#4 Marc Semmelmann – Beating the odds & Surviving cancer, Raquel’s Wings for Life

And here we are. It is episode number four of gut check project here with Dr. Kenneth Brown. I’m Eric Rieger. Dr. Ken, how you doing today

I’m doing fantastic. Episode Number quatro number quatro that is Spanish for radio know

that Spanish, French Before

that is Spanish for number four. Yes, you’re you’re pretty well versed in

Spanish, aren’t you?

Yeah, we’re a bilingual home. Absolutely. Well the kids speak Spanish and I’m probably the worst speaker in the house.

Well, that’s a okay Hey, just a quick tough nod off the off the jump Don’t forget that today’s episode of gut check project is brought to you by odd Tron to get your own otra and deal at love my tummy calm forward slash spoonie use code spoonie

save yourself some money. So I’ve been taking some voice lessons also trying to nail that drone. How’s it going? It’s going horrible. Was that was that your that your best shot that was my best shot?

Was that too bad? also brought to you by KBB health brand new kbmd CBD but now you can get to the gut check project calm and be linked directly to the KBMD store and find your own KBMD CBD Awesome, maybe if I gargle with that before I try and sing, it’ll improve everything. It could work. Well, we’ve got a great show today. And we’re going to get to him in just a moment. But our guest today is Marc Semmelmann. And we’ll touch on that here in just a moment. incredible story of survival, new lease on life and what he’s doing after his battle with cancer. But if you’ve been watching gut check project for all of the last three weeks, you know that Dr. Our first half hour is news and notes for gut check project. So, Dr. Brown, what’s happened to new in the brown household here since our last show?

Well, in the brown household, what’s really exciting is my daughter in her improv. I guess the trick class, she’s a sixth grader. She came home and taught me something really, really good that basically whenever you’re doing improv, what you have to do is say yes, it’s Yes. And second thing you have to do is trust. Third thing is
Listen. And then the fourth thing is making a statement. And I heard that and I was like, I need your teacher to come over to KBS headquarters. So we can work on that as a team building exercise improv exercise to make a team. Yes. And I love that. Yes. And, and then I’m going to trust what’s coming next. I love that.

That’s pretty wild. But basically, in an improv class, she’s learning just great communication skill. And
that’s

what I thought we were laughing about it last night because I was asking her, you know, the kids come home. It’s like, what did you learn today, and that’s what we’re talking about. The other really cool thing in our house is my son is currently playing in the finals of a really big tennis tournament out in Indian Wells, California, the Easter bowl, it’s a big one. So at 11 o’clock, our time he will be playing in the finals. Very, very proud of him in both singles and doubles. So the brown households having some good times right now,

how about you? Well, number one shout out to Lucas and Karla, those are both great notes to be able to carry around as a dad, I know that you’re proud of both of them. For me, both of the boys have moved into offseason basketball, they’re really fired up. They’ve been out of basketball all of about 10 days, which I think if you shoot who, apparently that’s way too long, so they both got started, but something that we did as a family. That was a lot of fun. gets a little over a week ago and I should have mentioned it for last week’s show.
I’d never done it before. My oldest son had actually done it before a couple of times. And that is we all sat down, relaxed, and got pedicures. And I’m here to tell you that

included,

Dad included nice if you haven’t done it, don’t knock it down. You try it because I’m going back. That felt awesome. And no, I mean, I’ll tell you what, I’ve got really ticklish feet. But I didn’t know something I learned about myself is that my left foot is more ticklish than my right because as they began to exfoliate the bottom of my foot, especially the left side, I was crying from laughing so hard as I got in my mouth and of course, the Yeah the woman doing is looking at and laughing and giggling with everyone else is they exchanged their own jokes and another language i’d also don’t speak just like Spanish and did it in my expense was completely worth it and I will definitely be back

so I almost got a pedicure one time I was standing out front and I looked at my feet and it reminded me of the scene from Dumb and Dumber when they were getting ready to take the grinder to the toenails. And I was I don’t want to do that to anybody. I’m just gonna put these Eagle claws back in the shoes and just keep on walking.

Yeah, I was you know, I was worried I didn’t want to I didn’t want to reveal like a Frito toenail or anything else like that. But I think I walked away as best I can feed I’ve had since probably I was a baby

kids doing good pedicure. Now I don’t even have to ask what you’ve been up to. Because you and I were actually hanging out. We were this last weekend. We definitely were business makes it a little bit of pleasure. Yeah. And that was in deed in Utah powder mountain. That was awesome. Incredible skiing, lots of powder. Fantastic. So much

snow for late March. It was beautiful. It’s a great place to go and visit not crowded either

now, but our ski experiences were a little bit different. They were they were a little bit so to put it in context, Eric was like heli dropping and taking these tractors up and I actually had to be escorted down the mountain by two wonderful people Lindsey Vonn and Susie chapstick, but No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t. But it was Juliet and
Karen awesome. So I survived that was a big thing. didn’t break anything, didn’t do anything. But our experiences were totally different. You came back just oh my gosh, that was incredible back country, just all powder and I was like, Oh, yeah, mine is a little bit different. I had two women sort of guiding me down the mountain the
hallways, there’s no shame in that. In fact, I’ll even say whenever you but whenever we got into our skis the first day, you and I had planned on even making a few runs together. It was snowing so hard. I stopped to buckle up my helmet because I’m safe. And I looked up and can and the other four people that I was skiing with were gone. They probably won’t. You probably weren’t 20 feet. away from me, but it was a complete whiteout for the first one hour that we skied. Oh no, it kept going. I ended up staying in that area and like true white. Oh, I lost everybody like it was you couldn’t see your hand in front of us. Whoo. Okay. Not only did I had not been skiing in over 10 years, that’s not the way to start. No. And shout out to Blake Kingsbury for finding me. He looked
like a Yeti lost in a snowstorm. And basically he was my beacon on the way down. I had no idea how to get down. But no, that was,

that was a great time up at powder mountain if you like skiing, snow skiing, deep powder skiing, you need to take yourself a bear to powder mountain. We’re gonna move on here a little bit to basically the news because yesterday while we were working at the indo center, you ran up to me You said look at this study. This is a little bit more in terms of what we’ve been talking about for catalysts and what causes cancer. I’m gonna let you take it

