So you want to be cancer free, what are you doing about it? Minute by minute, play by play?

You need to imagine your success, visualize what you want, feel it. You must be focused and know exactly what you need to get from here to there. You need to make your goals attainable, broken down by the day if necessary. You need to execute. You should have started already.

What are you doing right now to make your primary end-goal happen? What are you doing to keep this cancer at bay and aim for NED (No Evidence of Disease)?

To be honest, I don’t have a solution that will guarantee your success with metastatic, triple negative breast cancer. I so wish I did. The truth is, no one does. My personal goal is to collaborate with Louise and multiple professionals,  formulating the best strategy and action program that helps Lou defy the odds.  A very comprehensive holistic approach that leaves no stone unturned.

The six big pillars that are going to extend Lou’s life, defy the odds and have her present for Noah and Evie’s major life milestones are; Mind, Exercise, Diet, Professionals,  Contemporary Medicine/Treatment, Traditional Medicine and CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicines.)  All packaged with the right amount of each ingredient, at the right time.

1.) Your Mind

You can’t win anything if your head isn’t right. Whether it’s sport, academia, corporate or social. You simply can’t progress if your not motivated, mentally disciplined and have a will to win. Cancer is no different. In fact, in many cancer cases, just like our own, the bookies would have you at an outside chance more than most underdogs in a sporting event. So the mind is more important than that of a professional team-captain in a grand final. Your mental fitness is the most important ingredient to beating cancer.

After speaking with multiple people that are beating their odds, their mind is undoubtedly the winning factor. It is a factor hard to quantify but essentially inherent.

You need to find the right triggers that help you overcome the shock, fear, anxiety, grief, trepidation and uncertainty that’s dancing around you, elusive and unpredictable. You need to own the demons, don’t let them own you. Like any onerous accomplishment, it’s easier said than done, a broad holistic approach will aid your success.

You will have many days you can’t control, plunging into darkness, uncontrollable tears and periods where you can’t see the light. In saying that, by mastering your mental fitness you will be able to find ways to bounce back from despair more quickly, limit and sometimes avoid the black clouds.

2.) Exercise

Many studies suggest that breast cancer patients who exercise daily survive 50 per cent longer than those that don’t, now that is a bloody good incentive to get the heart pumping and legs dancing yeah? There are more medical reports being produced this month that link breast cancer to inactivity.
The mind plays a big part in your body fitness, they go hand-in-hand.

While I have you here, can I just repeat what I said; breast cancer patients who exercise daily survive 50 per cent longer than those that don’t. There are multiple reasons why this is the case (many are unknown) but I just gave you one reason that doesn’t need any supporting material, you will live longer. Exercise, do it daily and do it well, no shortcuts or half-arsed efforts.

What is Nike’s a slogan?

3.) Nutrition/Diet

Here is another primary factor linked to the previous. Find the right diet that has the most success with your cancer. A lot of people will say an 80/20 diet elasticity rule is good enough, so you have flexibility and some enjoyment in food and drink. My personal opinion is that we’re talking about your life so if it were me in the cancer seat, I’d be military disciplined. No cheeky rewards. No sneaky tastes. Rock solid.

I can’t tell you what diet will be best for you and your condition but there are some obvious disciplines that I believe you should follow.

Many people believe that some cancers are often caused by toxins. Toxins in the environment and toxins in our food. Whether toxins cause cancers or not, consuming toxins certainly wouldn’t aid your chances at defeating the big C. Especially when you need every fighting cell to be floating like butterflies and stinging like bees.

There is nothing good about sugar and processed foods. As tasty as they are, there is only a long list of negatives. High levels of acidity also can’t be good, with many reports detailing that cancer thrives in an acidic environment.

Whether you are a very institutionalIsed medical practitioner, a far-fetched witch doctor or someone in between, all advice says your health and immune system needs to be in the best fighting chance for prescribed cancer treatment to work. So the answer is to stop the build-up of refined sugars and acid levels in the body while simultaneously throwing superfoods down the hatchet.

To overcome the acid issue, it’s imperative that the body is more alkaline. One of the best ways to increase the alkalinity of our bodies is a massive focus on vegetables and raw foods. I’m afraid you’re going to have to empty the pantry of refined sugars, grains, white bread, pasta, soda, coffee and all processed foods. Gooone.

Replace them with as much green food and as you can along with nuts, sprouts, avocado, lemon, limes, whole grain foods such as spelt buckwheat, quinoa, rice, beans and lentils. Wild fresh fish is good too.

