Living Life to the Fullest: Dale Atkinson's Inspiring Fight Against Cancer.

Hello again, good people, and welcome to cancer and comedy. This is the podcast where we like to speak with and be helpful to cancer impacted people with a dosh with a dash of hope and humor. And we are have a wonderful guest with us today. His name is Dale Atkinson, and he comes to us from the from United Kingdom, from a town outside of London, and we'll get on more about that in here just a minute. And he has a wonderful story to tell about what he is going through in his life. And we'll put all the ways to contact him in our show notes. But he represents, among other things, pure serenity foundation.co.uk, and we're going to talk about that here a minute. But Dale, welcome to our conversation here today on cancer and comedy.

Well, thank you for having me, Brad. It's great to be able to tell my story.

Well, that's what we want to hear. We what we want to hear is your story, and then how parts of your story can be helpful. We're all about helping people cope with hope and humor and with with a bit of just seeing a kind of a positive side of life, even out of some really difficult circumstances. So let's, let's talk about your life for a minute. Here, Dale, your life was cruising along relatively good in the career that you were you were in till not too long ago when things a turn of events happened. So why just take us through that a little bit your personal journey, kind of where you were before this turn of events happened, and then what happened? And we'll take it from there.

Yeah, no problem at all. So for the last sort of 15 years or so, I worked in finance. I've been a compliance consultants, helping everyone from global governments through to large asset management and banking firms to combat financial crime. So looking at large international terrorist groups, looking at fraudulent groups, looking at all these wonderful scammers you hear about online, through to the likes of presidents who've hidden money offshore and paid off people and bribed people and all that kind of stuff. So my role has been at a very senior level to either investigate or to create mechanisms and frameworks to prevent money laundering, bribing, Corruption, fraud, and all these wonderful things you get to hear about in the news. I was incredibly successful in my career. I've been very, very lucky in what I've done, and I actually ended up starting up my own consultancy about a year and a half ago, and things were going fantastically well. I was just in the process of talking to a UK high street bank. We were actually about to in the week of my diagnosis, we were about to sign off a multi million pound deal, and I was about to try and hire in over 100 staff to help them with a remediation project going through and helping them sort their files out and and weed out some of the problems they were having.

So things were looking pretty good for you overall, your career wise, at least, and and you had some people in your life and family and important people in your life as well.

Yeah and that's sort of the next step in the story would be. So I have a partner, Anna, a very long term partner of mine. That's a weird way to put it, but she is my partner. We have two children. We've got a one year old and a three year old together. We moved out of London, bought a house in a little town not too far from London, couple years ago now, and life was ticking on really nicely until last summer, and then, unfortunately, Anna had a bit of a funny turn. She one day, started having heart palpitations. We're getting shooting pains up through her neck and her shoulder. And we rang up what's called 111, over here, which is a sort of non medical emergency line, to the NHS, which is our National Health Service, and they sent an ambulance out, thinking that she was having a heart attack. They took her into hospital and decided to run a couple of tests. They did an x ray on her chest and a few other things, and they somehow managed to find a lung carcinoma. So fast forward another month or two until about the middle of September last year, and Anna had a full lobectomy on her upper right lobe of her lung, so she had the entire moved. Yeah, not a fun procedure. She was in hospital for a little while, my goodness. And then unfortunately, excuse me, and then unfortunately, exactly two weeks ago, was home recovering. I actually then had my own diagnosis. Sadly, mine wasn't quite as clear cut. Anna's lung carcinoma was a very low stage, and they were able to surgically cure her. So they were able to remove them all over the lung, take out the tumor with it, and class her as surgically killed. From there, my own diagnosis, which I'd spent many years sort of hounding my doctor, I was having heartburn. I was having a few gi gastrointestinal issues, and I'd sort of spent the last five years or so going to my doctor on a relatively regular basis, having blood tests done, having samples done, and every time they came back to me with roughly the same sort of thing, we think it's just a really low level ulcer. Here's some omeprazole, which is a protein pump inhibitor which basically stops on a stomach acid being produced. Come back to us if it continues. And I'd go back and they'd say this. And they never again, and they sent me for the same test over again, and it was just a sort of a revolving door, all the way through COVID, all the way up until earlier last year, when, thankfully, my GP decided where we'd moved. It was a new GP, okay, decided that actually maybe there was something a little bit more going on. So he sent me off for some tests. The test came back in conclusive. So he then put me through for an endoscopy, which is a camera or a scope down your throat, right, right? Not the most pleasant of things. I will have three week. Who has that coming up?

I've had it done myself, and I know it's no right, no no fun whatsoever, right?