over from there because it’s pretty, pretty incredible piece. Well, I thought it was so it was just published i thought was so appropriate because we’re Gonna have mark on the show and we’re going to be talking about cancer and surviving cancer. Well, in this, just recently published in the Journal of science this month, they did a study where they looked at how high fructose corn syrup actually enhances colon cancer in mice. So what they did is they took the equivalent of one soda a day, and they gave the mice that amount of fructose corn syrup. The issue is that they had genetically engineered these mice so that they would get polyps and cancer. Sure, which is funny because you gotta wonder like, if you’re gonna be genetically engineered, you never think that you’re going to get that like I’m genetically engineered, you know, to be faster, genetically engineered to be bigger, stronger, and then one poor mouse is like, I’m genetically engineered to get cancer, and that’s how they end up looking at these different studies. And so what they did is they showed that by giving The high fructose corn syrup. It dramatically raised the amount of polyps and cancer over 80 times. The mice that were not given the high fructose corn syrup. This is with an equivalent of one soda and one soda a day. So it’s absolutely incredible because I don’t know if you remember but a year ago, a study came out where it was looking at how the rate of colon cancer in millennials has been going up. Sure. We did a video on that on YouTube where Ricardo was we did the interpretive jujitsu. And what it showed is, it felt that the millennials were getting a higher rate of colon cancer because of obesity. They showed with these mice, they did not become obese, they did not develop metabolic syndrome. It’s strictly due to the fructose and the sugar that they were consuming. Then they were able to actually show that by taking this fructose, the tumor cells love it so much that they could put a radioisotope and they could show that it just got sucked up and it turns certain genes that allows the tumor to go undetected. absolutely fascinating, because the fructose, and that the high fructose corn syrup they believe could be very similar to other like table sugar. Bottom line is tumors love sugar. And this is the first study that’s been done really actually looked at that and it’s absolutely fascinating. I’m sorry, my allergies about the mcgrill keep having to clear my throat. What this actually shows is now they’re looking at how to actually adapt, fasting plus ketogenic diet when you have tumors, because if you’re going to give them sugar, that’s just going to absolutely feed it like crazy. so fascinating study, just one soda day can do this. So let’s break down a few things here because you said a lot of impressive information. So if we were to backtrack, we could take away that tumor cells love sugar, and I love circulating glucose that’s going to be their main desired use for energy and that’s how they grow They don’t have energy they can’t grow. But something else that you said in there was was really captivating to me. And that is they were able to take the high fructose corn syrup after consumed and basically activate a process where the body could not detect that they were tumors themselves. So not only were they now stealing the energy so they could continue to grow as a cancer and develop into a bigger tumor. These little tumors now we’re being able or allowed to activate something where they were basically incognito, not being able to be detected by the mice and their immune system, correct? Well, exactly, it actually gets into so this is where I start getting into the geeky stuff a little bit. There was an enzyme called keto hexo kinase, which will change fructose into fructose one phosphate, wow, that turns on the gene in the tumor to use the glucose more so that’s what tells it to absorb it more. So it actually is a little cascade and they’ve actually shown that they’re trying to develop drugs that actually block that. So there’s actually phase two clinical trials going on where they’re trying to see if they can block that one little enzyme that does that. Sure. So would it then be able? Or would we then be able to extrapolate that and maybe the reason why Millennials are now seeing an increase in colon cancer, is because generationally, probably, if we were to back it up two or three generations, we’ve seen an increase in sugar consumption. People believe that sugar is related to inflammation, that those two things combined together are now we’re seeing an increase in these types of cancers. They’re being detected because when you consume any type of food, it goes straight to your GI tract. Would you say that this is somewhat related or possibly related? Well, that was the funny part because this study gets you thinking about that, because when they when they were, this is the first time that we have seen people having a higher incidence of colon cancer than their parents, right. It’s the first time and so it was speculated, oh, it’s got to be obesity. It’s got to be the metabolic syndrome. This is the first time we can look at something ago. Now it looks like it’s the way that we’re processing food. The high fructose corn syrup is in everything, everything, but it’s really concentrated in one can of soda. And so the consumption of soda has increased since the 80s. significantly. So is it our diet that’s doing this? We’re trying to label it with different things, oh, it’s sedentary lifestyle, or possibly it’s smoking or whatever now, looks like our diet is really contributing to the amount of cancer that we’re seeing. You know, it’s wild. If you just look back, I can remember looking back at pictures of my dad and my mom growing up and what family pictures looked like whenever they went on vacation, he would see everyone all the ancillary players in the photographs around and who they considered to be overweight, back then, in the 50s, and 60s and even the 70s and it’s starkly different than the than the body type. So what
People look like today and what we consider overweight. And for me personally, I really don’t even point at those people. It’s just our food supply is so inundated with lots of things that you’re just are unaware, could possibly be contributing to not only being overweight, but probably the diseases that maybe you’re going to have that you don’t even know that are manifesting right now, unfortunately, possibly even colon cancer and for a millennial, it becomes really kind of disheartening that they’re actually allowing or they the insurance companies are allowing us to screen people at an earlier age and they wouldn’t do it. If it weren’t in balance with with cost. It’s always more cost effective to catch a cancer early than late. So if they’re allowing people to not have to wait till 50 to come in and just get their first screening and now they’ve lowered it to 4545. And if there’s a family history of pileups, then it’s 42 Start to begin and that was not that way. All 10 years ago for sure it wasn’t and it’s fascinating because here I am I just got this article yesterday you and I were I was doing colonoscopies yesterday and I just started jumping up and down because I realized that when patients go into recovery, most of them are given a can of soda after they get out makes no sense. I’m gonna put a stop to that right now we’re gonna put a stop and I told all the nurses I’m like no more soda to our patients. We’re trying to stop colon cancer, and we’re causing it by drinking the soda so we should at least lead by example. It’d be you know, like giving our patients a pack of cigarettes when they’re leaving the end of center. I gotta admit that nobody in the hospital system seems and for all my friends out there, I’m sorry. But if you want to find the smoking Doc, just look for the respiratory therapist outside of the hospital. I don’t know why that’s the same at every single hospital all through my training every hospital I’ve been at, I don’t know either. It’s it’s, it’s really kind of fascinating. Hey, before we give it Other quick takeaways from this particular study? Well, it’s just that this one is just so impressive because it really shows that the way that we may be treating cancers in general, is wrong. So I’ve talked to some of my cancer doc friends, I’m like, hey, do you put people on a ketogenic diet? Yeah. When they do that? No, we don’t. Do you ever use fasting when somebody has this, and we’ve discussed before that the fasting mimicking diet actually has been shown to improve the effects of chemo and decrease the amount of side effects but that’s still not being implemented. So here’s one example. You know, it always starts out as animal studies, and it works his way to humans. But I think that this is the first step to show Hey, proper treatment of cancer is to starve it not to just dump a bunch of sugar on it, which is what we’re kind of doing. Yeah. Isn’t it interesting that maybe even when your body’s trying to recover from an episode of cancer and not just when it’s chemo induced, but when people begin to lose weight, everyone immediately becomes concerned. Possibly, it’s sometimes The body just knows what it wants to do. And by starving these tumors from the circulating glucose is its first mechanism of defense of, we’ve got to stop feeding. This is basically this rogue cell, or whatever it is. It happens to be growing out of control. Yeah, and it’s just I think it’s faster. Oh, did you see it? Speaking of fascinating Did you see that that California man was awarded $80 million because he had 56 acres that he was using roundup for decades. And $80 million that is so wild, but it’s so it’s kind of incredible that it that it took this long to find out about Roundup, I mean, we’re spraying it on everything. So we’ve got you’ve already got the deck stacked against you if you’ve got a carcinogen on your food chain, and then if you’re going to take the corn fructose, which the corn was sprayed, right and now we’ve got a you know, double whammy going on right now. You know, I can remember when the first big movement or the big push of, of non GMO foods, this non GMO foods that and I was really rather ignorant In terms of what that actually meant, and it was really easy to find detractors from people who were reporting that movement, like, oh, they’re just, they’re just afraid that we’re doing food technology and food development, etc. It’s so much more than that. It comes down to protecting you and yourself from carcinogens which can’t taste you can’t detect you have no idea. You can have the healthiest person in the world who’s exercising, not smoking, trying to eat right. And while they’re eating the foods that they trust, such as a great piece of broccoli vegetable, that actually consuming glyphosate or roundup in their food, and they get sick. Then I read another article which showed if you’re exposed to roundup on a regular basis, you have over a 41% chance of getting lymphoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I don’t know where they got that data, I need to find the actual article but in this particular study, they were referencing that because I think that was used, that’s the type of cancer that that man got, right and that’s why he was awarded this so we’ll probably for a follow up episode, because what we do do here is always trying to speak into the facts. I know that we’ve seen the trend on various types of cancers, including lymphoma have been increasing. I just don’t have it on hand. But we will tackle that. Probably in a in a future episode in terms of non GMO versus GMO roundup glyphosate is there has to be something to it, though, because you have the lymphoma belt in the United States, which is Nebraska and Iowa, where I’m from agronomy. And that’s why the university Nebraska is so good at transplants because they were one of the first places to do the autologous bone marrow transplant because they were seeing so much leukemia and lymphoma, and they didn’t. Technically everyone said that they couldn’t explain it. They didn’t know what it was. But it’s the same thing is whenever they first figured out that black lung was kind of a problem. You know, I mean, it’s it’s really no different. You know, one created the industry to make people sick, but once people began to get sick, it’s like, what’s the explanation here? I just kind of crazy everybody’s getting sick and you realize it’s a sudden the year yeah, it’s really no different. Do you remember that time that you and I went to Virginia. We worked in the coal mine that one day Yeah, with Zoo lander manopoly hired got the black man, Merman underrated movie. Speaking of movies, our guest today sent me his his top five movies or at least that I reminded him of that he wants to cover Why does he send them to you? Well, he sent them to me because I was just curious on what he would like to talk about it ancillary to some of his incredible story already, but we’ll dig in and see how how well he actually knows these movies whenever the last half hour rolls around and see what Mark knows about his own his own favorite pages send it to you or did he fill out our gut check project? intake form? That’s a good question. So if you have somebody you like to nominate to be on our new show, gut check project you can visit us at gut check project com Go to connect and send somebody our way that you think would be a good fit for get a project to be interviewed by your very own Dr. Brown and on that form. Of course, we find that Really a little bit everything about who it is that we’re going to have on the show. You know what I mean? It’s it’s the Eric and Dr. Brown. I’m, I’m here to just pull up movie lines occasionally when you say things like black lung in the middle of a cancer talk. That’s That’s all I could think about. I’m like, oh, Zulan Yeah, well, you know that there’s nothing wrong. I’m going to count on you to ask the hard questions. Okay. For any of our guests. Yeah. Why did you say that? Yeah. So we, I think in the future, what we should do is you we should have an over under, I want to see how many guests you can make cry like barbara walters style, okay. really dig in deep. Makes sense. That’s something I mean, physically, or you mean just by emotional questions. Well, it’s funny because I actually at the conference that we were at, one of the things was, they had a bunch of movie directors that were actually there and they were discussing when they start doing like, docu series interviews. When the guest starts becoming uncomfortable, that’s when they get their best footage and they really start pushing the boundary right there. So yeah, no Question. I mean, that makes sense, though, because it’s going to be the emotion, right? So it’s kind of raw emotion that’s coming out. Yeah, exactly. So if you can just get everything that’s real. That’s what I mean, we’re not really, you know, we’re doing the show here. It’s some of these movie lines. Some people don’t like the movie. So it is what it is, but it’s real. So before we finish this last half hour, one of the main questions that we got since our last episode, and we got a lot on polyphenols, CBD, really, about your hobbies, but the one that really stuck out to me that we had asked,
