Cancer if often referred to as a "journey" and it is. And as with any journey all the mapping, planning, direction changes, and forward movements have to be managed.
Is managing cancer possible? You bet it is!
Today, I get the honor of speaking with The Cancer Box founders, Rachel and Jamison Dye. We talk about Rachel's stage IV colon cancer journey and all the twists and turns that have been a part of it. Rachel and Jamison have a lot to share with others who may also be on a similar path. Don't miss this enlightening story of how cancer can be managed, even a stage IV colon cancer diagnosis.
Connect with Rachel and Jamison Dye at The Cancer Box:
https://www.thecancerbox.com/
Suggested Resource Links:
Your donations power our podcast's mission to support cancer patients with hope, insights, and resources. Every contribution fuels our ability to uplift and empower. Join us in making a lasting impact. Donate now! 🌟
Cancer if often referred to as a "journey" and it is. And as with any journey all the mapping, planning, direction changes, and forward movements have to be managed.
Is managing cancer possible? You bet it is!
Today, I get the honor of speaking with The Cancer Box founders, Rachel and Jamison Dye. We talk about Rachel's stage IV colon cancer journey and all the twists and turns that have been a part of it. Rachel and Jamison have a lot to share with others who may also be on a similar path. Don't miss this enlightening story of how cancer can be managed, even a stage IV colon cancer diagnosis.
Connect with Rachel and Jamison Dye at The Cancer Box:
https://www.thecancerbox.com/
Suggested Resource Links:
Your donations power our podcast's mission to support cancer patients with hope, insights, and resources. Every contribution fuels our ability to uplift and empower. Join us in making a lasting impact. Donate now! 🌟
Hi, I'm Ivelisse Page, and thanks for listening to the Believe Big podcast, the show where we take deep dive into your healing with health experts, integrative practitioners, biblical faith leaders and cancer thrivers from around the globe. Welcome to today's episode on the Believe Big podcast. My name is Ivelisse Page and today's episode will infuse you with hope and incredible resources to encourage you and others on their cancer journey. We are speaking to stage IV colon cancer overcomer, Rachel Dye and her husband Jamison, who are the founders of a really cool subscription service called The Cancer Box. Rachel's journey through stage IV colon cancer at the young age of 27 is what inspired them to create The Cancer Box. They have three beautiful children and they both have a desire to empower those battling cancer, to make a two letter mindset shift from victim to victor. Welcome Rachel and Jamison to the show.
Jamison Dye:Thank you so much for having us. I don't think we could have said it better ourselves.
Ivelisse Page:We always like to learn from our guests and wanna know what your favorite health tip is. I know you guys probably have many, but can each of you share one with us?
Jamison Dye:Yeah, so we knew the question was coming. I think we probably have the same one, but maybe from different angles. So what we talked about, and I feel like this comes up in conversation with people over and over again, is that a cancer journey is as much spiritual as it is physical. And I think that plays out in a lot of different ways. We've come across people or even been tempted ourselves to dive so heavily into the physical, to do everything you can to throw everything at it and be completely exhausted and worn out and discouraged and depressed spiritually or emotionally. And I think that's almost always our first recommendation is when we talked with somebody. And they're describing what they're going through. It's" hey, you're doing a lot of great stuff physically, but you gotta be caring for the spiritual because that is where healing is found". And so for me, I think what it makes me think of, I think it's in Isaiah 53, where it talks about who we know to be Jesus we talk about Jesus taking our sins but what that describes is that he takes our grief and our sorrow. And I think that's powerful in a cancer journey. Either as the cancer fighter or the caretaker. There's a lot of grief and sorrow in that, and I think for me, that's deeply encouraging to know we don't walk that alone. And there's someone who has not only experienced their own grief and sorrow, but is experiencing ours with us. And I think that's powerful.
Ivelisse Page:I completely agree. Jesus' life walk is freedom and forgiveness, right? In our own lives we're carrying so much, and when we lay down our burdens we're not meant to carry, He gives us the freedom and He forgives us, and it gives us an example of how we should also respond to others around us. I think Dr. Turner has that study that says that, your body is either in a state of stress, or in a state of healing. It can't be in both. And so when you are in a state of forgiving and a peace and having that hopeful mindset, through Christ, then you are able to heal in so many different facets. I'm so glad you mentioned that. How about you, Rachel?