Yes. And I went for the option without esthetic. Oh, my. So I did mine with just the just the spray apologies. I've got a bit of a chest infection at the moment, the way I've had a neutropenia recently, white blood cell counts. Understand completely.

No apologies needed. But let's hear more about your story. You where we left it out. You had the in cost and got I would say they're wrong. His copy could be and so what happened out of that?

So I was lying there, and I'd chosen not to have the the anesthetic, because with Anna having just come to the hospital, I had to drive myself there and back. And this was also on the day of my youngest little boy's birthday. It was his first birthday. Oh my goodness, they put a camera down my throat, and the the endoscopy nurse and doctor who were there basically turned around to me straight after it and said, Look, there's no hiding it from you. You saw it on the screen. We talked about it in front of you. There's very little we can, you know, do or say, but you have cancer.

Oh my sorry. So you learn, learn about it right there in that test right there in that moment. Oh, my goodness. And you're by yourself. Your partner is not with you at the time and so, so tell me. Just tell me what kind of how that impact you. I mean, was, was this a time of denial, or was this a time of just devastation? Tell me so a little bit about your feeling at that moment.

I think it was a bit of both. I think the first thing I did was come home, open a bottle of wine and just sort of sit with my thought thoughts for sort of half an hour or so. It was one of those where, having just gone through such a harrowing time with my partner, in the process of building my own business, just about at the tip being successful and on my little boy's first birthday was a lot to cope with, a lot, a lot to cope with at that point in time. And I think I spent probably the next five to 10 days feeling devastated, just feeling like my world had ended, like this was it was me shifting off this mortal coil as it were. Wow. Thankfully, I'm a relatively positive person most of the time, and I sort of managed, after a few days, to snap out of that. So part of my background I should explain here. So a little while ago, I sat on the board of the befrienders worldwide network, which is a global Suicide Prevention Network. And a lot of the other board members on there were psychologists having their career, working with the Samaritans and working with various other suicide prevention groups. They had ended up the pinnacle of their career, and ended up sat on the board of the befrienders network, which is a support network that covers everyone from Samaritans down to the seafarers suicide hotline, etc. They're, they're very global, 280 plus countries, and there is an arching support network for the suicide prevention lines.

So you were, you were kind of involved, engaged with the folks who were in these suicide prevention networks. And they were, did you, did you reach out to them? Or are they to you to have some support there?

So just winding back slightly, so part of my COVID project for myself, because I was sat on the board with all of these wonderful psychologists and psychiatrists, etc, and sometimes I struggle to understand the clinical language. Clinical language they were using in certain cases. I decided to go and do a diploma in psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy myself.

Really, okay, goodness, I didn't, yeah, yeah.

COVID project to myself when everyone else was off psychology, wow. I also tried to learn Spanish, but that didn't really work either. I'm not very good at languages.

So you kind of, in a way, for good or bad, you gave yourself to the you were equipped intellectually, in some regards to least know what was going on with you. Now we know that there's kind of the intellectual, cognitive part, but there's also the emotional and there's a relational part of all all of this. And so Tim, a little bit of how you managed to kind of coped with it, with Anna, with your children and with other people in your life, in that initial stages. When we're talking time frame we're talking about, like October, last October is just about the time frame we're talking about.

Okay, so I was diagnosed on the 15th of October, and I think I spent probably until later that month, or end of no end of October, the time feeling sorry for myself, as we would do when we get to a diagnosis. I then had to wait a week for the oncologist appointment to find out what it really meant. And it was horrible. It was, it was. Horrible, horrible time. And that weight between finding out you you and finding out what type of cancer from the biopsy, finding out what stage you said, etc, is so nerve wracking, and so it's so self harrowing that it is just it's difficult to explain to anyone who's not been through it.

The weight is the weight is the worst in many ways, isn't it? The weight is the worst.

It is the news after the weight almost feels like a relief. Sometimes, even if it's bad news, at least you then have a an idea of what's going on and an object to sort of pinpoint that onto.

Hey, you got something to react to. Then you got something to attack, or whatever you want to throw out you want to use. You got something to get after there.

Yeah, exactly something to prepare for, something to be able to, you know, research about, and look at and understand, as opposed to that weight where you just don't, you don't know what sort of cancer it is. You don't know what it means for you. You don't know whether you can be surgically cured or not. Unfortunately, in my case, it turned out that I had a stage for esophageal adenocarcinoma. It had metastasized all across my lymph nodes. It's attached to my daughter. You can probably hear my lungs are a little bit stuffy as well. It comes with lots of other fun little bits and pieces around it as well. With that, they class me as inoperable and incurable and put me as at October last year with 11 and a half months to live.

