Today's guest on the podcast is Taryn Hillin, a screenwriter, author and journalist who at the age of 34 was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer. She joins me today to talk about The Anti-Cancer Life and her cancer experience.
Taryn's story is powerful and a huge testament to the argument that patient's must be their best advocate and second opinions are often more important than we realize at the time.
Taryn's interview includes:
This episode is packed with the combination of practical advice, personal resilience, and innovative treatment approaches. Taryn's story is about BELIEVING BIG!
Learn more about Taryn Hillin on her website:
https://www.tarynhillin.com/
Suggested Resources:
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! 🌟
Today's guest on the podcast is Taryn Hillin, a screenwriter, author and journalist who at the age of 34 was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer. She joins me today to talk about The Anti-Cancer Life and her cancer experience.
Taryn's story is powerful and a huge testament to the argument that patient's must be their best advocate and second opinions are often more important than we realize at the time.
Taryn's interview includes:
This episode is packed with the combination of practical advice, personal resilience, and innovative treatment approaches. Taryn's story is about BELIEVING BIG!
Learn more about Taryn Hillin on her website:
https://www.tarynhillin.com/
Suggested Resources:
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 a 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 it's an honor to be with you today. Taryn Hillin graduated from Yale University. She is a screenwriter, author, and journalist from Southern California. But in 2019, at the age of 34, she was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer called High Grade Small Cell Neuroendocrine Carcinoma Stage 3C. Even with aggressive treatment, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, her prognosis rate was less than 10%. Determined to live, she learned everything she could about incorporating complementary, alternative medicine into her standard of care protocol, which included diet, supplements, exercise, meditation, mistletoe therapy, and high dose IV vitamin C. Now, at nearly five years cancer free, she helps others on their cancer journey to navigate it, and through her social channels and podcast, The Anti Cancer Life. So excited you're with us today. Welcome to the show.
Taryn Hillin:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I love Believe Big. I love everything you guys do. So I'm so excited to talk to you.
Ivelisse Page:Well, I know that our listeners are going to be just so encouraged by what you have to share today. We spoke, I think a month or so back and, just your story is so, impactful and I know that it's going to encourage so many people that are listening on the other side of cancer. So, but before we get into your story and what you do with The Anti Cancer Life, I would love to, and I know our listeners would also like to know, what is your favorite health tip?
Taryn Hillin:That is such a good question and it's a difficult one to answer because I feel like when I got cancer I kind of changed everything about my life, how I was living, how I was eating, how I was exercising. And so narrowing it down to just one thing, I really thought about it and I think what it is is because I think making diet changes is really difficult and it can feel very overwhelming in the beginning to suddenly be like, Oh, I can't eat sugar anymore. I can't drink alcohol or there's a lot of things we can't do or we shouldn't do. And it can be a lot of pressure on cancer patients and it can add stress that people don't need. So my favorite health tip is actually to tell people three things, which is big smoothies, big salads, and big soups. And I can't remember where I heard that from. It just ended up in my zeitgeist at some point, but it really matched with a lot of the changes that are very beneficial and it doesn't feel like you're taking away from your life. It feels like you're adding. And if you kind of take that little mantra and you say, okay, what big smoothie did I have today? And what 10 plants can I put in there? Whether it's like a mix of fruits, vegetables, herbs, supplements, and then, what big salads did I have today? How many different types of greens can I throw in here? Can I throw in some vegetables? Can I roast some vegetables and throw them in? Can I put some seeds in? How many different combinations can we make? And then big soups, because soup is one of my favorite foods, and I think that's another place where you can make a hearty stew. You can make these delicious recipes, and you're also just getting so many vital nutrients that your body needs. It's if you're doing those three things every day, sometimes, then you're not really craving, like you're so satiated, you're not craving other things, and it doesn't feel quite as difficult as saying, just stop. Everything's gonna hurt you.
Ivelisse Page:That is such a great tip. I've never heard that in the two years we've been doing this and it's such a great tip. And actually I'm going to tell my husband because he just started doing that. He does smoothies after his workout then he does soups and salads. He just said I just really want to you know reset. And he eats super clean and he just had soups and salads and smoothies. And I was like oh my goodness and then you said that.