I think six different times was how does CBD address anxiety and we don’t have a whole lot of time right now. But something that you take that Yeah, we’ll end up doing a whole show on that. But basically, the way that I tell my patients is, CBD just sort of presses the reset button and puts everything back in balance. And if you think of it anxiety, is just an over firing nerve. It’s like a sensitive nerve. All this does is just calm it down like a traffic cop, so that you
just get out The anxiety is just a perception of neurons firing, right? You know, the extreme version would be a seizure early on, it just calms everything down, gets it to go back to normal. And that’s how I kind of
explained it to my patients. Like just try it. If you have a deficiency in your endocannabinoid system, chances are you’re going to have a pretty good response with that. While thing is that just the multiple applications for utilizing the endocannabinoid system, which everyone has in their own body, and basically resetting just like you said, to make people feel better, and there’s a bunch of different ways to make it happen. But rather than make it sound like a magic pill for everything, we really want to break that down. And we’ll keep those questions coming. Dealing with anxiety is something that we’re going to have someone on a think in about six weeks,
eventually you and at that point, time will get a much much, much deeper, but any other applications of CBD and questions like that, combined with polyphenols? And this is Yeah, so fire up questions because this is how we’re going to figure out how to do other episodes. Definitely. What is You know, the anybody that’s swimming towards
us asking a question, we want to address it. And we have the ability to bring some experts in. And we’re just going to make sure that we do this and try to, you know, having some fun, but also, you know, kind of sciency here and so we want to make sure that we use science and studies to explain everything in a very late term.
Hopefully we can do it because the endocannabinoid system is a tough system to explain. You said a word there, hopefully. And that’s something that we want to do today with today’s guest is going to join us in the next half hour. We’re gonna bring a little hope to everyone this Our next guest is Marc Semmelmann, and he
is the only documented five year survival or survivor from D differentiated contro sarcoma, and he’s got an incredible story. So stick around, he has taken his journey and turning it into his way to reach others and deliver a great message awesome. Alright, we are back for the second half hour, Episode Four of gut check project. I’m Eric Rieger joined here by your host, Kenneth Brown. And now we have a fantastic guest joining us today. His name is Marc Semmelmann and as I mentioned at the bottom of the last half hour it He is the only five years survivor of differentiated chonrdo sarcoma, the only five year survivor on record. He’s got an incredible story of actually known mark for almost 20 years. You’re an entrepreneur, your husband, father of three, former D one football player, would you play? Where did I play? Yeah. Was there other school to play other than the University of Texas? I didn’t I didn’t know they had a program. Did you know they had a project not I know. I know that University of Nebraska has one. Yeah, Texas Tech has a program and we all get that. Are you the first Nebraska that’s royal Memorial North because it’s time to go to Nebraska we beat the Cornhuskers. Marc Semmelmann has an incredible story. And as I briefly mentioned, I’ve known him for almost 20 years actually, my wife and I bought our first home from you back when you were dabbling in building homes. And you’ve been a serial entrepreneur for a long time. Go ahead and we’re going to we’re going to jump forward a little bit, but once you take it from there, which part the serial entrepreneurial part well, or the cancer part because I Well, in 2010, I guess I would back most with bone cancer, okay. And originally it was just going to be a simple 19 hour procedure 15 hours by the orthopedic surgeon in four hours by the plastic surgeon and they were going to take out half my pelvis. So actually Had a Hemi pill victime with Allah graph, I’m gonna stop your real quick good. Because we’re going to get in that’s I mean do you want that’s not what you’re going you’re wanting something different well now it’s it’s it’s how it kind of hid from you a little bit. So I remember bringing my oldest gauge over to your house and this would have been in earlier 2010 Right, right. And you were laying on the floor of your
living room and you kept saying Rieger my back I’m just I don’t know what the hell’s going on. There’s only place I can get comfortable and take a nap and you were laying on the floor of your living room with your legs propped up and physician after physician had scanned your back and was trying to find out where the pain was coming from and we got different diagnoses all stretches and other things like that they weren’t working. And then it led to someone looking in a little bit different location. So I guess in January of that year, I’m coaching my daughter’s basketball team. And they were doing a drill I didn’t particularly The way they’re doing the drill, so I helped him to show him this is what you’re going to do the room. And, of course, they’re 10 or 11 year old little girls and that’s like herding cats, but I’m gonna do so I get up the next morning and I’ve got this back pain. And I’m thinking, Well, I’m gonna I’m a little older, I’m will shape just pulled something a couple weeks later be fine. That didn’t work. So it gotten so painful and I was so restless that a wife kicked me out of the bed and that moved the couch. I couldn’t get any comfort there and then I moved to the floor and that’s what you remember. I’m sleeping on the floor. Yeah, that was the only place I could comfort Well, I’ve been to two or three different doctors had a morass of my lower back. I’d had si injections. I went to a chiropractor for a couple three weeks and he said I can’t get you straightened out. him sighs therapist went to massage therapist every day for a week and she said I can’t get that. That muscles in just like a rope and I can’t get it. How old were you when you were going through that? 4445 Okay, and the massage therapy says hey, there’s a new sports medicine guy cross the street. Once you go see him I walked in. And he looked at me and says, you’ve kind of got your gates kind of funny. And he took an X ray, my, my pelvis, which nobody ever identified my pelvis because the pain was in my lower back and sends me across to the hospital to do an MRI of my lower pelvis now, and I come back to him and and in small town, you kind of know everybody that’s there. Well, the radiology tech pulls me out of the out of the tube, and he’s just kind of white, I can tell something’s wrong. And his name’s Mark also. And Mark was prom. So I can’t tell you, you just have to go back across the street and see the doctor have all the films and everything else. Well, he pulls up the films and I’ve got this, you know, what, just lit up on screen, this tumor in my pelvis. And that was the first indication of where it was. I always thought it was just a muscular, muscular problem and not a not a bone problem or a cancer problem. Right. Is there any family history of bone cancers or anything like that, no. Lost my mom to Two cokes a day to brain cancer there. And she fought that for 10 years and multiple multiple surgeries. But uh, no bone cancer. I can is it even common for an older person to have a bone cancer? Well, it’s it’s very rare, but the type of cancer that you’re talking about the one that you ended up being diagnosed with. What’s unusual about it is it involves both bone and cartilage. That’s why they call it the D differentiated type of cancer where it actually goes into both of them. There is a padres disease when you’re over the age of 60 that can turn into bone cancer, but most of the time it’s kids that actually can get bone cancer and that’s called osteosarcoma. So this is a completely different one. It’s very unique, very, very rare. Yeah. Well, the Congress or coma is is rare. And that was the original diagnosis from the first biopsy, which is like you said, bone and cartilage. And after they took the tumor out and did a full biopsy, then they decided Wow, we pulled out a bunch of homogeneous cells at that point in time. And so Congress will come was not exactly what it is. Now they’re slicing this, this loaf of bread define the, you know, the real cancer and it’s the differentiated which means that they can’t tell you where it came from. The way they described it to me was if what what’s the, what’s the cell in your body that the T cells that produce the the cell, the osteoblast? Know where the Counterblast usually it’s, it’s a blast. That’s the precursor. Now, so if I have a cell in my body, a stem cell or something that’s going to create a fingernail, or is it the stem cell? Yeah, okay. So the stem cell, it releases a sale to become a fingernail or a hair follicle, right? And that it was, it’s differentiated. So it goes from what that stem cell is to the fingernail, well, it falls short, and that’s the be differentiated part so they don’t know where it came from. It ends up in all your organs. At some point in time, they there wasn’t there is no cure that they have found at this point. They just keep having surgeries and taking stuff out. So what do you think about your 44 years old? Got young kids? What’s really going through your brain? I mean, let’s walk us through somebody that actually, unfortunately, you’re still here to talk about it. What’s going through your brain? How Yeah, how did the doctor come in? Well, so entering part of the story. I’m in I’m in for a week, four weeks, actually, in a body cast, kind of and I’m laying in this bed and King move. And you know, let the bones and everything heal. And the first time the doctor comes in my orthopedic lady, she brings a guy with her big six foot seven guy, Hey, Mark, I want you to meet this guy from the blood bank. Okay, great. Hey, how more you know, she’s always and she’s just, you know, she’s training all these fellows. She’s just this incredible physician, the innovative because five years prior to the surgery that she did for me, they just took the leg off and just amputated. So you run around from leg. So she had created an innovative this this particular procedure. So the guy comes in from the blood bank. And he says, I think we’ve infected you with HIV. And I’m like, yeah, blood transfusion, I think we’ve given the HIV. So I’m kind of freaking out a little bit. I’ve already got this, this rehab, there’s going to be a 24 month rehab and learn how to walk and do all this other stuff again, and now you’re going to complicate things and doing legia v. And he was kidding, right was the desert. And so we kind of freaked out. So it goes, yes. And I kind of freaked out all this conversation. But you know, it’s only kind of, well, he comes back, you know, two or three, four days later and says, right, so we’ve retested your blood, it’s not showing up, there’s no markers in your blood. We’re going to continue to test you but I think you’re okay. I think we have some kind of false reading, but just probably not. I mean, he’s probably just the messenger. They probably have the biggest guy. There’s like every Hey, every time we infect somebody with HIV, it’s Dude. I mean, how often does this happen in that particular blood bank? He’s like, sorry, I gotta get to another room over here. And yeah, we have an assignment. Yeah. So he leaves I feel like I’m in the clear but this kind of a rollercoaster of stuff that you know you’ve had the surgery 24 months now you’re going to dab HIV or whatever you got to, you know, fight this fight. She comes in a couple weeks later zone brings in another doctor and says, Hey, Mark, you’re gonna need to get your affairs in order. Oh, yeah. Because you’ve got about best six months to live. And I’m like, What? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what’s going on? And so you asked about what what’s going through your head? There’s denial. Well, first, you’ve told me hfp so i’m not buying your story anymore. Now you tell me that I’ve got six months to live i’m not buying that story anymore either. And you know, he leaves and we go through all the scenarios. So what are the statistics? What Is this legit? How do you know is this a misdiagnosis? Do you believe in miracles or mistakes? And he wouldn’t talk about any of that stuff. It’s just we’re just gonna have a positive attitude. You know, you’re gonna have a good family, a good support group, you know, you need to pray to whoever you pray to. And we’re going to go there as best we can that would become polytheistic Sure, start praying to all of them. Well, and he leaves, right. And so there was a guy in town, Aaron Milstein was in town, visiting me in the hospital, when this guy delivers and loses me and Aaron, I’m a dad. And I’m going, Oh, crap. And my wife’s back home. And she had heard this and I said, All right. I’m not saying a word. Aaron, when you go home, you’re not saying a word to your wife. I don’t want this out until my wife comes back in this weekend. And Dr. Robbie, by the way, you’re going to deliver the news I’m not gonna tell her right. So he leaves. And so you go through the you know, it’s kind of like, you know, the five degrees of separation, you go, denial, whatever. What are you going to do, now? You got to get your No one shares my tells you that you got to sleep What are you gonna do? And you think about your kids and all these other things that night, I’m laying in bed and talk about having, you know being being religious. I was born and raised in a church and has have a pretty good religious background but I’m pissed at that point. I’m having a fight with God we’re arguing right go to the stages rather and this isn’t happening to me. And I’ve got a wife I’ve got three kids if I’m gonna die I’m okay died. But I’m not okay leaving them alone without me to take care of more do somewhere influence the rest their life. And the time Marcus was third grade and then EA and what? Fifth and Sixth or sixth grade? Yeah, they’re not they’re not real old. Right? And so I’m pissed. My mom wrestling in bed before because it can’t get any risk because I’m in so much pain and now it’s a different kind of pain, but I’m fighting in bed. Kind of a, and I asked the doctor earlier about miracles and mistakes. And I’m telling you soon as I’m sitting here, bam, there’s just peace washes over me. And it was like, I got this dude, you don’t have to worry about it again. From that point on. I never thought about it again. No, no, I just knew I was going to survive. My job was just to sit back and let the doctors do what they do, and just survive. And I never had another doubt it was. I say another doubt. I mean, you go through all kinds of different emotions, but at that point, I can pinpoint that particular night. And that particular time laying in my bed that just this piece just just washed over me. And I was like, All right. So what was it? What was the journey so obviously, you know, the the doctors, there was intervention, there was medicine us what was the first step and then going through that kind of schedule? Well, after he told me I was gonna die in six months. He says we’re gonna do some chemo, which wasn’t part of the original plan. And he says if the cancer didn’t get you first, the chemo mind because we’re going to take you to as close as Canada death. And so I started at about 240 pounds and ended up at 187 pounds not a hair on my head. Not a brown not a nose here nothing in my butt crack nothing. I got a great, I got a great story I’ll tell you well, what I think is interesting is like I can’t see any hair up here, honey, get over here. back yeah, check it check it all right, you’ve opened it up. So I got to tell you the story them. So you know, they get you up to rehab. Right and you got to get moving and and running through one of my jobs was to get up and just walk to the nurse’s station and back and I’ve got this Walker and I’ve got this guy rehab. It’s got a you know, built around me so I don’t fall down. And his name’s Alex. Not that that matters. But so I’m walking a little bit and I get to the nurse’s station and come back. think I’ve had a good day. chemo starting to sit in. This is going on for several weeks now. Now I’m bald. You know, I’ve lost all my eyebrows and everything else on my record, show that just ruin the story. But anyway, so I’m plugging along with this little Walker and I’m sweating now it’s work and I hear this squeak squeak squeak I said bad food you gotta stop get some new tennis shoes or something because those and at the time you know you hearings all messed up and so that was just really driving me crazy so that just stop it’s not me my shoes aren’t squeaking that’s not me so just stop so he stops and I go squeak squeak and Alex that you know it’s not me mark it’s I mean I don’t know where it’s coming from it’s not me maybe it’s the walker I said it’s not the walker Alex just stop so he lets go and squeeze, squeeze and it wasn’t a walker so at this point I am not weight bearing on that on my on my right leg at that point. But what had happened I had worked up just enough of a sweat up that in my butt crack every time I walk people just go sleep So, going through all this Yeah, let’s go everybody stop looking around. And so now I knew that every time that I was going to rehab, I was going to walk until I squeaked. And that’s when I knew that I had accomplished my goal, you know, used to work up enough sweat. Now you got the squeak going. And it was just the funniest thing. There’s a bazillion just hilarious stories out of all this have a real serious situation. But there’s, there’s a lot of humor in it. And you got to have some humor. Sure. Otherwise, you know, the doctor originally said if you don’t have some a positive attitude about stuff and support from your family. And I completely believe that because there’s so many things in our brain that we don’t know that the brain does or that leases or controls and you being you guys being the doctors will have all that knowledge and young get all kind of Well, actually, what I’m trying to wrap my brain around is when your brain said no, we got this. We did something. I mean there’s epigenetics going on. When no I got this. Does that change something in your body that allows You to have a better chance of surviving a cancer that kills the mindset has to matter. But Masonic mindsets big, a big, think about, you’ve seen somebody in the office and the head, they walk around, get that permanent frown on their face. You know, they’re just negative all the time. And then you’ve got those other people that walk around, they’re just bouncing off the wall. They’re happy all the time. And you can’t tell why is that? Is that genetics? Is that something in your life? Is it just your attitude? You know, what is it but your your physical appearance turns into what your, your attitude becomes, and if I’m a negative, you know, got the frown on my face, then you can see in the body language that that’s the personality that you become. So the survival piece, I think is is a lot of it is mental, and it’s a battle and if you decide, at some point, I’m going to quit this, then you’re going to whip it. I could tell you that story, but I could also, I mean, there’s gonna be another thousand stories out there that people didn’t survive, so I don’t even know. How do you know? I remember after everyone has a good While after you finished everything, you came up with a slogan, I think that you’ve started to incorporate. We’ll get to it later. But it was, you’re getting what you’re getting? Because you’ve been giving what you’ve been giving. And that could go back to your attitude really in anything. Right? Right. It’s a, that’s funny, I stole that from Ziggler. I wish I could say I invented it or kept it, but it was I was going to let you float with it. But only one point in our marriage, my wife worked for him and, you know, brought home all the tapes. And so I’m listening to him. And I thought just that’s just so appropriate. Because if you give a bad attitude, you’re going to get a bad attitude in return. And I’ve just goofed around in different settings where people can get into a situation where a lot of negative gossip or you seen all the nonsense on social media and the talking heads in the news and the media nowadays. You go into a setting and everybody can be fixated on a particular item and have this negative attitude. And you just bring one person in there and you start lacing in the loo With a positive attitude and you watch the whole dynamics of the room change, yep. And it’s kind of interesting just somebody’s going to come in and change the attitude and works the same way. But you know, we had a listener ask it so that’s a big long name for the cancer but it’s a type of bone cancer, but is it? Is there any other way to describe it? He’s asking if there is any other way to describe Sorry, I forgot. But is there any other way to describe that type of bone cancer Mark? The live we’ve had a listener who has written in and wanted to know better that long name please be differentiated Congress or coma? Yeah, D differentiated you can chonrdo sarcoma chondro sarcomas the common name for it but because it’s special, the differentiated get Alec Alec up and I’ll just text a link back to them to spoony and, and yeah, it’s a it’s it’s rare, and it’s a there’s really no other way to describe it other than you’ve got this cancer that’s crossing over between the cartilage in the bone and it’s just forming. cancer and that’s how come we could end up in the pelvis. Like that. Just sounds wild. I real quick, just give us a rundown. And then of what the activities were that you had to do. I know they had to do chemo and then you had to do a surgery. So, yeah, so we had 19, our hundred enough good story in this. So you know, as doctors, you go in for any kind of surgery, they give you the purple pin, right? So I’m operating on the right knee. And so as the patient I’m going to write down, you know, make a mark on my knee, right knee. So when you go in and you don’t screw up and Mark, right on the left knee, right. So the plastic surgeon guy comes in and he’s telling me all that we’re going to do. And they were going to take six centimeters out of the middle of my stomach all the way down. past my belly button. I’ve got a whole brand new belly button by the way. And then we’re going to cinch this back up. Okay. And then we’re going to create in a flap so if you think about taking a big giant Folgers coffee cup and putting it right here in your pelvis and pushing it all the way through your Everything that went into that coffee cup ended up in the trash can. Okay, so you’ve got a cavity there. Now what are you going to do? So they were taking the six centimeters out of my abs to put into this flap down here to keep my insides from falling out the backside. He’s pointing to his right going right rolling in. So I took that purple pen and I said, Dr. Race, make sure you leave me a six pack abs on my stomach. Now, I’ve never had a six pack abs. So I thought that was the only chance I was ever going to get it. And he did a pretty dang good job. But the orthopedic lady worked for 15 hours straight. And then the plastics guy did a four hour surgery on the same day all in the same setting. And so 19 hours totals Canada. That’s amazing. That is a long surgery, which is, I mean, just absolutely incredible. Because a lot of times we talk about where medicine fails, as certainly you and I talked about that, sure. I feel like medicine could be doing a better job. For instance. Controlling diet, right? But then we have that 15 hours surgery. That is incredible. This is where it’s definitely succeeding. Yes. Well, you guys, there’s a reason why they call it you practice medicine, because there’s little perfection in it because you’re operating on human body, which is imperfect to begin with, right? And so, you know, we talked a little bit earlier how went from from one doctor trying to chase down a diagnosis, and I feel fairly fortunate that each doctor said, I’ve tried, I’ve made an attempt, and I’m gonna have to send you to somebody else. And so I kept getting referred over and over and over, and it might have been a frustrating situation. But in reality, the doctors practicing what he knows, and finally stops and says, I think there’s somebody better to help with your diagnosis or help push you down the track to where you need to be. So I appreciated that that they weren’t so egotistical. They said, I got this and this is what your problem is and, and sit me down, you know, the wrong path. So it was kind of a neat progression. I can see how the physician community just they work together to come up with the right diagnosis at the end of the day. So then what were the Were there any other foreign bodies? Any other animal parts that maybe you’re sporting right now that didn’t just belong to you? Well, so I have somebody else’s pelvis me, okay. And I don’t know where you’re going on the animal parts, but Well, I hear your wild man, I’m not really sure. So the The joke is that they were looking for a similar pelvis, same shape, same size that Allah graph, you know, a cadaver bone a donor and took them a while to find something. And they finally find it like call me Sarah. We can do surgery on this particular day. Now, you don’t have a whole lot of female orthopedist. Right. And the lady that’s down at MD Anderson is a female and so I thought that was a little unusual. And I, in my day job I deal with orthopedic physicians all over the country. And so that’s a little uncommon. So I go to the MD Anderson website and look her up. And it’s a black lady, which makes it even more uncommon. And when you meet her, you go, oh my gosh, you are perfect for this job, you are the right person. And she is a freakin ball buster. And she always had