Wow, that is, that's stunning. That is absolutely stunning news. It really kind of takes my breath away to even hear you talk about it. So just to hear, you know, I got my own cancer journey that I've gone through, and many of our audience has their cancer journey, or some other thing that we'd like to term cancerous, and that there's other things that kind of eat your weight, your life. You know it could be a mental health issues give you relationship, relational we kind of term all those things in their own way of cancer. But in your case, it's esophageal cancer, and spread it to your lymph nodes. And the word you got was a terminal diagnosis of a year or so from when they were talking to your 11 half months. You just said to me, tell me a little bit about that moment when they you know you you first get the diagnosis, kind of almost. It's not like almost off the cuff from those who are doing the initial scans of your esophagus. Man, I'm having trouble my pronunciation today, but the of your esophagus, and then, but a few weeks later, you get this actual diagnosis, and during that time you just said the wedding, you don't know if it could be cured or not, or what can be done, but now you get the word that this, you know, my time is finite in the next year or so, so can just go through the emotions, if you don't mind, with me. Dale, I know it may be hard, but I think it'd be helpful to our people who are coping here.

Yeah, of course. So in that week beforehand, it was just overwhelming. I couldn't pinpoint a single emotion in the week before I actually given my diagnosis, it was everything piled into one. It was shock, it was fear, it was despair at points as well. And I completely recalled from my family, I disappear, spent two or three days in bed, just not coping, and then the fateful meeting comes, and I'll be honest, it felt really at that point in time, hearing what my diagnosis was, hearing how long I had left at least, gave me a benchmark, and gave me something that I could get my hands around and understand, as opposed to the Not knowing, which, for me, was by far the worst bit. Right from there, I then hit the point where it took me a day or two to kind of get my head around it. And apologies, I'm still wheezing it. It took me a day or two to get my head around sort of what was going on, what was happening, why it was happening, how it had happened, and to really work out what my diagnosis meant, both for me as well as for my family as well as for my ability to live and my quality of life and all that, I think it's right into one and it was two days of I suppose shock is probably the closest thing I can like to but it was shock mixed with fear and mixed with the feeling of just crushing despair that my world was ending, and what that means for my boys, especially my two little ones.

Well, let's just, let's talk about that just for a minute, just to get context. Do you mind me asking how old person you are? Dale, what's your age? So I'm 36 you're 36 and your partner, Anna, is she similar age to you?

Yeah, she's in her early 40 she's 43.

Your children, as you mentioned, are very young. I'd take it like a year or two.

Yes, we got an 18 month old and a three year old.

Oh, my goodness. So just to say context, this is devastating on so many levels, you know, because you've mentioned about the, you know, the health diagnosis, but you got your partner, you got your children, other people in your life. You know you're not. We haven't talked too much since our initial stages of our conversation about your career, you probably had to be thinking about how you know, that's all you know, blowing apart, or whatever that that would have been somewhere along the line though, Dale you you mentioned about despair and shock and and fear and all that type of thing. You. Uh, somewhere along the line, though, I get the sense that you had some sort of a pivotal moment, an aha moment, a moment of shifting from okay, I'm, you know, I'm in this mess here, but some sort of a shift to okay, what am I going to do out of this that's positive or productive, or make the best of my time? Was there such a time as that, and if so, go with me there about what, what that was like?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the natural progression of the conversation. Anyway. Unfortunately for me, it was my mother's death, which happened nearly it was 12 days after my diagnosis. Wow, she was unfortunately, she had a terminal illness as well. Hers was an immuno based illness. She had something called scleroderma, which essentially her immune system is attacking herself. And they found her one day, her cleaner went to try and come in, couldn't get in the door, and they found her body at the bottom of the stairs. And it turned out she'd her body had just given up on her, and she'd fallen down the stairs, unfortunately. And it was hearing that news and having that extra weight thrown on top, that made me realize that life would be worse, that, you know, these things really are sent to test us, that I now didn't have a support that I really thought was going to be there. And to context, my mum was a palliative care nurse.

He was, for goodness sake. Wow, yes, so many, so many levels. Got so many levels of this. Wow, so shock and the and the and the pain and the fear and the things you're going through. You're also going through grief, losing your mother, you're going through that and and all that as well. So I just feel for you, my friend and but I'm also impressed by you, how you've chosen to kind of lean into this little bit. Tell me a little bit about how, how may, how people maybe stepped up to be supportive of you, your partner, maybe others. Were there people who stepped up and said, Okay, we're here for you. How can we be helpful? Were there people like that in your life?

