Believe Big Podcast

72-Jon Hegarty - Overcoming Osteosarcoma, Mistletoe and Going Well!

• Ivelisse Page & Jon Hegarty • Season 2 • Episode 72

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In the realm of health and wellness, the quest for effective strategies often leads individuals down various paths, each marked by its own set of challenges and triumphs.

Among these journeys, the story of Jon Hegarty and his brother Christian stands out as a beacon of hope and resilience in the face of adversity. Through their exploration of integrative healing modalities, they uncovered a wealth of knowledge and experiences that reshaped their approach to combating cancer.

Join me today, as Jon shares the trials and tribulations, as well as as the wins and successes he and his brother experienced together as they battled Christian's osteosarcoma diagnosis.  Today, things are GOING WELL and Jon is determined to continue that trend.


Learn more about Jon Hegarty at Going Well:
https://goingwell.org/

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Ivelisse Page:

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 always an honor to be with you. Today, you are in for a treat as we hear about an inspiring story of hope. Our guest today, Jon Hegarty, has accumulated eight years of experience in private equity, entrepreneurship, and holistic cancer research. He began his career on Wall Street after attending Boston College. but left finance behind in 2020 to focus on helping his younger brother, Christian, who was 23 at the time, tackle a seemingly impossible osteosarcoma prognosis. Despite conventional medicine telling Christian he was out of options and to get his affairs in order, Jon and Christian never gave up. After researching and implementing countless natural healing modalities, Christian is now 2 plus years in remission and living a full, healthy life. Based on this experience, Jon founded Going Well as a non profit dedicated to helping make this journey easier for the next cancer patient. Welcome Jon to the show.

Jon Hegarty:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be here.

Ivelisse Page:

Well, as you know, our listeners are always interested in discovering what our guest's favorite health tip is. What is yours, that you would like to share with us today?

Jon Hegarty:

I'm so excited to, to share my excitement for sleeping grounded. So I'd assume that most of your listeners have heard of grounding, the practice of walking outside and getting the earth's electrons. But, for me definitely getting that benefit six to eight hours at night at that time when it's most important. And, as we were on this journey with Christian, we found grounding, but sort of 10 minutes a day or doing it whenever we could is a little inconvenient, but getting that overnight, grounding experience with a grounding pillowcase or grounding sheets, definitely something that's easy that you know, that I think everybody should do.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah, it's, it's such a great practice. I mean, from the simple of, like you said, walking outside barefoot, in the wintertime, that can be a little challenging here in Colorado in the snow, but just even being outside is helpful. But I would love for you, if you could share with those, and we'll put them in the show notes, the items that you use and the brands that you use, and we can put them as links if people want to check it out and learn more. I think that's a great, great health tip to share. So thank you.

Jon Hegarty:

Absolutely. We're actually launching a brand of grounding products of our own, and our site will be up in the next few days. I'll definitely share that with you.

Ivelisse Page:

Okay. I'm looking forward to it. So that's fantastic. So let's begin today with a little bit of background. Can you share about how your brother found out that he had cancer and what you guys experienced as a family?

Jon Hegarty:

Yeah. So Christian was diagnosed all the way back in 2013. So, he's 26 years old now, 2013 he was a sophomore in high school. And he had a lot of knee pain, he was complaining to my dad about it, and he went to the doctor once, they diagnosed him with a form of growing pains called Osgood Schlatter. They took x rays that they actually didn't even look at and said these growing pains should go away, but over time they didn't. So it was about six months later after he initially went to the ER that he finally got a diagnosis of stage 4 osteosarcoma, which is a form of bone cancer. The cancer was in his right knee and it had spread to both of his lungs, which is a very difficult cancer to deal with.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes. Yeah, and you share that chemotherapy, it says it's almost guaranteed not to work in his case. And so you mentioned that there was disagreement even within your own house. How did you guys navigate that when trying to figure out the best pathway for his care?