Taryn Hillin:Yeah, right. Synchronicity. Yeah, when I was going through chemo and recovering from all of that I was making sure I was making these really big green smoothies. I think I had seen like a TikTok from Reese Witherspoon making her big green smoothie where she was throwing in like a whole head of lettuce and like celery and lemon and ginger. And then if you add in a little bit of frozen apple or banana and some unsweetened almond milk. It actually tastes delicious and you just feel so good afterwards, like your body feels brighter. And, and I was doing that religiously and I think that was just like revitalizing me with nutrients that I was losing from, all this harsh, all these harsh chemicals that were going into my body at the time.
Ivelisse Page:Yes. Yes. And I know we're going to get this question. So I will, if it's okay with you, if you can send us your favorite smoothie recipe that we can share. And I know that those listening too who are on their cancering journey, side note, make sure to check in with your integrative practitioner because you know, even for some of us, like myself, I can't have smoothies because even just a little bit of sugar and the greens is too much for me and my system to handle. So I always say, just kind of like a side note, make sure to check with your integrative practitioner, but you know, this is a great idea, great recipe, but make sure to confirm that with someone who's following your care and, and knows your internal environment really well.
Taryn Hillin:Yeah. Always great advice.
Ivelisse Page:Well, let's get into it. So I was reading your Huffington Post article from January of 22, and it is titled, If I'd Listened to My Doctor, I'd Be Dead Right Now. And It just really struck me and actually brought tears to my eyes because I really feel like so many people didn't do what you did. And so, can you share a little more about what that article stated and what you learned that you shared?
Taryn Hillin:Yeah, absolutely. And it took me probably, I think I was, maybe already a year cancer free when I wrote that article. It took me a long time to process what had happened and be willing to share that story. And I think it resonated with a lot of people.'cause I don't think doctors are inherently bad. I think they go into the business. with this idea of I want to help people, I want to save people, and then they get caught in a system that is very difficult to do that. And so, in this particular case, my cancer was an incidental finding. So, I wasn't really having any symptoms before going into the doctor, I was actually moving to the south of France with my husband. It had been a dream of ours. And so we, we had got our French visas and we had rented a house in Montpellier and I was going to go live out my French dreams. And so as a result of that, we were leaving in December. I wanted to get all of my yearly checkups done. This was like September ish. And I hadn't gone to an OBGYN. It had only been like a year, a year and a half. And even though the recommendation is every five years, I was always going every year, basically every year, every two years I was going. And so I went in and yeah, they saw that I was bleeding abnormally and the doctor ordered a ultrasound and they actually made me go to a different location for the ultrasound, and then I came back, so it was about a week later, and that doctor was like, why are you here? And I was like, I'm here for my results. You sent me to go get tests done. Oh yeah. Okay. And she's looking at the folder in real time. She was not prepared for me to be there. And then she just kind of looks at it and goes, Oh yeah. Oh, you were bleeding cause you have a, you have a tumor inside your uterus on the other side of your cervix. And yeah, it's about two centimeters. And then her phone rang and she left the room. And I was like, someone had just told me I had a tumor and that sent alarm bells through my body and then she comes back in and she's So, do you have any questions? I'm like, I have a million questions. Do I have cancer? And she's no, no. I mean, you got all your tests done like a year ago. This isn't how cancer works. This isn't how cervical cancer works. This isn't how uterine cancer works. The odds of you having cancer would be like winning the lottery. And I was like, Okay so what what's the protocol? Because I had this deadline of moving to France. She's well, we have to biopsy it just to be sure. But I'm going out of town. I'm not available for a month. It's going to be like a full day surgery thing. She's like, we're going to put you under, we're going to biopsy you. We'll get back to you in a month when I'm back in town and we'll schedule it, it's not a big deal. She was just so nonchalant about it in a way that was very uncaring. Not like she was actually trying to make me feel better. She was just very much I'm busy right now. I can't do this. And I said, well, Can I just go? Because this was a new doctor. I said, can I go to another place and get it biopsied? Like I'm moving out of the country. I would like to get this done. And it was like, no, no, you don't need to do that. She was making me feel like I was ridiculous. Like I was overreacting. Everything I was saying was just falling on deaf ears. And I just left that appointment in tears. Someone tells you have a tumor and then they don't tell you anything about it. She couldn't give me an idea of what else it could be. She was just kind of naming off some things, she was like, maybe it's fibroids, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, but none of that really made sense. Because it was in my uterus on the other side of my cervix, they couldn't see it. And she was just like, well, it doesn't really make sense because the cancer doesn't grow this fast. She made it seem like