Absolutely, of course. But I think just going back to the point of my mother's death quickly. So in terms of my mum's death, it was that overload that actually forced me into trying to deal with things. And I don't mean trying to deal with things as in process them individually. It put me more in a functional mode. So it put me into let's do this, and then this, and then this, and then this. And it allowed me, a little bit, because I was so overwhelmed by it, to switch off, I suppose, to sort of ban myself from feeling a lot of the emotions, a lot of the there, and to just get up and do things because, well, my two brothers are living abroad. They weren't in a position to do so, and it was sort of on me to do a lot of it, so I had to. There was no other choice, and that put me in a position where I didn't allow myself to despair anymore. I didn't allow myself to feel hopeless and lost. I pushed myself to get up and just start doing things. And that really for me, was the change in this there was having to try and cope with it all, to the point it broke me completely, but that allowed me then to rebuild myself a little bit stronger, and to go, well, well, this could be worse. At least I'm able bodied. I'm still able to spend time with my children. I still have a quality of life, and I still have all the things I need to maybe not completely beat this thing because, well, it's highly unlikely that I will, but at least arm myself with the ability to survive this as long as possible, and to get my cancer to, hopefully a relatively manageable, longer term point as well, which is not what my oncologist thinks will happen, but I do think it is what will happen from my personal my situation.

That's awesome. I love that because you took action, you took action. That's one of the things I like to teach is one of the first things you need to do after an initial shock period is just get moving, do something exactly, take some action of some sort. And then another part of what I like to talk and teach about is this making connection to other people or higher power and things of this nature, and sound like some people did step up to be helpful to you, some connections and maybe some support people came into play. So get go there with me for a second. Who who was helpful? And maybe did you reach out to others who were helpful to you?

Well, I think the very first person I should indicate here is my partner, Anna. So Anna went from she's a qualified architect. She ran private members clubs in central London for a living for many years, and has now retrained as a phlebotomist, so a blood taker and a cannulation expert, in order to help support me with my journey, and to learn a little bit more about how and why and and to be able to understand some of the terminology that doctors using, etc, she has gone so far above and beyond, you know, dealing with her own cancer sort of remission, dealing with the the fact that she had major surgery, and she was still recovering from that, when she started all of this, sure, and she had beyond, stepped up from, from anything, you know, even an urban partner would normally even consider Okay, and she has just been. Been the most amazing support to me in life that you could possibly imagine, and being there for our little boys too. She's just beyond incredible. I cannot ever thank her enough for that.

Well, that is awesome. I'm sorry.

We've also quite a few amazing friends who stepped up as well. We have a an old nurse friend who happens to live very nearby us. Excuse me, who I knew when I looked up the Channel Islands a little while ago, and she stepped up and come to help us on various things as well. She's been beyond incredible and supportive, both to me and Anna, emotionally and coming to oversee Anna's calculations and things in order, just to give Anna a little bit more comfort in what she's doing too. Yeah, and some of that, we've had various family members who've been incredible as well. And we've got some amazing friends. We've got doctor friends who Thank you, Alex, thank you Mark as well, his partner, the two of them, have been there for us and our kids like you wouldn't believe. And then I suppose the final one to say thank you to is all of the amazing people on LinkedIn who have donated and supported our charity building efforts and our just giving page as well. The people who've reached out by that have been, honestly, beyond amazing as well.

We'll put links to that in our show notes as well, because that shows the power of the intimate relationships, your partner and your friends, and kind of the concentric circle, if you will, and it goes extends out to, you know, literally, the world, and that's very cool. Any part of this in terms of making a connection, deal, any connect, any connection or reconnection, anything greater than self, on a spiritual realm, or any kind of a metaphysical realm, that was a part of this whole process for you, or any part of that, is it part of that, part of your story at all?

In some ways, yes. So I was brought up Christian. I don't necessarily hold a direct Christian belief. However, I am agnostic, so I do believe that there is a higher power out there, and I do believe in the ability to to heal oneself using a connection to a higher power. So a lot of what I have sort of started to do was post my diagnosis, post my mom's death. I threw myself then into a lot of research, and I have found through that research that I suppose there's two things that I'd like to highlight out of that research. One is that the live care path isn't always the best path, and it can be heavily supplemented and complemented by what we currently call alternative therapies, and those have to do with some level of spiritual self. So looking at things like the Wim Hof breathing techniques, although it is a metaphysical thing that happens, there are also underlying things that we don't yet understand that very much are plastered spiritual at this point in time. And I believe they are in some way, shape or form. It's a connection between the soul, the higher power that's out there, and the living being itself, and it's strengthening that connection using those breathing techniques. Top of that, there's things like meditation and relaxation. So looking at the connection between the body's way to deal with stress, looking at the loading that stress, and looking at how the self sits within or the hidden ego even sit within, the sort of wider community, and how you can then help that community, which, although doesn't directly have a higher power in it, it is working on behalf of a higher power.