Jon Hegarty:

Absolutely. So, he's diagnosed in 2013, just to make the whole story full, so he did go through conventional medicine, chemotherapy, he's had several surgeries on his leg, both cancer related, and just complications due to his cadaver bone, he's had steel in there at one point. And he's had several surgeries on his lungs. But I think the real story, the holistic aspect of it really starts in 2020. So he manages to reach remission for five and a half years, and then in 2020, the pandemic had brought us together, Christian and I were living together, and he got the terrible call from his oncologist that his cancer had come back, and at this point they said, we could give you more chemotherapy, there's this drug Etoposide that he had already taken before, years prior. And they said, when osteosarcoma comes back, it tends to be much more aggressive, treatment's much less effective. In fact, we sort of know, the more that we pushed this oncology team, the more they said, we pretty much know that the chance of long term survival here is quote, basically zero. So, you know, one thing that I think I'm grateful for looking back is that, we were able to really level set that option as not a very attractive one based on that. But yeah, just to your point, even, I say that now and I think it's easy now to say why would we ever consider an option, chemotherapy option that was guaranteed not to work. But if I put myself back in, in our shoes at the time, I remember my older brother thought, you take the chemo and you hope that they come out with a new drug down the road. And my mom seemed to think that way as well. But there was something in me that I had started doing all this research for him. I had left my wall street job and, there was just something pulling us in another direction.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah, so what were some of the roadblocks that you and Christian ran into as you began to research into integrative healing?

Jon Hegarty:

You know, there's so many challenges that we experienced. I think he was very lucky to have someone like me doing all this research, someone that he knew he could trust. I think for a lot of people, that's not the case. They don't even know where to begin or what to turn to. But I was very adamant and had a very strong conviction in a lot of the holistic protocols that I was recommending. Beyond that convenience, there's so many conventional appointments in the doctor's office for days at a time that it's, it got hard to even think about optimizing for lifestyle, optimizing for diet, nutrition, getting even simple things like blood work done just takes so long. Convenience, knowing where to focus our time and energy, and also cost as well. I think at the peak, we were probably spending around a thousand dollars a month on various things including supplements and other holistic healing modalities.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah, so where did mistletoe come into the equation? I know that's part of his story.

Jon Hegarty:

Yeah, so pretty early on, and I know you spoke with Dr. Dagmara Beine on mistletoe, she had shared with us a story or a study on mistletoe therapy in osteosarcoma. This was a study on 19 patients in my brother's exact position with his exact disease. And they took 10 of the patients and gave them etoposide, which was the exact same drug that my brother's oncology team at the time was recommending. And they gave the other nine patients mistletoe therapy alone. So out of all the holistic healing modalities out there, mistletoe was the only thing that they gave these nine patients. And, so you could put yourselves in our shoes where literally living this real time. And, scroll down and we find that five out of nine patients in the mistletoe arm never relapsed in the following five years, and unfortunately, as our oncology team was telling us at the time, all ten patients in the etoposide arm eventually had their cancer come back and passed away. So, it was mind boggling to see something so relevant to us and so perfect and, and gave us so much more conviction that we were on the right path and beyond that, mistletoe was only like one of the first things we were considering. We didn't even know what we didn't know about holistic medicine. I think that's true for so many people who go on this journey is that you learn more over time and more gets revealed to you. What you know today is a fraction. What we knew when we started was a tiny fraction of what we know now.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah, those are excellent points and, God's providence that you found mistletoe therapy, that's just amazing and to your point as well that all of them relapsed and sadly aren't here today. I, I find that a lot of people don't realize, even yet today, we had Dr. Connealy, she's one of the top integrative physicians in the country, and she was sharing what every patient needs to know, and people can look up that podcast that we did this past year with her, but she just shares that circulating tumor cells and circulating stem cells are not killed by chemotherapy, and so that's why patients get a recurrence of their cancer, and that's when things like high dose vitamin C and mistletoe therapy and off label drugs are the ones that actually do attack those cells so that they don't return. And some of that information is so important. And, hey, and we are, are not that, you know, chemotherapy is the enemy. I really believe that everybody's individual case, they need to do what is best for them. And in some cases a form of it, low dose or whatever it may be is necessary, but people need to know that they need to work with an integrative practitioner that specializes in oncology that knows these things so that their body can, one, be best supported while going through something like cancer and then also being able to attack effectively these circulating tumor cells and the circulating stem cells that are within the body and that the cancer gives off. So it's an exciting study that, that you shared and we can put the link to that if you still have that in our show notes for people to check out.