all these other physicians following her around because she was kind of the pioneer in this particular type of procedure. So she had called and finally found the bone and says, we’re going to schedule the surgery for this particular day. How does she even do that? Like, how do you even begin looking for a pelvis it’s going to fit in, there’s a bone there’s a bone bank, you know, so you dad and donate your organs. And and this is out in California and this is another funny story that I’m at a conference that I go to once a year all these orthopedic guys and all these vendors are in the you know in the exhibit hall. And I’m talking about my story it to this one guy and he says, Where did you get treatment? I said down in Houston, MD Anderson, just when did you do that? I said in July, you know, 2010. And he goes, I think I know about you. I said, What do you mean? I said, Well, my wife works at the at the bone. don’t replace whatever it is where they freeze all this stuff. And she was working, going through bone after bone after bone to try to find a particular one that was this size and had to go to Houston and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I said, Well, did she obviously she found what she was looking for she was I said, Well, does she know anything about the person that I got it from? And she says, Yeah, it was a 300 pound black lady. So I thought all right, I’ve got this black doctor working on me. I’ve got this black bone in me, and I’m gonna have a little soul when I come out of here. You do dance better? Oh, I do not either. It didn’t help me up yet. But I forget what your original question was about diverted into the wrong We’re just talking about animal Yeah, just just the different the different graphs that you you had to use. I mean, here’s surgery although we already know that it’s long I mean there’s there’s a process to it there’s a process to the chemo, there was a you had the best attitude but it was still work. I mean, I can still remember the the months and months of, of watching you show up to your kids, athletic events and games trying to pull the truck as close as you could to the football field just so you could watch and participate in family activity. And every time I stopped by to see you, you did all you could to smile and knew that was difficult. But you made it through. I told him to live miracles and mistakes and I think I’m a walking, living, breathing miracle and you don’t ever take a single day for granted. Because if you have yet sit and think about it for a second, get your affairs in order. You got six months to live. I think that will change your life a little bit. The things that you would miss. Definitely. So It just enhances your attitude so every day is a great day. Great day to be alive when you got to the end of basically where you felt okay we’re in the clear and now we’re now we’re counting months and now we’re going to count years of marks survival time. What was the turnaround saying okay, we’ve we’ve gotten to the end of what we’re going to do with you. What was that day like? And then how did you and Susan then Susan is Why is his wife’s name by the way? How did you and Susan, then begin to get into the frame set of Okay, we are now moving on with our life. Every day is a great day. And then suddenly now we’re counting up and you’ve made it to a year and then is that alluded to earlier you made it to five years and now we’re already little over seven, right? So what was it like no one is July 999. So I was off a year. What was it like to get to the end of whatever therapy that was so I mentioned for a start at 240 pounds. Go ahead. Now as it one minute. came out. 187 pounds, indicator where we live, they have this. I didn’t have any idea but had at the time there’s a service that would flag cancer patients to and from Houston for free. I wouldn’t take any of my money. And if you driven to Houston, it’s not the most scenic drive from Dallas Fort Worth to Houston. It’s kind of a beating Longtin. Yeah. So he puts you in the plane, a little private plane, fly in, drop you off a millionaire and take you into current delivery to the hospital and then come and pick you up when you’re done. Instead of being a five or six hour drive, and then they’ll be in an hour and a half flight, which was fantastic. So to start the process, I was in pretty good shape rather than a cane, physically move, but mentally I’m okay. But by the end of the process, nine months later, shriveled, withered enough that I can’t physically get out of the airplane. And Susan had to call somebody in town to come pick me up physically pick me up and put me in my car because I couldn’t do it myself. And I remember we’re driving home and I’m just exhausted. crying and say I can’t do this anymore. I’m finished and he said either the cancer is going to get your the chemo is going to get you. And at that point I was done with the chemo. So we call him say, we’re done. And he said, Well, I think we’ve been tortured you enough. that’s reasonable. We have got to finish that story in the next half hour. And then we’re going to talk a little bit about that same charity that flies people down to Houston because Mark decided to take his journey and let that inspire him to do something is gonna be really cool. So thank you for sharing all that. That is cool. We’re not finished yet, Marc. We got movies to get to see you in a bit Atrantil polyphenols
And welcome back. This is going to be the second hour of Episode Four of the gut check project here with your hosts can brown I am Eric Rieger. We’re joined today by Mr. Marc Semmelmann. We’re going to continue his story here in just a brief moment. Quick reminder, if you want to get your daily polyphenol fix, pick up some Atrantil at love my tummy.com forward slash spoony and he’s wearing it all right Here. I love that and he just he just took off his sweatshirt and there was it’s perfect. We’ve already started getting comments today so yeah, go to gut check project.com and you’ll take you straight to the page go to connect, you can send us messages I thought was really cool. One of the listener said that he definitely checked his ego at the door. So we call this the gut check project you really can’t learn if you think you already know thing. So the ego is the biggest enemy to learning. So we asked everybody to check their ego at the door so we can talk about anything, including squeaky butts squeaky butts. Marc did that right off the bat first half our ego nowhere in songo ego in that one at all. No, no, no. Hey, Marc, so we were rounding out the last half hour you were telling us that you had been at the point where you’re like I’m ready to stop not being able to get out of an airplane. And we’re going to finish it up on that story where you begin to emerge out of therapy. And post cancer treatment. Yeah, well, the treatment part was over now just to survive. So I go back every, for a long time it was every month. First year goes by, of course, I’m asking the chemo doctor Now, tell me statistics. How many survivors do we have? You know, who else is like me that’s out there. I get nothing that could be Graham, nothing, you know, we’re not gonna talk about that. We’re just gonna have a good attitude. We’re gonna keep moving forward. Right? So it’s every month I asked him the same questions going back down to Houston. Finally, you know, year two rolls around, same questions, same story. He gives me the same answers. We’re just gonna have a great attitude about it and blah, blah, blah. Your three rolls around. And what are the statistics? And he finally coughs up. I said, Well, you got to have people, you got to have a database of patients, right? Yeah, we’ve got a bunch of patients statistically, like you will tell me well, man, how many up Marlar. We’ve got 455 patients in our database. And I’m thinking All right, I’m not sure that’s a statistical analysis. Enough of a sample size for statistical analysis maybe so I mean it’s bigger better than nothing sure, but that’s all he give me at that point. So your fall rolls around and I’m beating him up again where the stats how many people are like me eccentric cetera and I’m getting better I’m starting to put on weight grown a little hair back closer to normal aside from I don’t have a growing muscle and a half of hamstring muscle and somebody else’s pelvis me and so I’ve got some limitations and the things that I physically that I can do and he’s do not give me any statistics but a year for he finally says, Well you were the only patient we have had that hasn’t had a reoccurrence. And within four years so typically had mentioned earlier that that they would take out the tumor but they don’t know where to the the genesis of the cancer. So it affects all the rest of your organs and he had said that, you know, we just take out organs as they go into you can there’s an organ we can’t take out. And that’s it. You You’re done lights out. So he says you’re the only case that we have that hasn’t had a reoccurrence at the four year mark. Five years rolled around, I gave him the same questions. And he’s pretty excited at that point. And he says, You know, I think I found the secret elixir to solve this problem. He had lost his brother to this type of cancer. So he’s kind of dedicated his life to solving this problem. Whoa. And he says, I think I’m going to go from a zero percent success rate to 20%. So I go see him The following year, and how’s all that going? What are the stats? You know, he’s not going to tell me anything. And he says, he’s pretty, I don’t use the word depressed, but he’s not as jovial and as happy as he has been. Because he, it’s what he’s doing now what he did on me is not working on other patients. So he where he thought he had found some kind of cure to help some people that hadn’t worked. So at that point, he said, we still don’t have any documented survivor. I’m now at nine years will be nine years of summer. And so I feel like I’m in one of those living miracle. And anybody with this type of cancer, they get funneled to MD Anderson to take it. Well, it’s rare enough that I don’t know that everybody, you know, can identify the particular type of cancer and they end up at Anderson. Sure, you know, and I feel fortunate enough that I had doctors that said, Wow, you get something it’s kind of weird here. And I think you need to go on those centers of excellence. So my mom spent, you know, years going to MD Anderson and I had experienced that and the care that they gave you there. So that’s first place I’m going. But there’s other places in the country, that these guys these researchers shared information back and forth. I’m not saying that the doctor Robbie had 455 patients of his own, you know, they’ve collected this from from other clinics or other centers of excellence and granted this database and sharing research. So you were patient number one, to make it to the five year survival mark. I did not see him in January. To go back every year, but I didn’t get him on the schedule. So the orthopedic lady but this December when I go back I will make sure I have him on the schedule so I can give him one more time. Right? What are the stats who else is like me? Is there anybody else out there? That’s that’s surviving. How are you doing? are you creating the new licks order to solve somebody else’s problem? It’s crazy. But that’s just like when you are down to your last dollar, and you don’t know how you’re going to get out of the casino. And you’re going to put it on the table and hopefully hit a Hard Eight or something like that so that she can buy the flight home. That is exactly what I was thinking throughout that whole story. Yes, they can blackjack the whole time. That’s all I mean, that’s all that’s what it’s actually it’s craps but doesn’t matter. So, Marc, I’ve, whenever you talked about the flights down to Houston, this whole journey inspired you to take up a completely new hobby, you still have your other job where you still deal with the orthopedists and that’s obviously something that you’ve done well in your own entrepreneurial spirit, etc. But you took up a completely different line of hobbies. And why don’t you tell us a little bit about that? Well, so the guy that runs this nonprofit indicator, kept busting my chops mark, you need to learn how to fly, you need to learn how to fly. And flying looks like a lot of fun. Theoretically, I mean, it looks kind of your fighter pilot doing all that stuff. But when you actually watch what they go through, and what they do, and what they have to know and learn, I’m the guy that wants to put the key in the car and just go, right I don’t want to know all the details and all that other stuff. I just want to drive I just want to go and watch him and all the stuff that he does flying. I said there’s no way. So I mentioned earlier that he wouldn’t take any of my money. So the only way that I could give to him because of what he gave to me getting what you’re getting because you’re given what you’re given. I decided to volunteer they do a charity bicycle race every year in August the week or so before hotter than hell. We have people that come from all we had somebody from Czechoslovakia and Australia. We had people from all over the world that show up at this by chance. And then they end up in hotter in hell in Wichita Falls, which is kind of a cool, right. So these people are writing and saying, Man, this is a lot harder and harder than him because hotter than hell is flat. You have some hills to it, but it’s pretty because you’re riding in the trees now in the country. And so it’s a little bit different. Anyway, so I volunteered my time for this bicycle rally. And of course, he’s given me the mark, you gotta learn how to fly and you got to do all this stuff. And then I said, Fabio, he’s Cuban, but his name