And you've integrated some of these practices into your life, it sounds like and so tell me, give me some results here in terms of how this integration kind of the spiritual, the metaphysical and Wen Hoff method, breathing and other things, has it made a difference for you? Is some observation working for you? Okay, tell, tell me a little bit more about that.

So if you look at when I was diagnosed last year, I had a it was roughly an 8.4 centimeter tumor in my esophagus with multiple metastases everywhere. It was, you know, an absolute horror show sort of thing. It was the level of cancer that nobody really wants, and the doctors look at you and they struggle to even talk to you. Know, my first meeting where they gave me my diagnosis, I think the doctor had me in there for less than 30 seconds, essentially told me I was dying, told me I was incurable, and there's nothing they could do, shook my hand and sent me out. So I went from dying I had cachexia. I've lost 52 kilos in the space of four months. I've started to put some back on there, but I dropped 52 kilos. I was unable to eat solid food. I was struggling to drink water. I was having to get cannulated and ending up in a hospital quite often for lack of fluids. I had actually, before my diagnosis, started going to a chiropractor because I was having severe back pains all across up my shoulders, all across the lower back, etc. We've now realized that my tumor was pressing against a major cluster of nerves, and it was causing me so much pain that eventually I ended up admitted hospital for pain management. Spent quite a while in hospital until the palliative key and put me on a mixture of everything from oxycodone through to pregabalin and all sorts of wonderful things. However, since then, and on the back of my research and the introduction of the complementary I'm using, so I'm using hyperbaric oxygen therapy, mistletoe therapy, I do high dose vitamin C injections or IVs even, sorry, although, if anyone. Is looking to use that in future. Please make sure you get a G, 6p, D test done and speak to an oncologist before you do it. I would not recommend just doing it for because somebody on the internet said so it's not a good idea to do anything like that, and everybody's cancer is different, and everybody's experience is different. So please make sure you speak to your medical team before you try anything like this. On top of that, I have an off label drug regime. I have an infrared sauna in the house. I do specific exercises and all sorts in order to try and put muscle in the right places and not kicks of the muscle growth into the MTL pathway through the human growth hormone, etc. And I'm working with some really amazing consultants external to the NHS in the UK, in order to try and create a protocol off the back of my own research that works specifically for me and my cancer.

Wow, it sounds like you've taken you've you've really dove. You even mentioned before how you went during COVID times. You dove into some research about psychology and so on. And now you really chose to not just let this happen to you. You dove into the research. You're an academic sort of guy, guy, I can tell. And so you dove into the research and you and then you applied it kind of, you know, really use yourself as a test subject, as it were, and then have some results you're going to report moving forward. Is that a part of what's going on here? Is this part of what you feel like you're giving back to the world here?

Yeah, essentially. So after mum's death, and after the funeral and everything else, I started looking into things I could do in order to survive as long as possible. And I came across the likes of Dr Thomas Seyfried. Excuse me, I came across the links to Dr Thomas Seyfried, Joe Dispenza, and multiple other of these people online, except and I started looking into some of the things suggesting and from there, I got really sort of bitten by the bug of trying to understand the different pathways cancer uses, trying to look at things that would directly affect my cancer and my outcomes. So even things like the level of akamansia, which is a bacteria, or probiotic bacteria, looking at the levels of acumen here in your gut, etc, can actually be an indicator of survival rates for cancer. So I went really deep into that. And I think I read somewhere in the region of you know, I couldn't even put a number of it, 1000s upon 1000s of articles and papers now, wow, in everything fasting through to the use of either mectin, fembendas or pen benders, or all these wonderful things that people are talking about, sure, and the one thing I would point out from my research is that everybody claims to have a golden bullet. Every single influencer you see online at this moment in time, on the cancer space, especially likes to think that they have found a way that is different to everyone, or they have found something that is special. And if you take status off, and if you take this, and if you take this, you will cure your cancer, or certain diet, certain diet protocols, things like that, nature, right?

You've taken all this research that you've done here, Dale, and then you've you compiled it, and then you start to share it. I know you have done some things, like speaking to some groups and some clubs or some groups, and then you're certainly sharing on LinkedIn as well. So what are you sharing with these, with the folks, when you share in the settings, like a podcast or and other ways? What are things? What are you sharing to be, to give, to get something back to others, who may be you said while ago, do you others are worse off than me, and yet you're, you know, you're kind of real challenge ahead of you. What kind of gifts are you giving to those folks there?