Rachel Dye:I think the first thing that kind of settled on me immediately after the diagnosis in the hospital bed was just that something that my parents actually instilled in me was a very heavy emphasis on God's sovereignty. And I just immediately knew that, although I didn't see it coming, God did, and there was peace in knowing that this didn't surprise God and that He allowed it in my life. The story that comes to mind for me was when Joseph in the Bible, his brother threw him into the pit, and through years later, Joseph ends up being exalted to Pharaoh's right hand man. He's able to set the kingdom up for success. Forewarn them about famine and then ultimately full turn of events. Joseph is able to meet his brothers again and he tells them what you meant for evil against me, God meant for good. And so I think just that, that mindset, even though it's it's a result of the fallen world ourselves attacking themselves and ultimately feels like turning on us. It feels like a betrayal of sorts. And knowing that even though it isn't God's perfect plan, that He allowed it to happen and that it seemed like something terrible, but He can ultimately use it for His good and just to be surrendered to His sovereign plan for our lives, no matter what comes, because we're headed for eternity, right? We're eternal beings and this life is just a vapor, and we don't get to decide how we get to eternity.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. It's to live as Christ and to die His gain, right? Yeah. So no matter how our stories turn out, we don't know who's tomorrow we have, but we have the confidence in knowing that whether we live or we die, we win. And so what are we gonna do with our life here while we have it? That's just such a beautiful perspective on looking at things as you're seeing difficulty come into our lives. I would say no cancer patient would welcome a cancer diagnosis, but I've heard from so many people that they found it to be a blessing in their lives. And what you guys are doing with The Cancer Box is really showing how you are empowering and helping people and using it for good because you know what people are experiencing. But before we get into that, can you share how you found out you had cancer and what you experienced?
Rachel Dye:Yeah, so I actually, I am an avid runner. And so there's a lake in our hometown and it's a four mile loop, and I had recently run that two days before. And then I had a little bit of like weird, like side cramp. And then eventually it got worse. And so we went into the ER and they did imaging, and they're like, oh, you're constipated, and sent me home with laxatives. Which I was like, that's so weird. I don't ever struggle with constipation. Huh. Okay. So I did all the things took the laxatives and I think it was less than 24 hours later, the pain was just excruciating. I wasn't passing anything, and I actually have a picture of the day before I went in and my whole stomach is descended, just swollen belly. And we went into the ER because I eventually started throwing up and was in so much pain.
Jamison Dye:It was definitely a stupid husband moment for me. I remember, before she was throwing up, to be fair.
Rachel Dye:We just never had any reason to expect this could be very serious. We've always been in control.
Jamison Dye:Yeah. It was like, hey, they said you're constipated. I guess let's just let the laxatives work. So when it got worse I was like, okay, it's time to go.
Rachel Dye:Yeah, I actually had to advocate for myself and I was like, I think something is actually wrong. And then that point, we went into the ER and they did imaging but couldn't see what was going on. So it was emergency surgery. They're like, we're gonna have to cut you open. We can't see what's going on.
Jamison Dye:So at that point they knew there was a total blockage. That's all we knew. Total blockage. And you're about to burst.
Rachel Dye:So I was rushed into emergency surgery and they removed about a foot and a half of colon. Luckily the surgeon knew that it was probably cancer. He had a feeling. When they had me open on the table, they checked my liver and took two spots off my liver and took lymph nodes from around the area. So the surgeon knew to look for cancer spots. So sure enough, when I think it was like three days before we got the results, but they put in a colostomy. So I woke up with a colostomy not knowing what that was.
Jamison Dye:Yeah. I can't stress the urgency that was on that time, where it literally felt like a dream, no idea what's going on. She's still in surgery. The surgeon comes out. He delayed a vacation to do the surgery. And so he literally came out, grabbed me, pulled me into a waiting room. He has his duffle and he's got a Hawaiian shirt on So he has changed. He's ready to go. I'm sure you've experienced surgeons, they're used to people being asleep on their table, and he goes, all right, so we got the tumor taken care of, and there were some other spots and we'll see. And I was like, hold on. Tumor, that's a new word. We had not talked about this word before. And he shared with me, he said, In my experience, this is cancer. And I didn't end up sharing that with Rachel or really anyone else for a couple days. Cause that didn't feel like a helpful burden.
