Our Cancer Story:

My wife was first diagnosed with stage III metastatic breast cancer (estrogen and progesterone positive, her2 negative) in March of 2022. The diagnosis came as a complete shock because after she had noticed a lump in her left breast in January of 2021 two doctors (a new OBGYN in Texas that she hadn’t met before and her OBGYN in Utah that delivered our twins and knew her) had looked at the lump and told her it was nothing to worry about.

But after a year of her saying that the lump “just felt alien" we went through the hassle of pushing for a mammogram. The biopsy results came three days later (the day before my oldest daughter’s 8th birthday). We got the official diagnosis March 24, 2022.

The oncologist we were referred to told us that we needed to start chemotherapy immediately if she wanted to live. He advised us that this was not a diagnosis to take lightly. Now, I’m not one to blindly follow authority figures (my dad was a litigator that sued plenty of doctors for medical malpractice and I am a trained lawyer myself) but when the oncologist said we needed to start chemotherapy immediately, we simply trusted that the experts had our best interest at heart and following their advice to the T would give us the best chance of survival.

She did 4 rounds of the red devil chemo and 12 rounds of taxol chemo, a double mastectomy followed by 30 rounds of radiation—the exact protocol that the oncologist, surgeon and radiologist recommended as the most aggressive way to ensure cancer didn’t come back for decades.

The protocol was hell and almost broke her and our marriage (another story for another day).

Two years later, October of 2024, a blood test (called Signatera) showed elevated cancer markers and a PET scan confirmed that the breast cancer was growing again, this time in her spine and pelvic bone.

The oncologist called and gave the same spiel he did two years prior—it was time to aggressively fight again—he had already ordered the new drugs and was ready for her to start the protocol.

But we had heard this all before and this time we decided to dive in and learn for ourselves what the best path forward was instead of blindly following the team that had promised us decades and given us two years.

Over the past 120 days, I’ve read thousands of pages about cancer, mitochondria, apoptosis and the corruption in the modern "healthcare" system. Once you are in the stage IV cancer family (a membership no one wants) you are besieged with anecdotes from friends of friends of friends who did something that miraculously cured them. In all of it, you have to keep your wits about you and pay attention to your own intuition about what feels real and what feels like snake oil. The desire for a panacea (a cure all) is strong but must be tempered with the reality that you are in unknown territory with your body and that your body has a certain wisdom to it that only you can access.

I believe the question is:

"What are the tools and protocols that are asymmetric bets (limited downside (side effects and cost) balanced against high upside of potential benefits)?"

These are three tools that we have found helpful along with the research and resources that I’ve found to be credible on the subject (to limit the snake oil as much as possible).

Our Protocol of Asymmetric Bets:

1. Diet and Inflammation

This has been the largest paradigm shift for us that makes intuitive sense. There is a growing body of evidence that cancer in all forms is driven by mitochondrial dysfunction (as opposed to genetic dysfunction). Cancer cells grow with glucose and glutamine so if you limit glucose and glutamine in your system by changing your diet you can slow the cancer's growth.

Thomas Seyfried (check his X account here) out of Boston College is leading the charge here and has the pedigree and bona fides to be above reproach as far as I’m concerned (a 0.0 on the snake oil scale).

I’ve read his text book "Cancer as a Metabolic Disease" and while much of the science is above my pay grade, the upshot is that a high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate diet puts your body in a state of ketosis which is much more difficult for most cancer cells to grow.

Eliminating as much sugar from your diet as possible is also key.

In order to accomplish this with the reality of three small children at home, my wife and I micro-dose semaglutide to reduce her inflammation, reduce food noise, and cut out sugar cravings (I love ice cream so much that I'd be tempted to take 5 years off of my lifespan to eat unlimited Haagen Dazs.)

We gets our semaglutide from fiercehealth.com (We both take 5 units per week, about half of the recommended starting dose. Her oncologist knows that she is doing this and was supportive of her taking it.)

2. Anti-Parasitics, Ivermectin and Fenbendazole

This came on our radar from reading a story about a man who overcame late stage cancer by incorporating cheap anti-parasitic drugs into his protocol after he was given months to live (his story here).

Some research has come out which shows that anti parasitic drugs can take “cold” cancer cells that are resistant to chemotherapy and turn them into “hot” cells that absorb treatment (One such study here).

Dr. Makis (his X account here) is a great follow and has great information on using anti-parasitic drugs to combat treatment resistant cancers. We get our Ivermectin here (yes it's for horses, we have some friends that get their from a compound pharmacy which we haven't done yet.) And the Fenbendazole here. We've had a lot of questions on dosing and frequency. Dr. Makis has recommended 1mg/kg/day for Ivermectin and 444 mg/day for Fenbendazole on his X account and we have followed that protocol.

Fenben can be tough on the liver so Carli also takes a liver care supplement to help boost liver support. She takes Ivermectin for three days in a row and then takes four days off.

3. A Spiritual Practice

Our first round through cancer brought us to our knees in a way neither of us had ever experienced. Looking back, we can now see that many of the horrible things we experienced we on-label side effects of chemotherapy and hormone suppressant drugs (she kicked me out of the house at one point, had suicidal ideations, and had an anger within her that I had never witnessed before or since she quit the hormone altering drugs).

We also started couples and individual therapy which was helpful in unpacking negative coping patterns (workaholism for me). When your pain is unbearable, it’s important to find meaning in that pain that doesn’t strip you of your humanity or your belief in the divine. I like what Carl Jung said about cancer:

"There is no illness that is not at the same time an unsuccessful attempt at a cure. We do not cure it, it cures us. A man is ill, but the illness is nature's attempt to heal him, and what the neurotic flings away as absolutely worthless contains the true gold we should never have found elsewhere."

Carli and I don’t share the same spiritual practice that we once did but she has found hope and peace in the practice of prayer we both learned in a traditional christian upbringing as well as meditations from Joe Dispenza (her favorite one is here).

Just weeks before her cancer came back, I finished the manuscript to the book I had been working on for the past year called The Creator's Call. The irony is that I wrote a book all about how to trust your intuition and follow what brings you enthusiasm instead of blindly following the advice of others (which I call the default path.) I can't think of a context where that is more applicable than in the treatments of your own illnesses and disease.

If you want to join the launch list for the book which I plan on releasing in the next month, you can do that here.

Some things I'm currently researching but we haven't tried yet:

Overoxygenating the body with hyperbaric chambers.
High dose vitamin C
B17 shots
Stem Cell Infusions
Metformin and DON (to block glutamine)
3-5 day water fasts
Removing the ovaries to suppress estrogen production (her breast cancer grows with estrogen).

Remember that Carli is not currently on any chemotherapy drugs, hormone suppressant drugs or anything else that would otherwise suppress her immune system from these protocols. If that were the case we would need to do more research on how the above protocols interact.

Disclaimer:

I want to make two things clear:

I'm not a doctor and you shouldn't take anything above as medical advice for your individual situation. I'm a lawyer by training and have been an entrepreneur for the past decade. I got a C in biology in college and before my wife's stage IV breast cancer diagnosis I didn't know or care to know anything that follows. All of my research and the resources I linked to come from us trying to navigate our own situation.
Everything I wrote is what we are actually doing. There may be better protocols out there but if we haven't done it I will not recommend it. Additionally, we are pursuing this in addition to the protocols recommended by our medical team (not as a replacement to our medical team.)

Tell me more about you and what has or hasn't worked:

I read every response. I'm sick and tired of people suffering or finding success in silence. Tell me what has worked (or what hasn't worked!) I want to hear it all and let me know if you are comfortable with me sharing personal details or keeping it private.