Go hard on chlorophyll foods. One of the most alkalizing foods to incorporate into your diet is chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is the substance in plants that allows them to absorb light from the sun and convert that light into usable energy. A diet high in chlorophyll (dark green veggies and super greens) is like consuming liquid oxygen. Super greens come in different formulas and may include wheatgrass, alfalfa grass, barley grass, chlorella and more.

One of the most important factors for creating an alkaline environment in our body is water. This makes complete sense when you simply consider how much of our body is water. 70%. By consuming 70-80% raw alkaline foods and consuming large quantities of alkaline water, the body will become alkaline and play a massive role in removing acidifying toxins from every cell in the body. Creating a pretty dam healthy environment.

Whack an alkaline filter on your tap at home.

I’d be careful of some perceived healthy foods such as apples and grapes which have the highest levels in processing and pesticide. Make sure you wash these foods thoroughly.

A few other summaries:

• There is a list of super food and supplements that I’m still learning about, but these are some that appear to be anticarcinogenic, oxygenating and have alkaline properties; Green tea, wheat grass, and barley grass
• Turmeric is evident to be a very powerful anti-inflammatory, enhancing the effects of chemotherapy and helping to reduce tumour sizes. It must be mixed with black pepper and ideally dissolved in quality olive oil
• Garlic, onions, shallots, leeks and chives – regulate blood sugar and reduce insulin. They promote the death of a cancer cell
• Mushrooms; Shiitake, and Coriolus. Now, these are considered to be acidifying however they are essential in creating natural killer cells in the body. They stimulate the production of immune cells
• Cruciferous Vegetables; cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower. Have them lightly steamed
• Fruit and vegetables rich in carotenoids like; carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, apricots, and beetroot. They are found to inhibit particularly aggressive cancers
• Herbs rich in the oils of the tarpene family that block cancer cell enzymes; Rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, mint
• Citrus Fruits are generally acidic but I’ve read that the ones that become alkaline in the body are limes, lemons and grapefruit
• Himalayan Salt is the go instead of ocean or other salts, it has a plethora of benefits with a lot more minerals and no toxins

Booze, it’s gotta go. Studies are suggesting that no amount of alcohol is good for cancer patients. This one always hurts because getting on the lash is so fun, but it’s shortening your odds of survival. Sorry.

Louise is on the ketogenic diet, a little more specific than the information above but with many of the same recommendations.

Your own healthful, balanced diet should supply your body with sufficient nutrients to carry out its routine tasks. I do believe supplements can play a big role in contributing to your health by supporting the immune system. Supplements played a big role in my sporting career and fighting cancer is bigger than any game or competition,  so I see the need.

My advice would be to work with a diet professional. I personally think you will get more value from someone with more of a  holistic approach to health and wellbeing. Someone that has had success with cancer patients, focusing on the supplements, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, phytochemicals to give your body’s internal environment it’s best chance to punch on and protect and repair those cells in your body.

4.) Professionals

Speak to as many professional as you can. The best way to create options is to converse with the people that have been studying your disease for many years. You need to get the best possible advice, from the professors, doctors and clinicians that are the subject matter experts. It’s hard work and a lot of effort but these smart cookies are your ticket to a cure.

Speak to professionals that work in different areas of your disease. Traditional and nontraditional practitioners, complementary and alternative. Knowledge is power.

Talk to the innovators and early adopters that are pioneering or at the early adoption curve of new developments.

Ask lots of questions. For some reason, doctors drip feed information and often don’t tell you important details unless you ask. I don’t know why this is but I experience it often. Store and categorise your notes of who you are talking with and about because the library of information accumulates very quickly.

5.) New School Medicine

Immunotherapy, precision medicine, targeted therapies, personalised vaccines, natural killer cell therapies. There is a lot going on.

My advice is to get your tumour profiled. Do your research on what profiling is best for you. Examples of commercially available tumour profiling services are Caris Molecular Intelligence (CMI), FoundationOne (Foundation), OncoDEEP, and Paradigmdx (PCDx. The (RGCC) Blood test is another test to determine the tumour cell counts in the bloodstream.

These tests may give you the data you need to guide treatment.

In my opinion, mainstream cancer cures will be found in personalised treatment options. This is where the success is at but I feel the vast majority of success is still on the horizon. The big barrier to accessing these options is that many personalised treatments have not gone through rigorous phase three trials, or any trials which have proven to be better than the current one size fits all cancer train that you have to get on. People are being cured by highly personalised treatments, people with only days to live are being cured, like miracles. But we don’t hear about the ones that don’t respond to the treatments. At this stage, it may be a last resort option but it’s an option. It will however be the first choice option in years to come. Hopefully in Lou’s lifetime.