Rachel Dye:I guess the pain level, the intensity of the trauma, what I experienced before going into surgery, I was still just shocked. The pain scale was at a 10. I was literally on my hands and knees on the hospital bed waiting go in surgery. Find any comfort that would alleviate the pain. So then it was four days of figuring out how to take care of a colostomy and then waiting on results. When a surgeon's assistant came in and she was visiting for a couple minutes, I actually asked, I said is there any news on the results yet? And she said she had them in her hand. And she said, actually, yes, they're here. She said, so the tumor was cancer. Five out of seventeen lymph nodes were cancerous and two spots they removed off the liver was cancerous. I felt like I had a huge weighted blanket thrown on me. I was hooked up to a heart monitor so we could see my heart rate went up to like over a hundred thirty. And it stayed up there. Just the shock I'm 27, I run, I'm healthy, are you serious?
Ivelisse Page:Wow. You mentioned something that I wanted to circle back real quick. We usually tell people when they're dealing with a cancer diagnosis that you have time to research, and you have time to look at all options, that it typically takes cancer seven to 10 years to grow. But in your case, you did the absolutely correct thing and advocated for yourself and had to go in for the emergency situation. So taking your time, you're not able to do that when you're in an acute situation like you guys were. I wanna make sure I mention that. There are cases when you don't have time and you have to go immediately into surgery, and you mentioned the colostomy bag. Is that something that's been reversed?
Rachel Dye:Long story short, I started chemo a month after surgery. Twelve weeks of chemo, low dose and then I was in remission by December of the same year, diagnosed in August. Then I had the colostomy reversal in March of the following year, in 2019.
Ivelisse Page:So you were 27. And what were the doctors saying as far as your chances of surviving, based on your lymph node affected, based on everything that they were seeing at that point?
Rachel Dye:If I did nothing, six months to a year, and I have 13% chance of making it to where I am today.
Jamison Dye:To five years, yeah.
Ivelisse Page:So what made you investigate integrative medicine?
Jamison Dye:Pretty early on in the process, we weren't getting the answers. We weren't really getting any answers from the doctors we were talking with. And this was even before we met with the first oncologist. We're in the hospital, we're recovering from surgery, we're trying to talk to anybody we can soon as we got the diagnosis was like, Okay, what's next? What should we do? What should we change in our diet? We are just asking these questions and the answers we were getting were lackluster, I'd say, from a diet perspective. I think the first meal you were given was or the first food you were offered was an impact shake.
Rachel Dye:Forty two grams of sugar.
Jamison Dye:Yeah. It's essentially a milkshake. And that was their surgery recovery. And that triggered something for us to go, wait a second. I don't know much about cancer, but I feel like what I do know is that cancer loves sugar. We gotta be thinking differently about this.
Rachel Dye:I just thought it was interesting that in the hospital, the nutritionalist that came in to give us the shake, I felt like she was expecting pushback. I felt like she was saying, you need to drink this, or you are irresponsible and you are not caring for your body and you're not gonna recover. And it was very odd to experience someone telling me something I knew to be bad for me, that I had to drink it. It was a thing that caught me on to the fact that I was gonna have to go against the norm.
Ivelisse Page:It's that aha moment, right? And you know what a lot of people don't realize is that in hospital settings, like the nutritionists are not trained in oncology specifically. And their version of nutrition is not our version of nutrition, which I'm so grateful for the people at Remission Nutrition that we work with, because they really individualize a plan. There's no one diet for every single person. It really needs to be individualized and they really give you resources that I can actually attach to this podcast that kind of gives people ideas of what to do when you're in a hospital setting and how do you avoid that or how can I get good nutrition while in a hospital setting.