this would just be impossible. And that's a bold thing to do when it is quite possible. And so I, I left in tears. My mom was like, you have to get a second opinion go back to UCLA, I called my old doctor at UCLA and was like, can you get me in? I was in tears on the phone. They were like, we'll get you in in basically 24 hours. They were like, we've got a spot, come in, we'll take care of it. My actual OBGYN who I normally saw, it was a whole different experience and he was like, yeah, I saw you, like 15 months ago. This is weird that this has happened, that this tumor grew. He's like, I don't know what it is. He did the biopsy right there. It took him five minutes, in office, like that's someone who cares. That's someone who's like, I'm just gonna take the time and do it right now. He, he saw the medical mystery and was like, let's solve it. But then seven days later, he called me back and, you can hear it when they call you on the phone and they sort of do that sigh beforehand. And it's I'm so sorry. And he was like, you have a very rare cancer. It has these things called neuro endocrine receptors. We're very concerned. He was like, at the very least you're going to have to have a hysterectomy. And I was like, okay. And then he was like, do you have kids? And I was like, no, I'm newly married. He's okay. He's just take the weekend. I've already set up all your appointments. We'll do everything for you. It was a much different experience. And the reason why I have that headline of If I'd Listened to My Doctor I'd Be Dead is because in certain cases time does matter. There are cases in cancer where you can take your time. They are slow growing you have options, you can weigh your options and you should take the time to get second, third opinions and you don't necessarily have to rush into treatment. And that's why I sometimes wish oncologists would explain that more to people of specifically what we're dealing with based on the pathology. But in my case, that was not the case. When I walked into my surgical oncologist's office with a neuroendocrine diagnosis, they were concerned, because neuroendocrine is kind of like a silent killer. You often walk in stage four, and because you don't have symptoms, it's growing,. Neuroendocrine, especially high grade small cell neuroendocrine, likes to metastasize early, those adhesion molecules break apart, so even if you're stage one, you could have micro disease floating around your body. And at stage 2, same thing. Stage 3 and 4, it's almost a death sentence. So, they were very concerned and they thought I was going to be early stage disease once we did the surgery. I was not. I was already stage 3C. That's with an incidental finding and a tumor that was two centimeters. Two centimeters. That's a very tiny tumor to already be stage 3C. And being stage 3C with high grade small cell neuroendocrine, your prognosis rate is around 7 to 10 percent which is crazy.
Ivelisse Page:It is unbelievable and knowing that you were doing all the quote unquote right things, being checked and things like that. And so thank God that you listened to your gut and your mom being your advocate to say get another opinion. I'm really proud of you for that. Thank you. In your Instagram post, you mentioned being scared of dying. And I think that everyone who's had a cancer diagnosis has felt that the mental challenges that accompany a cancer diagnosis. I always said for me personally, with my first one on stage four, the mental battle was worse than the physical battle that you had to, really stay in a positive mind frame. So what did you practically do to overcome those mental challenges?
Taryn Hillin:Gosh, that is so hard because you're right. You're, you're living in this weird dichotomy of believing in yourself, believing that you can beat something, believing that you're going to be the one. And then also the reality of the situation, which is you're looking at the prognosis rates. You're looking at other people who are going through the same thing as you and some of those people might even be passing away. You're seeing what treatment does to people and especially being young, I, I really was terrified. I had always thought something really bad was going to happen to me. And then it did. I felt like my whole life had been leading up to it in a way, like okay, all my past experiences have prepared me to this, I'm a survivor by nature, so I was like, I can do this, I can survive. But I think we can't do it alone. It was very much leaning on my husband, leaning on my family, my friends. They all started a GoFundMe for me. I had so much support, it was like, it takes a village to get you through it. I also became a more spiritual person, I think. I had written an essay called There's No Atheists in Foxholes and that really resonated with me because yeah, I was praying. I didn't grow up going to church, so I didn't have any kind of organized religion to lean back on and there was a certain I think there was a certain, I think it was a proverb or a Bible verse about something about like his wings will hold you and and it like meant so much to me and I just, I found comfort in that in exploring religion and spirituality and praying and meditating, a lot of meditation and just facing those hard conversations. My husband and I had a lot of conversations about What if I died? What would happen? What would that feel like? And then we basically made the decision that, I don't know if we placebo affected ourselves or what, but we made the decision, we had a phrase called one and done. We're going to do the harsh treatment, we're going to do everything we can to beat this cancer the first time around, and it's going to be one and done. So every day during treatment, we would just high five each other and go, one and done, one and done, and that's kind of what we did. And also my oncologist had told me, my oncologist at UCLA had told me the cure rate is not zero. And that actually really helped me because hearing that, it's hard to hear a prognosis rate when someone gives you single digits and to be fair, they didn't give me those prognosis rates, it was in the literature at the time of when they had done studies on this cancer, because it's very rare. And they were like, ignore the numbers, the cure rate's not zero. You can do it. And that was, I know not everyone has that with their oncologist, but that was very helpful. I think you have to believe, you have to believe big. I think you have to, on some level, you have to believe in yourself. Even if people are like, but this, but that, but this, you have to go, no, I'm gonna do it.