is Fabio. And when you say Fabio, I think of the long haired guy on the Harlequin romance books and stuff. And I’ll tell you another Fabio story in a minute but anyway, so Fabio, I’m not no I’m not gonna do it. Well, one of the ladies that runs this kind of head head dog in charge of the the bicycle realm, she’s a doctor in town, she says Omar flans not like that at all. That’s just Fabio once you comply with me and I’ll show you what it’s really like. Pilots live in detail. It’s not that big of a city. There’s only five 6000 people live in Decatur but 74,000 pilots. You think everybody’s flying planes? Yeah. So she gets me in and it’s like Jeep punching the GPS and the plane just takes you there, right? It’s kinda like in your car, except you’ve got to drive and give a gas and the brake, but in a plane, you just, you put in the GPS, and that just goes, I’m oversimplifying things, but I said, Wow, it’s that easy. I can do this. So that was going to be my husband turned 50 that year. And I decided instead of going out and having a midlife crisis, and banner red Corvette, I was gonna buy an airplane. Hope I don’t offend anybody that had a midlife crisis. I went bought a red Corvette right now. So anyway, I buy an airplane and start to learn to fly. And one thing leads to another and it became quite addicting, and at 50 not saying you’re not too old to learn something but it was quite a nutrient. And it was, I was not in school anymore. So the learning aspect of it was, it’s like going back to school you have to rethink about the learning process. So now I’m flying and bought a second airplane to train in bought a third airplane. So I’ve moved up in different stages. And now I’m flying kids cancer patients back and forth to Houston. Oh, lucky, me, Josie, the pilots bone, you know, they donate their airplane and they volunteer their time. And the nonprofit just pays for the fuel, you know, to help get you to and from. So I’m trying to give back what they gave to me some survival. So it’s really rewarding on my part to take some patients that are going through what I kind of went through back down to Houston and taking care of them making their life a little bit easier. Now when you’re taking these patients, do you tell them your journey most often? Yeah. Wow. So it I try to instill some kind of hope. And they know, you know, on the flight that, wow, this guy’s been there before, and if they don’t have any hope, and there’s a lot of them. We’ve had patients that were Go. And we might take them four or five, six times, and they don’t come back. And you know what happened. And that’s kind of a heartbreaking thing. But we have there’s patients that we go on a continual basis, they’re just a rotating basis, like I was I went for nine months. And we’ve got patients now that are going for nine months or so. And it’s encouraging to them. But then hearing that it’s not the end, the journey itself to heal is already taxing enough. It’s just, it’s fantastic that Fabio put together and I don’t know if you mentioned already, but it’s Raquel Wings for Life. Raquel wings for life.com is where you can you can learn a little bit more about this specific charity but basically in our area. It’s not they don’t discriminate anybody who needs a lift down to MD Anderson and certainly can’t tolerate the repeated trips on in the car, all the way down to Houston. This particular charity it’s it’s a niche. However, it serves so many people every single day, every single week throughout the year. Well there’s Angel flights, like This in other parts of the country, Sure, sir, service Wise County and kind of the surrounding areas, they don’t just go to Indiana and then go to Tulsa and any other number of local places. I mean, the planes aren’t large enough that you’re flying to, you know, to Tampa or whatever, what’s the furthest that you can take a patient. In some of the smaller planes, you probably don’t want to do more than two and a half or three hours. In the bigger plane, obviously go faster in the bigger plane. So you go another two and a half or three hours if you had to, but most folks are in the in or in our area or end up in Tulsa, or Indian Ocean, Houston. So I would say 90 95% of our flights are going to Houston. Okay. So with the with the bike rally, I remember that. Five years ago. Whenever you immediately wanted to start giving back with Fabio you signed up. Me family. Your family was now working the race you had yet Susan yet all three kids, Madeline EA Marcus all helping you out with if they weren’t riding, they were doing traffic, same thing for my kids. And then my parents, they started helping my dad had a had a friend who was also flying there. You immediately begin to make it a community event. This is still before you became a pilot. So you had decided that you were going to give back and your attitude really hadn’t changed throughout. Go ahead and follow up with what the bike race has meant for Fabio and then tell us a little bit about Fabio story. Well, it’s it’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing. They were serving maybe 30 patients a year. You know, so we might have two, maybe three flights a month wasn’t huge. But you you start getting some notoriety. You start working on the bicycle rally, the word starts to get out. Last year we did 70 some odd patients down to him back to profusion or wherever. And this year so far we’re I mean there you could see if you went website and saw the calendar of events and All the patients that are, so we’re going to explode way past what we did last year. That’s fantastic news. The bad news is that it costs money to do that. Sure. And, you know, so there’s this always as fundraising. You know, people in the community, every five bucks helps, you know. And so we’re still working on our outreach to raise some funds for that. Fabio lost his mother years ago to the breast cancer. And he wanted to have some vehicle to give back to the people that had cancer. Well, he flies obviously, and so he enjoys doing that. And his way to get back was to transport people back and forth. So he started this probably in 2006, maybe. And it’s just grown and evolved over the last 13 years or so. And as it gets bigger, it just sucks up more money. So I got involved to try to help at some point to raise some funds to pay for the fuel to get people to where they need to go? Pretty selfless act on his board. Sure. Yeah. So what’s the funny story you have on Fabio? Well, it’s not on Fabio, the Cuban Fabio. But wife and I are on our honeymoon in Maui. And we’re on kaanapali Beach and sunsetting in the back and I’ve got my camera and I think this is just fantastic setting. So you go out there and let me get a picture of you and the sunset back. And so I’ve gotten it. I think it’s on a camcorder actually. So I’m video in her and she’s walking out and posing and doing her thing in the water. And then all of a sudden, behind her in about four feet of water. This guy comes up and his hair just flops flops back blond hair over the top. muscular looking dude can looks like can you know physically fit photo bomb, your real flat Fabio comes out of the water like a freakin book, you know? And his hair’s all flown in. My wife just turned around. She’s just going. Now we’re just married. I mean, this might have been the second or third day on the honeymoon. We just got married and she’s just drooling over Fabio looking over in the water. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I’m actually friends with him. And what he does is he waits in the water until people do that. And he just does that all day long. Just all day just flipping his hair, but he does. Well. His nickname is Aqua man. So there’s another story behind that y’all might need to get into right by Bako man story. What is that? Something up in real Pennsylvania where we all look at me like that. I don’t know where you’re going with this. Alright. Nevermind us. I’ve known mark for a long time and I don’t know sometimes where he’s going. But he did that before the cancer. So you can’t say as a side effect. Let me ask you a question. Do you have any limitations? After going through all of this, you’re talking about riding a bike you’re flying a plane physically have you noticed a significant difference? Oh, for sure. I can’t walk. I can’t I mean, I can walk. I can’t jog I can’t run. There’s a lot of things that can’t do. not supposed to snow ski. We we changed That we change that, really. So I remember what year it was Eric, his family, we took some other folks and we went snow skiing was either four or five years ago. And they have a thing called a sit and ski. And one year I had seen a show on TV about wounded warriors. And they were taking people up to the mountains and teaching them to ski and you know, amputees and whatnot. And I was like, Well, if they can do it, then I can do that. I mean, I’m not an amputee, but I could sit in on those chairs, learn how to ski, right. So we had a big group of us and we go snow skiing, and I rent this chair and learn how to ski. So Eric was my helper to help me get on and off the lift, and I’m sitting in this chair and I’ve got videos and it’s, it’s funny. Well, it was scary. Don’t do it Marc. Marc is Marc little fearless. And he doesn’t really necessarily say it but whenever I remember you getting a lesson on how to pump up the chair so that we can get theirs for the lift to pick us up. And then they turn to you and they say or to me and they say look, if you’re as helper You always have to make sure his seat is all the way back. And if you need to, there’s a safety strap to hold him onto the chair. And then be sure to undo that whenever he’s out. And then this is as as the lift is going around, so you have to do it
quickly. And yeah, I mean, all all the cool stuff, they’re actually really, really comfortable. And so we we do all that and it didn’t take long for Mark to get the technique down of the Leaning and the pivot skis or whatever you call it wherever you have your arm out. But the one thing is this the one where he just has a ski in the middle and yet the two poles with the skis. Yeah, but you’re sitting in the chair, and the skis are underneath the chair. And you get to the little bitty kind of like a like correct like a forum karate, basically balance yourself. And it’s got little skis on the end, um, but what he is is a low center of gravity snow missile. Because he saw, if I remember, right, we were up there with the stories, right, and we were in Park City and Utah. And
essentially Marc says, Okay, well, I’ve done two runs. I’m ready. I’m like, holy shit, this is gonna be wild. So then we go up the lift, and then you decided to follow us, as we ended up going down a pretty rigorous bumpy
blue. And I’m like, Man, I’m out. This is what Marc wants to do. And he said that y’all are doing it. I’m doing it. I’m like, Well, I’m not going to tell the man No. And so then you made a hard, right? And then you made a hard left. And then I saw, basically in a very cartoon fashion, both of your arms go back and you’re off of the mountain in the air. And I’m like, that is this is wild, and then a cloud of snow dust. And then you said, I’m fine. I’m fine. We’re gonna keep going. Yeah. It’s it’s an adrenaline rush. It’s cool. So do you get some limitations was your original question and yeah, I can’t do some of the athletic things that I like to do before because I would play you know, pickup basketball, in three on three legs and stuff like that. can’t do any of that stuff anymore. I was never a big runner. So I wouldn’t, didn’t have my feelings hurt. But the other things bother. And so snow schemes as well. One thing we’d always done as a family, and the fact that I could do that. So we just went again this past year, it’s probably done it four or five times now. And really, that’s awesome. And I’m now to the point I’m an official licensed adaptive skier with you know, card and everything that I license and everything that I can go to wherever and present my card and get the chair and go. And I don’t have to have the lessons anymore like I did before. I remember that year was the year that you bought all the GoPros and we all had our pros, we were wearing those in and filming the family and you going down the mountain that was a lot of fun to you guys should look back at those old GoPro videos because I bet you at some point Fabio is going to pop out notice that it just emerges. Yeah, because we’ve talked about that he prefers to hide in the water in Hawaii, but sometimes he’ll he’ll if he skate he’ll just hide and do the hair flip straight out of a mogul. Yeah. Hey Marc, what’s what’s one of your favorite flight stories that you have with a patient taking it down to Houston if you have one kind of sticks out a flight story with a patient yeah or demean you could you could tell us a great flight story with without the patient well that I can almost imagine, with all these pilots indicator, it’s just we’re waiting here for Fabio to take off. It’ll be another test on land or 74,000 I was waiting in line to take off 7400 people small airport. I can’t I don’t have one story on me that I would tell so much as I will tell one on my son. And so, you know, as a parent, you want to get your kids involved as much as they can hope they find that they may find a passion about something. And whether it’s tennis or whatever it may be. It may be, you know, mountain biking or whatever. So as a parent, I’m trying to expose my son as much as I possibly can. I said we’ll all learn to fly so why don’t you learn to fly? All right, dad. Well try. So he goes and tries and he kind of gets I don’t think he’s as addicted as I am. But I think he enjoys what he’s doing. So part of your process is you’ve got a you fly with instructor for so many hours, and then you do a solo. And you don’t go very far, but you go and land somewhere that you’ve done several times and come back and land. He gets his private pilot license. And I guess he’s 17 years old at this point in time. And I have another plane that I’ve taken for some maintenance. And so he is now taking one of my instructors up to pick up this other pick up my plane and drops him off and it’s just from Decatur to Gainesville. So it’s not it’s a little bitty flight. He drops drew off. Marcus turns around, take off and come home. And he gets to Decatur and his gauges are starting to act a little fun anything, Something’s Weird, something’s going on. Then hear anybody on the radio. And all of a sudden he’s got his power structure to go out. And he’s in his descent to the land. And so he goes to this check but his gear down and a gear is not coming down. Now this is a 17 year old that maybe have 40 hours total. That’s it. Is he communicating with somebody this point describing what’s going on? He was Until the power goes out, and his radios are gone silent, so he can’t even call anybody until him. My gears not down. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. So most people kind of get into dead panic at this point. And I’m gonna dead panic right now listening to it. So the fuel gauges over here, I have some to zero. So now he’s going I don’t have gear, my fuel gauges are zero. I don’t know if I can make it to the airport. And even if I do, I don’t know how I’m gonna land because I don’t have the gear, right. So he’s too close to the runway to land because the gear didn’t come down. So now he’s got to turn out and come back and set himself up again. He had enough where with all so they have a manual, your extension and it’s a pump and so he’s down there pumping that thing, or you can see that I pumped it until