Jamison Dye:So I'm a project manager by trade and I think this became my most important project pretty early on. As Rachel was recovering I put my researcher hat on took over one of the rooms in the house and had hundreds of pieces of paper printed out and studies and research. And one of the things that I kept running into was, you can Google a question and get immediately contradictory answers. Diet for cancer, right? There's a hot button. You're gonna get keto is life post. You're gonna get a keto will increase your cancer risk. You're gonna get a low sugar. You're gonna get a juice, fruits, essentially high sugar on the first page. And everyone is gonna speak as if they have found the holy grail. And so that's one topic, we were looking at a hundred topics, exercise and sauna-ing and hyperbaric and supplements and even chemo and things like that. So it became, really like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. Not even a needle in a haystack. I think God blessed me or allowed me to hone in and refine down to some things that we felt good about, that seems backed in science, that had meaningful impacts on the physical. And so we built a plan pretty early that was supplements, diet changes, exercise and other kind of complimentary treatments. Then we found our doctor in Seattle who you may have interacted with him at some point, but he's a traditional oncologist, but he takes a very untraditional approach. And so he specializes in metronomic chemotherapy, low dose. And so it is a chemotherapy path, a western medicine path but one that, that really changes the impacts on your body pretty significantly. And so we took that integrative approach coupled all those things together, and that's where, like Rachel said, after 12 weeks of chemo we had our first kind of announcement of remission.
Ivelisse Page:That's incredible. And I didn't lose my hair because I didn't do the conventional treatments outside of surgery. Was it the type of chemotherapy you were given or the low dose of it that prevented your hair loss? Or did you do something different to prevent from losing your beautiful hair?
Rachel Dye:Thank you. It's a combination of both. Because it is low dose, it's much less likely that your hair falls out. And then I was doing high dose vitamin C two to three times a week, which also helped all my healthy cells and my hair follicles stay attached to my head.
Jamison Dye:And I think the third thing was probably hyperbaric oxygen. That does a lot to protect healthy cells. And because we were coupling that with it, I think it was that, three, three punch.
Ivelisse Page:It's never just one thing. I always say cancer treatment is like that trivial pursuit piece and there's different wedges for each person, and you're just having to put those pieces in that you know are effective for you. And I know you have three young children, did you share with them what you were going through? What did that look like so that they could understand what mom was going through?
Rachel Dye:Four years ago when it started, our oldest, Reagan was only five, and then our son Braddock was three and Waverly was one. They didn't really know what was going on, so we told them mama was sick and that I had to get medicine that made me a little more sick to help make me better. And that was easy enough. That sufficed. But since I've had four recurrences, I've had the colon cancer come back in my liver. The conversation is definitely matured as the kids have. So that's been an interesting path for us to navigate, is how to explain this to the kids.
Jamison Dye:Yeah, I think we, we learned early on that they picked up on things that we didn't think they would. That there wasn't really an option for, maybe we have incredible kids, but I think probably all kids are incredible in this way, that there wasn't an option for us to just act like it wasn't happening. It was impacting them and going to impact them. And we have a really robust church community and so there was a lot of prayer happening. There was a lot of people coming by bringing meals and serving it. So life had changed for them, whether they knew why or not. And so I think we've progressively gone through windows of time where we realized we need to bring them further into the process.
Rachel Dye:Yeah. So initially I feel like I would get home on Mondays is when I would do chemo and I would be sick in bed. And there's usually like an onslaught of emotions that come with that because of the steroids and other medications that I was getting. I wanted to protect my kids from that. So that would be one thing that changed. Jamie would take the kids while I'm in my room silently weeping or something really depressing like that. And I think it changed the last time I went through chemo actually. Back in February of this year is when I finished,the kids would come to bed with me and be able to snuggle. We watched the Sound of Music together and I just let them into the process and we'd take selfies together and I had pictures of my face just puffy and swollen. And the kids are a lot more resilient then I would give them credit for, and I've learned that they can not shoulder the burden, but they can handle it. And it is bonding for me and them. And so just let them into the process a little bit and let them see me sad and let them hear me telling them that I trust God and that he loves us. And just communicating hard truths when it is coming from a very, difficult place and time.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. I agree. I think children are resilient. I think it empowers them to feel like they can help you in their way, I believe.