Jon Hegarty:

Absolutely, I'll pass that along. And I couldn't agree more. Yeah, when we were in the thick of it, we wanted to consider absolutely everything. So we wouldn't write off anything, we wouldn't right off chemotherapy, but just in, in his specific situation, we knew that chemo just wasn't, it wasn't a great option. And by the questions that we asked his oncologist, it was clear that they weren't considering anything beyond the couple of options that they had in front of them. They didn't even know what mistletoe was, and here I was with a study on 19 patients that was clearly pointing toward mistletoe. So, yeah, we just wanted to take as comprehensive of an approach as possible.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah. and that's the other side of conventional care that people aren't familiar with is that oncologists, conventional oncologists are only able to, to share and prescribe what is standard of care. And in today's world, there's only three things surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. So unless three phases of the clinical trial have gone through and it's been approved and become part of standard of care, they're not able to even share that for legal reasons even. And so that's probably one of our biggest initiatives in wanting to push forward phase two of our mistletoe clinical trial that we are raising the money for so that we can begin this process to continue on to make this part of standard of care and so that insurance covers it. Now, so looking back, out of all the things that your family did for your brother, what would you say were the top three integrative healing modalities that benefited him the most? I know you can't isolate one, and it is a whole approach, but what would you say helped him the most?

Jon Hegarty:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely can't isolate one, but, there are a few that have a special place in my heart. One is high dose vitamin C for sure. Especially because we did that early on in the journey, and it gave him the early success in the first five weeks that he had on high dose vitamin C, gave him so much more conviction that this was the right approach, and it helped his mindset more than anything, probably even more than the cancer itself shrinking. So definitely hold high dose vitamin C in high regard. Mistletoe, similarly. And, for my brother specifically, there's a pretty nuanced strategy of lowering his copper levels, so he takes a drug called, TM, tetrathiomolybdate, which lowers his copper levels. Keeps him at a level where he has basic function, daily function, but it's low enough to prevent a cancer recurrence. So, after getting into remission, he's been on this therapy for a few years now, gets his copper levels tested every month or so. And, that one as well is a stronger strategy that, that we have a lot of conviction in.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes, yeah, that's great. And did you have the support of family and friends when you're trying these new therapies, or was it because you ran out of options that people were more open and supportive of what you were doing integratively?

Jon Hegarty:

I think I was just so adamant with my perspective and opinion and he just clearly didn't have good options on the conventional side that everybody just rallied around and said, this is our best way forward, then so be it. But yeah, you know, it is difficult. I think a lot of times we felt like we were misunderstood or doing something that you know, is just so out there. Even just speaking about it with my friends and stuff. I remember in 2020 when we were in the thick of it, having people say oh, why doesn't he just trust his doctor? Which is just a gross oversimplification of the situation. So, yeah, it definitely can be isolating, but knowing that what you're doing is knowing that what we were doing so important to us. And that feeling like we were on the right path was really all that mattered.

Ivelisse Page:

Now, so if you could go back in time, I always like to ask this question of people who are sharing stories of hope, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently at the start of his cancer journey?