Lou’s cancer just seems like a massive minefield of varying histological subtypes and molecular profiles within the heterogeneous biology that is TNBC. Personalised treatment needs to consider the uniqueness of these presentations so we can come up with the best strategy.  It feels like we are right there but just. can’t. get. to it…….

I still classify Immunotherapy (IO) as a new school medicine. While some Immunotherapy treatments might be personalised many of the trials are not. IO uses the natural power of your immune system to fight cancer.  Some IO boosts your immune system overall, while others try to teach it to attack very specific types of cells found in tumours.

Cancer grows in our bodies by tricking the immune system into ignoring it. Lou’s current trial is about testing checkpoint inhibitor drugs to stimulate the immune system to recognise and destroy cancer cells. Lou’s current trial also has a PARP inhibitor. These drugs block an enzyme used by cells to repair damage to their DNA. PARP inhibitors may work by keeping cancer cells from repairing themselves once they’ve been damaged.

The main point I would make about IO is getting across the trials, work with an onco that has access to trial options and do what you can to investigate, learn and get on one as soon as possible while researching the next one.  If IO is your choice of direction.

5.) Traditional Medicine

First stop; Chemotherapy. Second stop; surgery. Third stop; radiation. Fourth stop; more chemo. Unfortunately, you need to get on this old-school barbaric cancer train to see if it works or not. For most it does, hence why it’s still the preferred method.

Louise is refractory to upfront chemotherapy so we pretty much had a year of all pain no gain. Her unfortunate situation of getting TNBC and not responding to treatment puts her in a very small bucket of metastatic patients resistant to chemotherapy, a very small bucket. Fuck you cancer.

I wish I could say you didn’t have to go through this archaic process but chances are you will.  Do your best to balance it with whatever you can to help mitigate the brutal side effects that will beat you up like a bully in the schoolyard.

6.) Complementary And Alternative Medicines (CAM)

I know there are many individuals that have decided to steer around traditional medicine completely, I am fascinated by it.  I think it’s amazing, brave and inspiring. I don’t have the balls to influence Lou down this path because I don’t know if I could do it myself. The smallest thing you can do is learn about alternative options, learn from it and integrate all that you can into your prescribed regime. Attempt to make the most of both sides because there is a trump style wall between the two.

Finding the right ingredients of CAM for your own war on cancer is critical. The reason I think it’s critical for an advanced cancer patient is:

• The new school medicines mentioned in point five are advancing by the day, so you need to do what you can to stay healthy and be present on this earth.
• This puts you in the best position to trial and be treated with new school options
• Being in peak condition also gives you the best chance for traditional therapeutic options to have a positive effect
• They help your mind fitness
• They give you control of your body  as most lab-rat traditional options do not

If you are on a trial or taking a chemo regime, be careful to make sure CAM treatments don’t interfere with your cocktail of drugs.

Vitamin Infusions help Lou a lot as oral intake of such high doses is simply not possible due to absorption limitations from the liver. The Intravenous (IV) therapy is a method of feeding vitamins, minerals, and amino acids directly into the bloodstream used to correct and aid nutrient deficiencies.

There is a lot of CAM options out there to explore. Here is a list of CAM that we are still researching and willing to try if we can validate its success.

• Heat treatments
• Hyperthermia
• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• CBD Oil
• Ozone Therapy
• Targeted Radiopeptide Therapies
• Dry needling for pain
• Acupuncture
• Mushrooms
• Coffee Enemas
• Rife Machines
• Mistletoe

If you have any more suggestions and evidence of a treatment success I would love to hear about them. I am all ears.

At the time of writing this, Lou has been diagnosed with advanced cancer for eight weeks only. I am not a medical professional, I’m the furthest thing from it. But I’ve read more in the last two months and taken more notes than the five years it took me to complete my Masters of Business. I have an open mind and believe I have the right balance between an ignorant and an all-out radical approach.

If you’re embarking on a journey to succeed, you need to get started, you need to get moving and adapt along the way. If I wrote this blog post in a few months time I have no doubt it would read very differently. I’d much rather set sail and change course as I go.  Reacting to the winds and tides I encounter and making a start rather than not getting out of the harbour at all, with little attempt to win the cup.