Jamison Dye:I think one of the things we have lost as a probably Western society is the value of grief, of sorrow, of lament. Just the ability to say, we're all sad and that's okay. There's even value in that in going through that. And so that in the last two years has been a learning process with the kids. Because our story is like big scary cancer thing, take care of the cancer, now I move on. The cancer is no longer, in, in our foresight. For us it's been a process of managing the disease really. That's given lots of opportunities to say, yep, let's just grieve a little bit. Let's sit and talk about the impact that this has. Yep. The cancer is back here and that's gonna impact this and let's just talk about it and allow those emotions to flow. And I think that's been a really healthy, helpful thing. And really bonding, really for all five of us, our little family unit, to go through that together knowing that times of joy are coming. It's not grieving without hope, but grieving with hope and allowing both those things to coexist.
Ivelisse Page:What have you learned through this as far as when you get a recurrence, what do you do differently? What have you changed in the hopes that it won't ever return. And I do love that you say you're managing it like a disease and I think a lot of people are just one and done, or they blast people with chemotherapy and then their bodies are not able to bounce back, as readily from it. There's so many different stories, but in your case, I love how you're managing it just like a disease. So what are some things that you're investigating? Have you looked at mistltoe or other things that maybe you incorporate that could potentially prevent a recurrence from happening again in the future?
Rachel Dye:So we usually map out, what are five new things that we can incorporate.
Jamison Dye:Adjustments to make.
Rachel Dye:Yeah, we might even make more than that. And then we pick our top five. Let's try this, this combination of things. Last summer I actually did ablation and
Jamison Dye:Hypothermia.
Rachel Dye:Hypothermia. We tried that down in California and that halted the cancer but didn't eradicate it completely. I ended up doing, 12 more rounds of chemo. So I think I've done I'm up to almost 50 rounds of chemo total over the last four years. But every time it's been a different combination of doing sauna-ing, hyperbaric chamber, I did mistletoe for a while, but the strand that I tried was super, super hard on my body. So we've done different strands of mistletoe.
Jamison Dye:She's a unique case in that we've played with mistletoe quite a bit actually, and she has what seems to be a fairly severe allergic reaction rash and body ache.
Rachel Dye:My naturopathic doctor calls me a delicate flower.
Ivelisse Page:And I think you're part of that 1%. I think that can be allergic to it or something to that effect.
Jamison Dye:But I think that the management mindset provides a lot of freedom and I'll say it's an up and down battle for us. Largely it helps remove the fear. Cuz I think making decisions out of fear is a scary place to be, to say, oh my gosh, what if this is the time that we can't get on top of it? And it destroys that mindset is there. But to say, you know what, we have tools. We need to pull some tools out of our toolbox. We need to work through this because we're going down this road. One, thing that our oncologist in Seattle shared with us was that he instilled this in our first meeting with him. He said, look where we're at in the medical field today, it's not about healing it now necessarily. It can be that's wonderful, but it's not heal it now or die. It's heal it now or within a few years, we probably have a cure for these cancers and we have more effective treatments and the rapid nature of development in this field puts us in a place of just wait it out essentially. And that just brought again hope of okay, we're always going for healing, but it doesn't crush, it doesn't destroy our world to be managing.
Ivelisse Page:And to give you hope, I had Chris Lawrence, Hope Has Arrived, he started that foundation couple weeks back and he was one of those. He waited on these treatments and it happened to be the treatment that saved his life. Be encouraged with that. Listen to his story because it's really powerful. And I wanna just mention to people who are listening, they can't see you, Rachel, but if anyone was to look at you, they would never even think that you've had even one drop of chemotherapy in your body cuz you look so vibrant and strong and beautiful. It just really shows you what an integrative approach can do. People think of chemotherapy, they think of these treatments, conventional treatments, and yes, they're harsh. But your body can handle it when it's done in the right processes with the right physicians that are helping you walk through that to protect your body, going through something difficult and you're a true testament as to how resilient our bodies are when we treat them with compassion and do these things with wellness that impact you for the future. So I love that. I wanted to ask you both before I ask you about The Cancer Box, how did your faith play a role in your journey?