I couldn’t pump it anymore and I’m sweating and it’s just that I don’t know what to do. And I’m just hoping to gear down and see out the window. I got one gear on this side and I’m going to go to land, but I can’t tell anybody. You know the 74,000 pilots that are in live indicators. There’s a bunch of airplanes flying around. So you Don’t want to run into somebody else that’s out there, right? So he he comes around and lands and taxis up to the fuel station. And I get this phone call and I’m sitting in my office and he says, Dad, I think you need to come
up here to the airport said Why? I had a gear problem had a gear malfunction and I’m still kind of nervous and shaken. I said I’ll be there in a second. Are you okay? Yeah, I’m fine. Is the plane okay? Yeah, the planes fine. Okay, I’ll be there in a second. So I you know, jump in the truck and show up at the airport. And he’s standing
outside and then I’ve never seen him really nervous or, or stressed out about something. And he comes he comes running out of the where the airplane is and just bear hooked me as I get out of the door my truck and he’s still just kind of shaking his dad You just don’t know fly. So it’s kind of one of the legendary moments now at the
airport that this 17 year old kid has encountered a catastrophic event and handled the challenge like a champ. Yeah, that is impressive. If you meet Marcus is one of the most mature stable Eddie or steady Eddie stable kids. for his age I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. He’s Marcus is a is a very unique and incredibly
intelligent. That’s my job. Yeah, that’s all my fault. Well, we got just a few seconds to the bottom of the hour we will be back with the last half hour here in just a moment. Alrighty, we are back now for the last half hour of Episode four of gut check project. And we closed out the last half hour with Marc Did you tell us it was your fault that your son is so intelligent? Well, yeah, that’s I’m so sorry that you’ve you’ve owned that responsibility. But no, seriously, I think we’re talking about how he’s This maturity is for a 17 year old. Yeah, I mean, I was asking you how in the world is a 17 year old have the composure to pull that off? That was amazing. So during my cancer, if I’m not gonna make it, I had pulled him aside one day and he’s 10 or 11 years old. I said, Marcus, if I’m not here, who’s gonna be the man of the house? He didn’t really answer that. He just kind of looked at me as it like a 10 year old would and I said, that will be you. And he kind of said, All right. And he decided that at that point, he was going to take on the role. So during all my treatment, he was the man of the house as best he could take enough trash didn’t have to ask him twice. feed the dogs didn’t have to ask him twice. I mean, he took the roles that to help Susan as best as he could, as what he thought dad was doing at home, he’s going to be the man of the house and taking care of the girls taking care of the women said you got to take care of the women. All the sisters are older, by the way. Yeah, so he did. And I think that’s good, and that’s bad. And I had read a book at one point The one book in my life that I read, that was a joker. You are bad. There was a punch line saying, oh, but it said it talked about raising kids. And it said, Whatever you do, don’t force your children to grow up too fast. And what did I do? I went told my son, you got to be the man of the house at 10. And you got to grow up too fast. So I’ve kind of carried that around with me for a while. And he’s grown up and he’s been the more mature kid in his grade, that sometimes some of the other goofy things that those kids do Didn’t he didn’t relate to. And that wasn’t his in his wheelhouse. And I’m still waiting on him to do something really stupid. So grounding and beating or something, you know, and he’s just he’s been a really good good kid. and way more mature than it should be. Yeah. When you read that book, you felt like you may had done some damage, but Well, yeah, because I look back and you know, it tells you some of the problems that if your kid grows up too fast You put too much responsibility on them too soon and don’t let them be a kid. Don’t let them make some stupid mistakes, juvenile mistakes that I’m actually I probably made enough for the both of us. So he didn’t need to make any. But if stuff like that, in addition, growing pains that you gotta learn through some trial and error, and he he didn’t do any of those things. Okay, I’m not saying he’s straight laced, but he was he was mature and made mature decisions where everybody else in his grade was not. And like I said, I kind of want him to go do something silly and stupid and immature, but he had done it well as a as a non parent and huge fan of Marcus that is a top notch kiddo. And I can’t imagine him being any other than just an incredible person and young man as he gets older. He’s a good kid. Got you. Absolutely. All this has led to you becoming a pilot. And now I know that you have been getting some training beyond learning how to be a pilot You’ve been getting some training in a completely different arena. What is that? Well, for years, people have told me you gotta write a book. You gotta write a book. Well, I don’t know how to write a book, but you’ve only read one one. Right, exactly. But I can tell a story without a punch line. With that was another job. Yeah. Anything else would be laughing. Thank you. Anyway, so I kind of had this vision that I would sit down and just regurgitate and tell stories about this treatment, what I’ve been through, and somebody else would write the book, and put it all together and whatever chapters and where it needed to go. And my wife being the best promoter that I know, has run across people to say, Oh, they can help write the book. And at the same time, oh, would you come to my company the story, because that’s a pretty inspiring story. And, and I want to give people some hope and some motivation and what they do and have a right attitude about work, or life in general and relationships etc. And so one thing led to another, I’ve hired a speaking coach. I guess I have jumped in with both feet as it relates to, to public speaking and motivational speaking. And it all revolves around the story of faith, family, friends, attitude, confidence and your expectations and kind of how all that stuff wrapped up into, you get what you’re getting, because you’re given what you’re given. So you give something back and you’re going to get something back in return, give something negative, you’re going to get a negative, positive positive. So it’s, it’s it’s kind of come full circle. So now one of the main reasons that I’m doing the public speaking is obviously for motivational people for other motivation for other people and help. But the any, any fees that I get from the speaking that I’m donating back to rock hills wings, to help pay for, obviously transportation back and forth cancer. Sure. That’s a Amazing. Yeah. So you’ve got another avenue to give. Yeah. And you probably enjoy doing it. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s rewarding. I mean, you think you’re helping somebody else. But really in the beginning, it’s self satisfying. So the more you do it, the more satisfying it becomes to you. It’s kind of a weird thing. I’m thinking I’m helping somebody and I’m making their life better, but it’s really benefiting me. I absolutely love that. Because remember, in the first half hour, we’re talking about the kids getting up to speed with everything. My daughter, you’re right on the show, but my daughter is in her theatrical class. She’s in sixth grade. They did improv training and the improv training is everything that you’re talking about right now. You say yes. And that you don’t argue you go Yes. And you trust that’s followed by listening. Followed by making a statement. You said yes. And I’m going to do this. I’m going to trust that I’m going to be good at it. And my statement is going to be my story. That is so cool. Yeah. It’s life. You know, you think you get it people have it all figured out or you look at somebody and go well, they their lives in great shape, they do something great, what a great looking family, whatever. But on the inside people have all these other things in the baggage that’s in your head. And you kind of got to clean that mess up so when they look at you and say you’re in great shape because of the six pack abs Yeah, you ever feel guilty that it’s nice. Hey Marc I’ve seen and in and beyond rock hills wings. I’ve seen you and your family give and multiple different avenues. So that’s, that’s nothing new to you whatsoever. But you also had a little entrepreneurial spirit as you are hosting several people out of your lakehouse it’s probably a little over a year and a half ago, and you wanted to inspire your friends and that included me and we were all going to put our heads together and we were going to develop something how’s it has, we were going to do a whole new business venture. Uh huh. And I think It was just perfect Canvas is up your alley By the way, it right up your alley. Good. squeaky but thing I hope you’re getting close. So I’ve got it. I’ve got a doctor. I’ve got Eric, who’s been involved in more than one business. It’s kind of a techie person, internet. Wow, Facebook, go to all that other stuff that goes out the door. I had another guy that was instrumental in in starting businesses and running, you know, building catalogs and things like that internet wise. And then me, and I’m just out there having fun and throwing out ideas. Oh, wait, wait before you get further. He also has two big green eggs niche next to each other and he wanted to create a cover for them. It looked like a bra. That’s a whole other story. So we’re sitting on the top of the dock one night having a couple cocktails and telling stories and what if we could do this? What if we could do that and you know, y’all had made a comment earlier that if we could talk about boobs masturbation and gonna say that on the air well I did already go well and then it’s gone it’s already gone and and poop right then you get a great audience out there to choose from so we decided that we were going to have a kind of a Facebook page or Instagram page or a whole new app that we’re going to create and it was called Show me your poop calm What do you think your partner now and so we thought about you because you know it leads into on Trump to and all that goes on with that and you’re saying I’m now I’m thinking about advertisers. I’ve got toilet paper people I’ve got squatty potty people I’ve got all this stuff in there that help. Don’t show me your poop and you can be clinically diagnosed but taking a picture and send that out and post it in and out there. So I have to tell you where this all came from. So my son My mature son goes into The stall in the high school, and they’re fairly regular high school, I don’t know if it’s athletics or whatnot. But there’s a particular young man that sit next to him in the stall and start screaming at him. And he gets up and takes a picture and sends it via text to my son who’s in the stall next to him. So they’re taking pictures of poop. And that kind of one thing led to another and I thought, well, that’s kind of funny. And if they’re doing it on Instagram, but you’d get in trouble at school, if you’re kind of sharing this stuff back and forth, so I thought we’d have our own Instagram or Facebook like page that you could go on our advertisers, and you could do some clinical diagnosis with it. That’d be right up your alley. Show me your calm so we still own the domain. We still have it on. There’s Instagram page. I don’t have any followers yet. Because the person Eric that was supposed to build the app never got the app built, but we at least got the winner actually set up the company but we do have that you did say we were talking about it late at night. I did. I didn’t wake up The next day and I didn’t act on it yet. You’ll know it. That’s funny that you guys were doing that. But you’ll notice that I’m not like shocked or anything because when I see patients they’re like, Oh, yeah, let me show you and they will have just multiple pictures. And just show me I’m like, the first one was good. We can stop. Like is that Fabio pop it up in the background. We’ve had people show up to we’ve had people show up to the indo clinic, believe it or not, with no photo, but the whole sample in the bag to see if it’s something that we would want to just look through. It’s fascinating because poop right now is big business. Let’s look at businesses like Naveen Jain Oh, yeah. Via via there. I mean, there’s a lot of money being thrown at this. This is like an entrepreneurial billionaire who’s decided that poop is the next great frontier. Well, the perfect wife is a three square wipe. And I can get videos that I can show you the perfect Wipe. Oh, that’s where the story. So on this app, you will have like wiping techniques. Think about and we’re just yeah. I mean, you think about a web page and you have all the headers up at the top and you can have the greatest poop the biggest log, the wipe greatest wiping techniques, the best squatting thing. I’ve done blogs on the perfect pooping angle. On Furman, you’re introduced me to him before because I get him excited about this. I would probably go somewhere. Finally, I encourage everyone to go to YouTube and type in rectal bleeding. That’s what I’m known for. Yeah. That’s exactly right. I figured that here at least while you can pitch the idea. It’s being recorded and hopefully get back out anymore. Yeah, it’s on tape now. So Jim and David, you’re welcome. You don’t have to be a part of this particular conversation. So Marc, let me know before he showed up here that he had five, top five all movies or all time movies that he thought were his favorites and Everybody see if I think these are pretty, they’re pretty normal for a man of your age to pick out as some of your favorite movies, but you listed, probably in no