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah, I always tell individuals that I come in contact who have cancer is that to keep your circle small. And those that really can believe that you can be well. Because you don't need that negativity or the doubting. You're already doing that yourself. You don't need someone, chiming in and saying they're concerned and they're well meaning individuals. But I always say, keep your circle small and have that person who's that lightning rod that's going to, for me, it was to point me back to Christ, to point me back to the possibilities of, of what He can do and not what the world says is possible. And it's so important to have those people in your life and you know your story is just amazing because I love it because there are people who do no conventional treatment and are healed right? It's like my story. There are people who do both like yourself and are healed and then there are people who just do the conventional and are healed. So it's like that's why I love the Radical Hope book by Dr. Turner because there's not a set formula and each person's an individual and everybody needs something different and everyone's journey's different. So I just love that one and done. That is amazing. I love that. So what prompted you to look beyond standard of care to other complimentary treatment options? And again, we know every case is different and needs to be individualized, but what therapies did you personally choose to use in your treatment and why?
Taryn Hillin:Yeah, to be honest, I didn't know that much about cancer before being diagnosed with cancer. And I didn't realize that it's actually like 400 different diseases, that it's, we hear that umbrella term cancer all the time. As if it's something that we got, like we picked it up somewhere versus something that our body made. And so that was a real mind shift for me of, I was like, Oh, my body made this. Maybe my body can unmake this. That was where I was coming from and I had been a health journalist before being diagnosed, and so I already knew how to get on PubMed and read clinical studies and reach out. I had been doing health journalism for such a long time, I had already done reporting on cancer treatments before like new innovative ways to fight cancer. I'd been doing a lot of reporting on women's health, so I, I knew how to reach out to researchers and doctors and ask them questions and I wasn't afraid to do that. And I started cold emailing people. I would find a study on my cancer and I would just email the researcher who wrote it and be like, I was diagnosed with this. What are your thoughts on this? And they would get back to me. Not as like a treating kind of thing. Obviously I can't treat you as my patient over email. They were just saying, from a research perspective, here's what my paper was saying. And I was able to do that with experts around the world. And they, and just get on the phone with them and talk to them from an academic angle about what's going on with this cancer. And when they told me I had to do the radical hysterectomy which means I lost all of my reproductive parts, including my ovaries, and went into surgical menopause. And then I also had to do a lot of chemotherapy and concurrent radiation, which is radiation at the same time as chemo. I mean, they were like, we're going to bring you to death, basically. We're going to bring you to death's door, and we're going to keep giving you all of this for as, as, I mean, my treatment was changing in real time. It was like, you're going to do four rounds. Nope. You're doing great. You're going to do five rounds. You're doing great. You're going to do six rounds. It kept increasing because they're like, her body is making it. They were very concerned about whether I'd be able to survive it. So we're doing all of this, and that prognosis rate is with all of this? And they're like, yeah. And in my head, I'm like, well, it's not working. The treatment's not working. I understand that this is all you have, but if you look at the data, it's objectively failing based on the numbers. And so that is what made me go, there's got to be something else here. This can't be the answer, right? As a journalist, it's my natural inclination to be like, what else is under the hood? What are we not looking at? And I read a book, it was a textbook called Integrative Oncology by Dr. Andrew Weil. And it was great, and it was like a reference guide of every possible complementary alternative medicine you could do. And he includes all the clinical studies and all of the research in it, and gives his objective opinion of here's the caliber of this research. This is good, but we only have mouse models, or this is good, but we only have phase one clinical trials that kind of thing. And that's where I learned about turmeric and broccoli and high dose IV vitamin C. And actually, that was the first time I learned about mistletoe. I'm pretty sure there was mistletoe in a chapter in that book. But at the time, it's