Jon Hegarty:

Oh, wow. And this is a lot of the background, the reason why we started Going Well is to consider, you know, we want to consider more holistic approaches from day one. So he was diagnosed in 2013, reached remission in 2014, stayed there for 5 years without any thoughts of holistic or integrative approaches or even lifestyle approaches and so yeah, if I could go back in time 100%, we would be doing all of this stuff from day one. Today he's in remission, he's healthy, he looks great, but he has limited mobility from all the surgeries on his right leg and it is hard not to think how much better of a position he would be in, if we were able to do all this stuff from the start. So, yeah, I think our mission with Going Well is to get to patients with our message of hope and inspiration at diagnosis. I think what we've noticed is that patients will really think about taking a holistic approach until they run out of conventional options and just typically speaking. And then they'll turn to it when it's often too late, which unfortunately is the case. But I see that changing. I see a lot of people turning more toward health and wellness, lifestyle approaches to life in general and to cancer specifically.

Ivelisse Page:

Yeah, I do too. And I'm glad you brought up Going Well. For those of you who've never heard of their organization, what they do, they have a collection of survivors that create GIF videos for people who are going through difficult chronic diseases such as cancer. Can you share about more about what you guys do at Going Well? It's a wonderful organization.

Jon Hegarty:

Absolutely. Yeah. what I noticed along the way was that Christian has an amazing story, but he also wasn't special. And so many other survivors have beat the odds with holistic, integrative, and lifestyle approaches. And so we've tried to create this community of patients, of survivors of these difficult diseases and allow them to make these GIF videos for people who are earlier on in their journey and give them their story of hope and inspiration, their mindset, some of the things that they've done along the way. And all of it's completely free. It's donor funded. So, if any of your listeners know someone with cancer, maybe someone in their family or a friend, a close friend of theirs, they can log on to goingwell. org and order a video from one of our survivors, try to find the one that you think that the person with cancer might resonate most closely with. And they can put together a pretty inspirational video of what happened to them and how they were able to overcome some serious health challenges.

Ivelisse Page:

I so love that. I remember way back when I was going through stage four colon and we just kept getting bad news over bad news. And someone came into our life through a friend who was a 10 year survivor of a stage four diagnosis, and just seeing that person and speaking to me and saying, okay, it made me realize if he can make it through, I can make it through. And there's just such power in being able to see someone's story who has overcome what you've gone through and to empower you to do the same. So I love that you guys do that. And not only just having the stories, we have several stories on our website that we share that are testimonials of people that have overcome great odds, but I also love that you guys personalize it to the person who's asking. So that, that's just really special. And we will put a link to your Going Well website as well on our notes of this podcast so that people can click on that and send one to one of their loved ones. I know that's so vital on this journey, letting people know they're not alone, and that there's someone that's gone before them to help them through. So I love that.

Jon Hegarty:

Absolutely, yeah, I was very inspired with Kelly Turner's work with Radical Remission, and I'd say along our journey starting in 2020 when we were in the thick of it, I knew in the back of my head that finding someone who was in a similar, perhaps more difficult situation than Christian and was able to get to the other side would be so inspirational, because everything I was saying to him were just words, but if I could show him a real person that he could identify with, then that would help him out so much. So we actually befriended a Radical Remission survivor of osteosarcoma, the only one we could find, a guy named Alex Berto, who's my brother's age, and ended up becoming a close family friend, and, um, you know, hired the same naturopathic doctor as him and you know really, really just gave us that level of drive to know that we were doing the exact right things along the way.

Ivelisse Page:

I love it. Now you have a special event that's coming up on April 6th. Can you share about that?

Jon Hegarty:

April Six! In Santa Barbra, California, we are hosting a fundraising event at a trapeze company. They've agreed to come together are partnering with them on it. So it should be a great event. Everybody's gonna come and try out Trapeze, which is not something I've ever done before, not many people have done before, and it should be an awesome time. Really cool company, they have a lot of different charities that they host these events for as a way to get people to try something that they've never tried before. And people end up having an amazing time with it. Really looking forward to that. Yeah, if anyone's in the Santa Barbara area on April 6th, definitely come to our event.

