of the radiation but I also increased my exercise so that contributed, too. There was no pain except the pain that I originally had with the inflammatory breast cancer. In fact, I looked forward coming here and taking a nap during my hyperthermia so it all worked out beautifully.

Carlos: All right, Gerry, I really appreciate your time during this interview. I just wanted to ask you, is there anything that you would like to add. Any other thought if you have one regarding the treatment, hyperthermia or whatever.

Gerry: Well, considering the fact that the oncologist back home told me I should undergo immediate chemotherapy and have a mastectomy and then more chemotherapy and more radiation for up to two years and no guarantees, I’ve been here three months and it appears that I’m healthy. I’m looking forward to learning how to live without my husband and contributing to society.

Carlos: This is a big contribution because the reason I’m doing this interview is to show other people that there are betters ways than the conventional therapy.

Gerry: Yes, it is such a shame, such a crime that so many women are being disfigured and their lives are completely dismantled and premature death is pretty imminent because just doing the surgery and eliminating a part of the body isn’t healing anything. You have to learn what caused the disease and then take care of it properly. Here, it enables you to do that so much faster without any of these side effects from conventional therapies.

Carlos: Gerry, I thank you so much and I wish you my best and I mean to keep in touch with you.

Gerry: It has been a pleasure.

r.