so many things that um, And then I read a book called Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. And then I started reading a lot of Dr. Michael Greger's stuff, How Not to Die, how to beat disease I think that's Dr. William Li, Eat to Beat Disease. I was just reading every book I possibly could and then taking what was in those books and then researching it on my own. And then I was coming together with my own plan of here's the stuff that I've read that speaks to me, that I can actually do, and is feasible in my life, and so, for me, and I always, always would talk to my oncologist first because there are rules about what you can do on chemo and you can't do on chemo. They were like, eat as many fruits and vegetables as you want. They gave me free reign with my diet. So, I was like, great, then I can do as many smoothies and soups and salads and juicing as I want. There's some things like don't eat grapefruit. The high dose IV vitamin C, they wouldn't let me do during treatment. And mistletoe, I didn't start till after treatment. But basically, during treatment, I was a little bit in this cage, so I had to work within the parameters of what they were doing. I would send them lists of supplements, and my oncologist would go through it and go, yes, yes, no, no, no. So I was able to take vitamin D THC, melatonin. She was fine with curcumin. So I was able to do that stuff. I was intermittent fasting during chemo, which is not super fun, but, I had read a lot of research from Dr. Walter Longo and some of the work he had done on breast cancer with intermittent fasting during chemotherapy. Again, not recommending that to people. Because it is dangerous to go into cachexia if you're in treatment, but I was not I was not too skinny, so it was, it was fine for me to do it. Yeah, so I felt like a guinea pig of myself, and then I think after treatment ended is when I went. I went full blown. I went hard.
Ivelisse Page:Yeah. So I heard that you did high dose vitamin C, mistletoe, acupuncture, ozone treatments and off label drugs. So you really did a lot of the, the great heavy hitters in there, intermittent fasting. Those were all great. So, looking back, what was the most powerful thing you learned about cancer?
Taryn Hillin:I think that kind of what you mentioned, there's no one way to beat it. And that it's a very individual disease, and I think when you start to think about that mindset, you really get into the cellular biology of cancer, sometimes it demystifies it, and it takes away its power a little bit. You start to learn. Okay, my cell mutated and this gene got turned on or off, the epigenetic changes that occur in cancer and you can look at your own mutations and say, okay, I had a KRAS mutation or I had this mutation. What is that doing to the cell? What is that making the cell do? And to me, by boiling it down to those really micro components, I was like, okay, well, what if I just tell my cells to not do that anymore? Even though that sounds insane, that's kind of what a lot of biology of belief is, is he's talking about cellular biology, he's talking about the placebo effect, and how that our minds really have a lot of power over our bodies, that it's like first the thought and then the physical manifestation of that. And so I tried to take away cancer's power because I felt very powerless. When someone says you have a 90 percent chance of dying, you think that you have some crazy thing in your body that is trying to kill you. And I think by demystifying it, and saying, okay, I made these mutations, how can I undo this? And then you start learning if you have a p53 mutation things like celery work really well against that, or part celery, parsley, chamomile okay, I'm going to put those things in my body every day. And you start looking at food and meditation and exercise as part of your medicine, as part of your healing journey, and it feels good. You're drinking that green juice and you're like, I know for a fact that these things are combating, these things are making my cells do a U turn and they're going to shut down these mutations or the daughter cells or they're going to trigger apoptosis. They're going to trigger that cell death. My tumor cells are going to die. And then I'm going to create an environment that cancer cannot live. And that was another one of our, we had a lot of phrases, right? I'm creating an environment that cancer cannot survive. That is like what I kept telling myself every night. I'm creating an environment cancer cannot survive. I'm creating an environment cancer cannot survive. My body's inhospitable to cancer. And that's kind of, that was like the biggest thing for me.
Ivelisse Page:I love that. I think mantras and things like that are so important for us to say to ourselves and you're right. I have not read that book, but I'm going to The Biology of Belief, but I've read studies even from Dr. Turner's studies that she's done in her research and they had two sets of groups and they were both told, they're both on saline. They were given saline. Half the group was told that they were actually having chemotherapy when it was actually saline. That group that thought they were having chemotherapy, 30 percent of the people lost their hair.
Taryn Hillin:Wow.
Ivelisse Page:Because they thought they were having chemotherapy and it was saline. So it's like the, you're right. The power of belief and that can work the other way. And I'm the same way. And every time I give myself a mistletoe injection, I just picture those bad cells just dying off and cleaning out the blood within my body and picturing it. Just, creating an environment that, that cancer cannot thrive. I love that. I really do. So, we're getting close to the end already of our episode.
Taryn Hillin:I know. I feel, I'm like, I ramble on so much.