Ivelisse Page:

I love it. I love it. Yeah. We are big fans of Cirque du Soleil. So, that is they do a lot of trapeze artists kind of work. And if we didn't have the Believe Big dinner on Saturday, April 6th, I would be tempted to hop on a plane and go be a part of that. So I, I wish the best of that fundraising for you all. Before we head out, we're getting short on our time. I can't believe it's already gone so fast. I know that one of the biggest things that patients are battling, especially during a diagnosis, is fear and anxiety and having that ability to overcome that. Did you experience any fear and anxiety? I know many times the caregiver, it's even tougher than the patient. So I would love to get your perspective as part of his team, his support team, on how you all overcame that fear and anxiety knowing his diagnosis and what the doctors were saying that there was nothing more you could do.

Jon Hegarty:

Yeah, absolutely. And definitely, it was incredibly challenging. I think when we turned down the clinical trial in 2020, I felt this level of pressure that, for better or worse, Christian's outcome would hinge on the decisions that I was advocating for. So you can imagine that's really wearing the the weight of the world on one's shoulders. But I think, I think what made it work was that he wasn't, in our situation, he wasn't doing the research on his own. So I could think more logically and more rationally about these different medical decisions. And he, he had a level of trust in me that kind of just made it all click and work together. I couldn't imagine being a patient having to do research for oneself. That sounds like it would just, it would just break someone. Though I'm super impressed when I do see that. So yeah, I think designing your team, and this is something that I've heard mentioned on your podcast is totally true. Designing your team, knowing who you can trust to do your own research. You know, you want your integrative practitioner, your oncologist, but also someone, I believe someone close to you who can help you sort through all these different options.

Ivelisse Page:

I love that. So in closing, is there anything else that you would love to add that I haven't asked you yet?

Jon Hegarty:

I could talk forever about how to heal stage 4 cancer with a lifestyle approach, but I think we covered most of the important things. I think there's so much out there and I get the question all the time, what did it for your brother? How did it happen? And it really is more of a mindset of we're going to, we're going to do this at all costs and we're going to find the things that need to happen. And then slowly, but surely you start to find things that just start to work, repurpose drugs, lifestyle, sauna, cold plunges. We were fasting for three day fasts every other week for six months at one point. So you start to find these things and things just start to come together. So yeah, I'm just I'm grateful that it's turned out the way it has.

Ivelisse Page:

Yes, us too and in closing, I know that there's many cancer patients that are listening today and what would you say to someone who's listening today who's in the middle of their battle? What would you say to encourage them?

Jon Hegarty:

Yeah. I would say trust your gut, whatever that means to you. For many of us it's to pray a lot, but you really have to understand that you're the ultimate decision maker in your own healing journey and you have to have a level of conviction that the path you take is your own and for better or for worse. You'll make the decisions that resonate most with you and there's a level of comfort knowing that you're making the most of the situation that you're in.

Ivelisse Page:

I love that. It's great advice. Yes, listen to your gut or as you've said, as believers I believe that small voice of the Holy Spirit as we pray, guiding us, directing us, putting people into our path. I always say when I'm talking to someone who's going through something difficult and going through something like cancer journey. I'll say Lord, open the doors wide that they should walk through and close the doors hard that they shouldn't. And that just gives you such a sense of peace. Again, one, that we're not alone and two, that he's guiding our steps. Jon, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today and sharing your brother's story and all that you guys are doing with Going Well. We really appreciate you.

Jon Hegarty:

Absolutely. And I want to say thank you and congratulations so much for everything that you've accomplished with Believe Big. We have a phrase that says, belief is half the battle, but I really think it's more than half the battle. So really love all the work that you guys are doing with Believe Big and wanna support you guys any way that we can.

Ivelisse Page:

All right. Thanks so much, Jon. 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!