Well, I think, first of all, just going back to the last point, because I think it's important for this point as well. The one thing about all of these influences, the one thing that I want to instill in people, is that everybody's cancer journey is unique to them. There is no thing as one singular treatment for one singular cancer, my cancer, my metastases, my lifestyle, my everything is going to be different from from your sales, Brad Sure, from anybody else's, and until you understand your own cancer through things like I've done genetic testing on it, I've gone through I've done everything from mycotoxin panels to look at mold spores and levels of mold in my body through to you name it. I've probably tried it or done it at some point, and therefore I have an understanding of my cancer that allows me to make some of these decisions and to look at these alternative therapies in terms of myself. And what I would strongly suggest to any of your your viewers, etc, is that they do the same, they become their own self advocate, and that if they do want to try any of these things, they need to look at it and understand it themselves, because ultimately, it is their body, therefore it is their responsibility, and it is down to them to sort of understand how that works in order to best inform their own outcome. And with that, I think doing so also gives you a level of confidence to to, first of all, take your hands around your own care, to be able to self advocate against doctors, oncologists, etc, who, in my own experience, I have found sometimes don't look outside of the current standard of care, and they will only suggest you know, the standard radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and if you like. Immunotherapy. They won't look beyond that. They won't look at the fact that you've had a high sugar diet mixed in with, you know, you haven't done any exercise for six months, or you're under a huge stress load, all these other things. They won't look at any of that. They will only give you the one suggestion, which is the medical suggestion, right? Right? At least great in isolation. But you then need to look at your own diet. You then need to look at what you think the cause was, and you need to try and address that root cause a little bit in order to help itself get better. And for me, that was stress levels. I had economically high stress levels. My partner having been ill, we had a Great Dane puppy at that point in time, as well, two toddlers who didn't sleep very much, a mum who was dying, a father who'd just been in for a double ablation on his heart, and wasn't doing particularly well while he smokes and drinks heavily. That's down to him. And then, and then me trying to start a business all sort of culminated in a lot of stress levels, not properly, not looking after myself.

Sure what I mean, what I'm hearing you say is that context matters, you know, high stress level or whatever it is going in their life, and you've chosen to take this adversity that you've had that going on, and you know what we're all about here in cancer comedy podcast, is people who've taken some adversity or some and made some opportunity out of it, or to turn your diagnosis there's something positive to give something back. And I know one of our earlier conversations, you said you really want to be about something effective when to live life to the fullest whatever life you have left. So how you doing that? I mean, we've already talked about that a little bit, but I'd like for you to maybe give me a tangible example, either from somebody you've impacted, who's come to you, or some story to tell about how you've lived life to the fullest, maybe now, because you talk about that stressful life that you had, and now you got kind of almost a singular focus now and what you're working on. And so tell me about that. Tell me a story about living life to the fullest. How's that manifested itself, either in yourself, or maybe somebody you've impacted.

So following on from the last conversation as well, I decided very early on after my diagnosis, to put up a post on LinkedIn. And I decided that it was with the aim first of all of I had quite a few people checking in on at that point, wondering where I disappeared to, because lots of things were happening my life, and I hadn't gotten back to people. So I put up a LinkedIn post. It resonate quite heavily with people. I think it got somewhere close to a million plus views, 13,000 comments, and I got about 10,000 nearly messages off the back of it as well. And I decided, then and there, that I would try and use my story to to help impact other people and to show them that, first of all, they can self advocate, second of all, that there are alternatives that are there to support the traditional therapies. So looking at ways to support chemotherapy, be it using fasting, so there was a proven method that if you fast for a minimum of 24 to 48 hours before chemotherapy, it creates a level of protection in the cells itself, and basically stops chemotherapy from having quite such a devastating effect to the body. So I started posting up things about how some of these little bits and pieces that people could do to sort of improve their outcomes and improve their journey, and it seemed to resonate heavily. So from there, I then had a chat with the lady who runs the hyperbaric oxygen therapy center I was using called Louise Williamson. Louise has been absolutely incredible. She's, uh, she and herself is just an amazing woman. She has MS, and she created a a clinic off of the back of her MS, because she found that the hyperbaric therapy was one of the things that really helped her to cope with her MS ongoing. And she's been instrumental in helping me deal with everything from pain through to all sorts of things. So we decided, together with a couple of other people, to set up a foundation, and we set up a just giving page in order to feed some money into that foundation. And also split into two other places, one being a researcher who Dr Thomas SIFI put me on to, who's a researcher based out of the University of Westminster in London. She's called Isabella Cooper. Dr Isabella Cooper, and she is heavily involved in metabolic theory, so looking at how the body metabolizes things, and looking at what the effect on cancer is of cutting glucose levels and all these kind of things. And she's helped me hugely to create diets and to add supplements in to fight certain things and protect myself. So a line in the line on the list is Dr Amanda King, who is a naturopathic doctor and nutritionist who has been just honestly incredible. We go through my bloods on a monthly basis. We adapt my supplement list. We look at other ways to to help support my body and to help me be in the best place possible to both combat the effects of the chemotherapy and the immunotherapy I want, as well as to give me the best chances of survival ongoing as well.