Ivelisse Page:No, I love everything you've said. And one thing that we've been seeing as well is that cancer seems to be affecting people at younger ages. And, you talk about the long term effects of chemo and radiation treatments, and I wanted to ask you, so, what are some of those long term effects, and what can be done from a practical standpoint to mitigate them?
Taryn Hillin:Yeah, I think that is the hardest thing. I recently talked about how we were, I wrote an essay on like how we're leaving AYA adult young, young adult cancer patients behind because even if we get them to five years cancer free, you, you see that around like age 60 they, they have higher mortality rates because you do have these relapses of secondary cancers that are formed from your treatment. So for example, I did radiation. There's usually a 10 year lag period. So I can be five years cancer free, I can be on cancer year 9, 10 and get a secondary cancer from the insane amount of radiation that was hurting my cells while it was trying to, because it's killing both the good and bad cells and same thing with chemotherapy. And then the second layer to that, besides just the actual poison and radiation that is damaging your cells, you're really damaging your immune system. And if you think of cancer as a failure of the immune system. We have cancer in our body. We have mutated cells. It's fine for you to have a mutated cell. That's totally normal. Your immune system then is patrolling and comes in and identifies that cell and says, Hey, this is mutated. Let's kill it. When that doesn't happen, when that immune system starts failing, that's when the cancer can keep replicating, it gets bigger, it becomes a tumor, it goes through angiogenesis, now it's growing blood vessels, now it's siphoning your nutrients, now it's full blown cancer, right? That's what active cancer is versus like micro disease. And so I think that failure of the immune system is so important, and so we're setting up cancer patients to fail because we're basically destroying their immune system when you go through chemotherapy when you go through radiation. You are killing your white blood cells. You are killing your defenses against cancer. So it's this real double edged sword of we have to treat this acute problem right now, but we could have these issues later on. And one of the drugs they give you to increase your white blood cell count, which is called Neupogen it's like a colony growth stimulating factor. I think I just said the brand name. I don't know the generic name. One of the side effects is acute myeloid leukemia. And so for me, I had six shots of that. And because I was permanently neutropenic following chemotherapy and radiation, I've been neutropenic for four years. My blood cells never recovered and they won't give me that shot because it's not worth the risk of getting acute myeloid leukemia down the line because you're making these rapid rapid growth in your bone marrow. And so it's like, how do you combat that? That's actually where I discovered mistletoe because I was searching for something specifically that would support the immune system. And I was getting so worried about being neutropenic for five, six months following chemotherapy, nothing was recovering. That's where I stumbled on mistletoe. And I had read it like once or twice in books, but I hadn't done it yet. And so it was like this third time. I think I heard it on a podcast actually, which is why I think these things are so important. And I, I think it might have been like a doctor or maybe it was like with you. I'm not even sure. But someone was saying, my number one piece of advice post chemotherapy, when you're done with treatment is get on mistletoe for at least six months. And I was like, I need to go find mistletoe. And that was really a big thing for me. I need to find this and then I started looking at all the research and how it's so popular in Europe and they use it in Germany and it can help with chemotherapy side effects and it can help revitalize your immune system and it can even reduce tumor burden. And I'm like, why is this not more available? Right. And then that's when I found you guys. And so yeah, I think, I think that's the hardest thing is that when you get cancer young, you're not trying to live for five years or 10 years. You're trying to live for 50 years. How can you live for 50 years when I've now had 20 PET scans and I've had so much radiation, it's like I've gone through a nuclear reactor at this point. I have to be so protective of my cells and make sure that any mutations that I was getting during that time, that I'm creating an environment that is not hospitable for those to grow into cancer cells. And so I always say another mantra is, cancer doesn't end when treatment ends. You're, you're still the soil, you still have this terrain, and now you have to be even more careful. You're at higher risk of a secondary cancer, you're at higher risk of recurrence, you really have to take care of your mind, your body, and, and do everything in your power to just keep living in a way that cancer can't survive in your body.
Ivelisse Page:I love it. Well, Taryn, thank you so much for being with us today, for sharing all this incredible information. I know that you have inspired those who are listening today, and I'm just grateful for your time. So thank you for being with us.
Taryn Hillin:Thank you. And thank you for having me. And again, thank you for everything Believe Big does. Every time I tell people about mistletoe, as I've said before, it's so easy for me to just type on Instagram, go to believebig.org, they've got you.
Ivelisse Page:Aww. Well, thank you.
Taryn Hillin:Thanks. 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!