Jamison Dye:That's a good question. We've probably shared some things that hint towards the foundation that it's been, I think. Outside of the more personal relationship side, which we talked about of the foundation of God's sovereignty and Him bearing our griefs and sorrows and what relationally that does. I think something practical that comes to mind is the faith community that the physical, tangible, hands and feet of God in our life has been a game changer. I think dozens, hundreds of people actively serving and loving us. Thousands of people praying for us and the power of prayer and what that does in a cancer journey. It's those things that come to mind when I think of just the impact of faith, right? There's a foundation of faith, and then what that foundation impacts in that journey.
Rachel Dye:For me, I would say as far as my faith through it all I felt on a personal level, like God was very gracious. I almost felt like a theme emerged through each recurrence where I can very clearly say, this is what God was teaching me. And I had to like work through the process of God isn't just up there giving me trials to make me grow and be different, although He does want my sanctification and He does want me to be more holy, image bearer of who He is. I just felt very like he was gracious to me and saying, this is what we're gonna work on next a little bit and in the most loving, gracious way He could. I felt protected, I felt cared for and sustained, like Jamison said, by the global body of Christ. We had people reaching out from literally all over the world encouraging us. And I felt shored up in the community that God put around me. So I felt at ease and I could learn. This is what he's working out in me personally, because I felt so just secured in my relationship with him.
Ivelisse Page:I think that, in our lives, we want it to be always sunny skies, right? But He even says that growth doesn't happen on the mountaintops when everything's going great. It's in those valleys that we flourish and, I think it's because to that, we tend to rely on him more for our strength, for our peace. And I think sometimes we get to life and say, Oh I got this, instead saying, I got this. No, we don't got this I feel like, it's these trials that make us stronger, make us know how strong we really are. And what we're able to endure and overcome the challenges that are before us. In closing, can you share with us about The Cancer Box?
Jamison Dye:In a lot of this story it, it really culminated for us in recognizing maybe two things. The first was that there was so much opportunity to impact people through our faith journey, but also, just through the things we had learned in the chemo room. There was just so much opportunity and openness and ability to talk frankly about hard things there that you don't find in the coffee shop or, in the pew, even. And the second thing was that it, it seemed clear that we were given an ability or a body of knowledge. The ability to research, the time investment to do that, that others didn't have that same ability granted to them. They didn't have the time. When you're in chaos mode it's hard to figure out where should I be focusing. And the concept of The Cancer Box came out of hey, is there a way that we can physically, literally package up this experience, this knowledge, this research, and say, hey, here's a starting point. Here's a foundation that there's tons of ways you can go on top of this. But if you don't know where to start, here's a good place.
Rachel Dye:Initially one of the things that seems so basic, but unless you've gone through it before you wouldn't even know that took a fair amount of research was to come up with a list of questions to ask the doctor. It's on The Cancer Box website. It's just little things like, how can we shoulder the burden with someone who doesn't know what to ask?
Ivelisse Page:I'm gonna put a link to that as well. If you send us the link to your questions to ask oncologists. We have one as well and that we have on our website cuz the same thing. We encourage people to interview three different oncologists from three different hospitals so that you're getting the person who is for you. This person's gonna be following you for many years to come, and you want someone who is a team player and not my way or the highway.
Jamison Dye:I think we're aligned on that. I think we talked about, you should be the coach of your team and have that mentality, and so you need people who are willing to be on your team, not trying to control your team,
Ivelisse Page:and that mindset shift. That's fantastic. What advice or encouragement can you share with someone that is listening today, that is battling cancer right now? What would you tell them?
Rachel Dye:God has a plan for you and that He loves you so much more than you can fully understand. The passage in Matthew comes to mind where it's talking about the sparrows and not a sparrow falls without God knowing. He has all the hairs on your head numbered. And If he knows all the lilies in the valley that are here today and gone tomorrow, how much more does he care for you? That's God's heart for people.
Jamison Dye:I think that's first bit of advice and everything after that gets practical is second. Important but secondary.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. Thank you both so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us today. And we will be praying for you guys in the future and know that we're all a big family here, so we're always here to support you in any way that we can.
Rachel Dye:Thank you so much.
Jamison Dye:Oh yeah. Thank you for this opportunity and a wonderful conversation.
Ivelisse Page:If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support our podcast, please subscribe and share it with others. Be sure to visit believebig.org to access the show notes and discover our bonus content. Thanks again, and keep Believing Big!