Yeah, well, you've taken a lot. You've mentioned several things there, including establishing a foundation and all these different tracks for healing and for wholeness. And so we're going to. Bring us around to just a couple of final thoughts here. One of them is that, you know, we call our podcasts or cancer and comedy. The cancer is those things, bad things that happen to us, and the comedy is how we can see life just a little bit more positive life, no matter what our circumstances are. And you've mentioned several things there, but as any part of this whole process that made you feel happy, or put a smile on your face, or something that said there is some value in this that is enlightened and made made me delighted in some way. Or you seen that happen to somebody else.

So I mean, there's lots of examples I could give. The best one I've got at this moment, I actually went and met up with a chap called Phil Richards yesterday. He if you've not seen him on LinkedIn, he's a wonderful guy. He's actually got an MBE for his services to cancer. I think he had give me stage four. Oh, he's got a very different route to why what I have. But we met up for a coffee because he lives not too far away from me and someone who's been living through cancer for about seven or eight years. In his case, he then sat there and asked me a couple of questions about sort of my focus and how I'm doing, and to see him so intently focused on what I was saying I'm writing notes and all sorts out in the coffee shop, it gave me such a wonderful fulfillment that I could help even though they're further along their journey than me, even though they coped better than me with a lot of things, who manages to maintain some amazing it made me feel just incredible that he was so intently listening and wanted to understand, wanted to know about the sign, and really sort of invested his time in understanding what I was trying to tell him, and he just it's given me such a boost to confidence that I'm doing the right thing by sharing my story, by trying to put out some of the word about the complimentary therapies, and by having also sort of put money in for the placements with Dr Amanda King and with the hyperbaric oxygen therapy center as well, in order to help people to have access to some of the things that have really helped me.

Well, let's and let's just yeah, thank and I think it's wonderful. Do you good that's encourage you in your life? And let's kind of take that and kind of turn that around. Let's just say you're now talking to someone else who may be in our audience, who is having you're kind of going through their rough time. Maybe they've just had a recent diagnosis of some really devastating cancer or some other bad thing in life. And so what kind of things might you share with that with that person, to give them some sense of encouragement, or some sort of sense of a next step for them? What would you say to that person who's not too long ago had a diagnosis?

So I think there's three things I'd say, the first of which is a diagnosis. Isn't the end. A prognosis is not, you know, they're not fortune tellers. Doctors aren't fortune tellers. It's just based on a set of data, and they're just percentages. You might not fit in that box. You might not be that person. And the best thing you can do around that point two is be positive. Don't look at it as this is the end. Don't look at it as my time is finite. I am leaving here in 12 months. If I looked at things that way, I don't think I would have pushed so hard for the information I've got. I wouldn't have pushed so hard to find the doctors that I've got, the support team that I've got, and my partner wouldn't be on board with fighting it so hard. And then the last point, the last thing I'd like to impart to people is self advocation. The more you personally know, the more you can self advocate, the more you can understand. And to give a very good example, I've recently had of that. I went in for chemotherapy a couple of weeks ago, and it turned up my oncologist had put 20 milligrams of a corticosteroid on the prescription. Now, knowing what corticosteroids do to the body, and the fact that, yes, they are supportive for chemotherapy and stopping some of the side effects, I'm happy to have a certain level of corticosteroids, despite the side effects, but I was not happy to have that level, and I understood what the impact of that level could be, the longer term effects of it, and looking at my own journey, I was able to sort of have enough to to push back on the oncologist and say, This is not okay in my circumstances. I actually only want to have eight milligrams and a bit of back and forth. And we agreed on my eight milligrams, sure, because it's that we didn't need to have the 20. It was just a maybe, if this happens, it would be good to give you this.

It's your body too, right? Exactly.

