A Story of Faith, Food, and Finding the Other Half
“You have a twenty percent chance of living.”
Those words hung in the air. My oncologist had just explained the odds for Keytruda immunotherapy against my stage four cancer. Twenty percent. I sat there doing the math. A twenty percent chance of living meant an eighty percent chance of dying. When a doctor hands you numbers like that, fear takes over. But underneath the fear, I felt something else. A door was opening.
I knew right then I couldn’t just accept the odds I’d been given. I had to change them.
The Medical Arsenal
Modern medicine saved my life even as it destroyed my body. Seventy radiation treatments. Twenty chemotherapy infusions. A radical neck dissection surgery. The cancer cells died, but so did healthy ones. My shoulder is disfigured. My feet have neuropathy. My nerves fire with pain and muscle spasms. Three surgeons worked on my neck, three skilled professionals whose hands and expertise I trusted completely. That team was incredible, and I give them all the credit they deserve. They kept me alive.
But when I traveled to Tennessee and dug into the research, I discovered something that explained why my doctors never talked about nutrition. Medical students receive an average of about twenty hours of nutrition training over four years of medical school. Some schools offer as few as zero hours. A recent survey found that students report fewer than two hours focused specifically on clinical nutrition counseling. Meanwhile, those same students spend hundreds of hours studying chemotherapy mechanisms, radiation science, pharmacology, and surgical techniques. There is no standard requirement for training in clinical nutrition, immune system support, or supplement use. It’s not that doctors don’t care. They simply aren’t taught. Conventional treatment is only half the story, and medical schools only teach that half.
The Other Half Nobody Talks About
While doctors were attacking the cancer from the outside, I realized I needed to arm my body to fight from within. Our immune systems are designed to recognize and destroy cancer cells, but what happens when that system is overwhelmed? Burdened by inflammation from seed oils. Stressed by chemicals and food dyes made from petroleum. Depleted of the very vitamins it needs to function.
Nearly a third of Americans are deficient in Vitamin D. When your body lacks vitamin D, zinc, and magnesium, it cannot fight cancer the way it was designed to. Your cells are trying to wage war with empty ammunition.
So I made changes. I adopted a carnivore diet, cutting out the breads, the sugars, the processed foods that were feeding inflammation. My body entered ketosis, shifting from burning sugar to burning fat, starving the very environment cancer thrives in. I supplemented with vitamin D, zinc, and magnesium at therapeutic levels.
But there was something else I had to face. Something harder to admit than any diagnosis.
A Confession
I have something to tell you.
Before cancer, I was drinking more and more. It started innocently enough, a glass of wine at dinner. But one glass became two, then three. Pretty soon, it wasn’t just wine. A vodka tonic while grilling. A gin and tonic while landscaping. Maybe another one or two later that night. I told myself I had it under control, that I wasn’t like those people who gulped from bottles. But I was going to bed early because I couldn’t stay awake. I couldn’t drive. I needed someone else behind the wheel. I weighed 255 pounds and was considered obese.
I was becoming an alcoholic. And the trend was only getting worse.
When cancer came back for the third time, I stopped. Almost completely. These days, I might have one or two drinks socially, and that’s it. The desire to get hammered is gone. When I had AI analyze all my lab results for my book research, I discovered I had been sliding toward prediabetes. There were troubling trends in my bloodwork that I never noticed because the individual numbers looked fine on their own.
Cancer became my wake-up call. Sometimes the thing that almost kills you is the thing that forces you to finally live.
Stronger Than Before
Today, I am healthier than I have been in decades.
I see a physical therapist twice a week. I go to the gym daily. I drink protein shakes. My stomach abs are showing. I weigh 155 pounds. With cancer. My left shoulder doesn’t work the way it used to, and my feet have neuropathy from the treatments. But my bloodwork is optimal. My energy is through the roof. The carnivore diet, the supplements, quitting alcohol and sugar, it all added up to something I never expected.
I’m in the best shape of my life. And I have cancer to thank for it.
Gratitude
This Christmas, I will be with my family. When you’ve been told you have a twenty percent chance of seeing another holiday, every meal together feels sacred. Every laugh feels like borrowed time made permanent.
I’ve reconnected with old friends I’d let slip away. I’ve had conversations I’d been putting off for years. I’ve said the things that matter to the people who matter.
And through it all, I know this: God has blessed me. Not just with survival, but with purpose.
Why I’m Sharing This
I didn’t write my book, launch my website, or start my YouTube channel to get attention. I did it because I know there’s someone out there right now, maybe you, maybe someone you love, who just got the same devastating news I got. Who is staring at the same terrible odds.
I want them to know those odds can change. I am living proof.
If you take nothing else from my story, take this: try the carnivore diet for thirty days. Just thirty days. I guarantee you will lose weight and feel better than you have in years.
I was given a twenty percent chance to live.
I chose to fight for the other eighty.
Read Chapter 1 from Still Here: How Faith, Food, and Family Beat Stage Four Cancer