Yeah, the side effects for me with, sorry to talk into this, but things like constipation, etc, oh yeah, for for some of the stuff around those corticosteroids, right? That the doctor hadn't necessarily sort of factored into me and my feelings and my quality of life over the next couple covering the chemotherapy, I was in a position to understand what that effect was, and in a position to understand the effect it would have on me, and therefore able to actually turn around to my doctor and say, I don't agree with this. Can you justify exactly why you want to give me this level of steroids? Can you tell me what impact. You have assessed from this, and I will then tell you what I know is the impact of this as well. And we will find a way to talk this through as a two party, sort of you agree and I agree, you know, well, let's find a compromise to make this work for basically a team effort for your health, and you're part of the team. It's not just being done to you, it's not just being done to you. It is for you and that type of thing. Well, there's kind of closing I think a lot of people, unfortunately, because an oncologist is an oncologist, and it's what they do for a living, people, unfortunately, sometimes blindly listen to them. And sadly, in my experience, especially, oncologists are incredible people, but they're overworked, you know, in the US, in the UK, worldwide, at this moment, there is an end of cancers coming out, which they're calling turbo cancers and all these wonderful terms. And it means that, unfortunately, these people are stretched, and sometimes the easiest option for them is not the best option for you. And what they will tell you, sometimes to your face, is, we think this is the right option. And what they really mean is this is either the cheaper option, the quicker option, the option that works better for me, as in, then right oncology that they've set up, and you have to absolutely be the advocate for your own health.

And so that's what I'm hearing that you say, well, let's wrap it up with this, with this thought here, this question or this statement I'd like for you to make just kind of what is next, thinking about a in a positive way, what's next for you? Dale, I got a feeling that you could take a lot of this research and things that you could do. You could package it up in some form or another, a book or a research paper or a video or a podcast or whatever it would be, but I know you have a foundation, so tell us what's next for you, and also and tell us more about how, if people need to be or want to be a part of and connect up with your foundation, the other things you're involved with, how they can be involved with those things.

So first of all, next steps for me. So I'm actually waiting for my progress scan, which is on Monday, and yes, the weight is horrible waiting to find out whether it's my first one as well. So I only got diagnosed in October, so they haven't done a secondary scan to check the progress yet. So finding that out is is my first next step that sort of informs what happens with my treatment plan, how much more chemotherapy I have. It informs a lot of things, and it will inform whether I choose to continue chemotherapy or not, and whether I choose to continue some of the alternative therapies, etc, or whether I decide to prioritize my quality of life the little time I have left and decide to not do the chemotherapy route anymore and to focus on my family and enjoying the best time in my family. I've yet to make that decision because I need the scans first, but that is the next step, working that out. From there, it'll sort of depend on the outcome of that as to what I do next. In terms of my knowledge, I have started compiling some of it. I passed it on to some doctors and some other people who are using it for various purposes. I've also had a lot of people reach out via LinkedIn, asking about sort of things I've posted. So I'm using my little bank of you know research knowledge in order to help them as well. Sure, I don't give opinions. I'm not a doctor in any way, shape or form. All I'm doing is passing on the research that I have found. And if somebody wants to ask about fasting, wants to ask about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or any of the things that you see up on my LinkedIn, please feel free to reach out. I will send you on any information I have. But it is always, of course, down to you to make a decision as to whether it works for you. It's not, it's not anything. But, you know, my research, that's all I can do, and we'll put and.

Then tell us, tell us a little bit about the foundation you're with and how people can get a hold of that if they want to be participating in some way.

Yeah. So the foundation was set up with the with Louise Williamson, who's from the the pure serenity clinic, which is a hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic just outside of reading in the UK, so in Berkshire, and essentially, we have paid for a number of hours worth of hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber uses. And anybody in the local area who is of a low income and can't afford to to self fund those we are providing either supplementation, subsidization or paying for it outright for them. It is all depending on need, etc. And we're looking at on a case by case basis, and trying to allocate it based on the highest level of need. And if anybody does want to reach out, if anybody's need or know somebody who might benefit from it and is in commutable distance. To Berkshire, please do reach out to me, either on my LinkedIn, which is LinkedIn, whatever it is forward slash Dale J Atkinson, alternatively, we also have the pure sorenti foundation, the foundation off the back of the clinic, and the website for that is the pure serenity or www dot, pure serenity foundation.co.uk.

All right, awesome.

Also Amanda King. We have a number of places with Dr King as well, in terms of metabolic theory and looking at nutrition, and again, that's same sort of thing.

We'll put all those links into our show notes at cancer and comedy. Dot. Com. Well, what a fascinating conversation. And Dale, I just know that the cancer comedy family we like to call our followers lifter uppers, our focus is to lift people up. Are just lifting you up in whatever ways you need to be lifted up and those people close to you, whether it be emotionally or through LinkedIn or spiritually and other ways, just to lift you up and say, you know you're doing good. You've taken this situation you've had where life is throwing you some really tough situations, and you're doing something positive with it, and so say, way to go, and we're with you, and we just look for great things to come. Whether you know your physical life is months or years, you have made a great contribution, and we thank you for it. So our guest today, Dale Atkinson. He is available on linkedin.com/dalejatkinson.com, he's been our guest today on the cancer and comedy podcast. Thank you, Dale.