particular order Braveheart, the nutty, Professor Tombstone, American Pie, and the quintessential Animal House. Okay? Hello, all real good movies, all really good movies. We’ve all seen them. But I’ve got a really cool game here. For the two of y’all. If you know the answer, you just simply say your name. I’m gonna call on you. It’s gonna be pretty quick. I’ve got 1010 movie lines here to from each of the five movies listed. I’ll read them out. And I guess I could try to pretend to say it the way that they say no, you have to say it the way that it was said in the movie. Okay, so this is going to be really interesting. But regardless, I’m doing my best you have to say your name. So simply just say, Mark and then I call in you spit out the answer. Let’s see if you can beat the can be can can. Same thing you’re ready. Okay first line remember the movies are Braveheart, nutty professor tombstone American Pie and Animal House. So first line it’s not Space Shuttle. It’s not a space shuttle launch. It’s sex can go oh, this other game is played like I have to like call the other person. He just cheated and said I’m gonna go with American Pie. That’s exactly American Pie. You just gave them a point mark. I don’t know the answer. I have not yet begin to defile myself. Oh 10 don’t stone tombstone tombstone. Nice. Nicely done. Who said that? Val Kilmer? Exactly. He was playing. Doc was here in nortec. rich, rich. I’m going to go ahead and do the best line to that movie. Yeah, I’ll be there. Yeah, that’s why I put it on there. Yeah, yeah, that was an easy one. Every man dies. Not every man lives. Wow, Mark, Mark Braveheart right behind the action david jackson gave it away. You did so good. Fat drunken stupid is no way to go through life’s in Animal House. Okay, well I’m sorry to the limit I want I want to hear you say it one more time I want I want a little more character out of you this I need some feeling and let’s imagine you’re staring at john Belushi get it in your character fat drunken stupid is no way to go through life son much better. Excellent. Oh no seven years of college down the drain. And well, how else didn’t use your names? Nobody gets a point. But anyway, where to go both got a point. There you go. Let’s see here. It’s all for nothing if you don’t have freedom. Mark, Braveheart. Here we go, Mike. Nice. Your accent killed it. Yeah, we know. Hey, I’m the one with the gluteus minimis. Mark. And you can’t fail to favorite movie American Pie now, Danny Professor first wrong answer. So I get lose two points. only had one. Oh, he’s a little Hercules show, but it must. That’s easy one. Okay. That’s nobody wants you to do that. I want you to take it one step further. It’s a great movie, though. Oh, it’s buddy. We’ll just tell your mother we ate at all. Oh, American Pie. Nice. Okay, well, basically, just, I’m gonna I’m gonna live up to my expectations. I mean, keep score. A lot of fun. So you both winners. Thanks a lot for participating. So on our gut check project intake form. Yeah. Don’t you ask that question? The gachet project intake form for the guests. I do ask what their top five favorite movies are? That’s correct. Did you say we had kind of an unusual one. somebody tried to be a guest recently. We did have an unusual more or you did or you thought their movie choices were a little odd. Yeah, now they’re their movie choices were a little odd. It was more mccobb Chainsaw Massacre Devil’s rejects I think were two of them that were in there. So that was interesting. I can’t wait to that person comes on the show. Yeah. So Eric, when when people apply to be guests, and they could be, you know, New York Times bestselling authors, they could have all this other stuff, all these accolades, islands from Decatur pilots from Decatur and, you know, Joe Rogan applied to be a guest and he rejected him because of his movie choices. But yeah, it was a little, it’s easy just to balance. You know, he’s got to work on a submission before he’s can get making it back. Eric set the bar pretty high to be a guest here. So hey, another quick question that you had during the break you brought up? Yes, the question of kin and that was CBD. You said that you have a little bit of a pain situation. So could you go land the question I got again, well I’ve got everywhere I go, I wear flip flops, put on shoes just absolutely kills my feet. Pain, very painful sleeping bed with my feet up. Painful so I’ll go to sleep on my stomach, hang my feet off the edge of the bed. This is all after chemo. He said because of the chemo and the neuropathy that had it in my fingertips. my fingertips have come back pretty good. But the front half of my feet really don’t have any feeling in there which is interesting. But yet I have neuropathy, or say the word neuropathy pain or apathetic pain. That’s not the right word. I learned that in one book. Anyway. I had gone into the pantry one day to get so can have something and I watched a can of corn kind of in slow motion fall off the pantry down and it was great to my foot and I’m watching all this happen kind of in slow motion. Bam on my big toe. I know that has been hurt, but I couldn’t feel it. You know, the toe turns black and it falls off. But I did not never felt the mechanical arm hit my foot. So it’s kind of a weird type of pain. So you’re talking about the CBD earlier. And I was thinking, I was wondering, aside from taking, you know, medication with all the side effects that come with it. Is there something that you guys do or know of? There’s a CBD work that could help with this neuro neuro neuropathy, but the neuropathic pain. There you go. That’s the word I’m looking for. So can my feet Yeah, can he’s not the first one asks that question. Go ahead. I’ll let you go very similar. We were talking about the question was brought up with the anxiety, no neuropathy or neuropathic pain, it’s just over firing of a nerve. And so the drugs that are out there like Lyrica that you see tons of commercials on so people that have chemotherapy can experience this people with diabetes can end up experiencing those people with post trauma can have this kind The thing also so it’s a very common thing, common enough that you’ll see these pharmaceutical companies take ads all over the place. Sure. Another common one is course gabapentin, or also known as Neurontin is a another drug to use so so CBD probably in its role to kind of help in this particular area. How would that? Well, in this way, the way that CBD works is once again, it just gets everything to go back to normal get you back to balance. If you’re nervous firing too much. It just presses the reset button, tried to get that nerve to calm down. And the way that it works is it sits on the other side of the nerve meeting presynaptic or postsynaptic. What is really unique about CBD is that it sits on the postsynaptic area so that it can jump across and stop that current that’s coming through all the way so it just kind of calms it down and says okay, just settle down a little bit. When we’re looking at medications to do this. Like Lyrica went ahead and pulled him up here the side effects And this is the problem with it you get a lot of side effects dizziness, drowsiness, loss of balance or coordination dry mouth constipation. edema go back to dry mouth there because my allergies have taken so much Claritin. D right now that I feel like I’m taking Lyrica, a deema, tremors, blurred vision, weight gain problems with memory and concentration. So what I really like about doing natural treatments like trying to, like CBD, is that these are natural. These are already in nature. And usually you don’t end up with all these incredible side effects. A lot of the side effects we don’t even realize until they’ve been on the market for a long time. So a lot of times these things, these polyphenols and CBD been around forever, and we’re just now discovering the true potential of them. Yeah, well, you had mentioned I think it was two weeks ago on that show. Actually, the maybe as last week’s show that you said that Tylenol actually works on the endocannabinoid system. But this is actually a natural way to activate the endocannabinoid system to control pain, correct? Yeah. So there was this article that came across where if you look at Tylenol, then it probably wouldn’t like, like we discussed it probably couldn’t get FDA approval now because it’s one of the leading causes of liver failure, right? Well, they really never understood how it worked. And now it’s looking like it works on the endocannabinoid receptors. So CBD would work similar to what we’re already buying that is causing liver failure. And so that’s one of the ways that it does work. So Mark, we didn’t prep you for this part of the conversation whatsoever. But have you ever heard of the endocannabinoid system and then everybody has an ECS? No, I do have a buddy that the lake was telling me about the CBD said this, you have to trust him with this stuff. So he’s recently started taking some to help with some anxiety or are some issues that he’s got going on. But I think if you take it right before Go get your pedicure that may eliminate some of the tingling or numbness that you get in your feet. Eric, it may be maybe it would mark, thank you for your nice little tip. In fact, I think you were the one who gave who took my oldest gauge to his first pedicure. So I do need to thank you for that. And it got you to go. Hey, wait is that your story has inspired me enough to try and get a pedicure? Oh, yeah, you’re gonna like it. You’re gonna walk better? You’re gonna I mean, I it’s like a haircut for me now. I mean, I’ve only had one. But the moment one haircut. Yeah, I’ve only had one haircut. But the moment that they end up having an easier marketing angle towards males, I think that they’ll, they’ll, they’ll do a little bit better. But last question about the CBD that I had for you. Being alone, or being a cancer survivor and seeing the progression of what people have tried to do to help people who’ve suffered from cancer. Would you find it when you were looking for new alternate There’s to make yourself feel better going through the chemo and going through the surgery and the recovery or what have you. Did anybody really even approached you about that angle? Because we’re talking about almost 10 years ago, and I think a lot has changed over the course of a decade, on how people end up feeling better going through a journey like that. And now that was never a conversation. And part of what they did with the chemo is they absolutely Fried my kidneys. Yeah. So they don’t function as well as they should. So a lot of the drugs that you’ve mentioned, have some side effects that that mess with your kidneys, or your liver. And I just chose just to deal with the pain and tummy pains like any other emotion, you’re happy, you’re sad or whatever, that you can control your own emotions. So I felt like I could control my own pain. I really kind of did that after after sleeping on the floor a long time ago and decided that I could control my own pain. And I do for the most part, but it sure would be nice not to have to. And so this is something that’s fairly recent new to me. Whether it’s medical marijuana or Whatever it is, I know I think that’s maybe an untapped resource that again, it’s organic. Did did we say medical marijuana? Shut? Patrick here by the way, sorry. That’s his. That’s his magic cue. It’s like Pee Wee Herman’s Playhouse whenever they would say the magic word of the day medical marijuana, Chef Patrick. Like to there? Yeah, yeah. Two seconds ago, it was Matt and then we say it and Matt transforms into chef Patrick. No, actually, so I was listening. I listened very closely on the CBD conversation. And, you know, I can’t relate to Well, I can’t actually my sister just is is cancer free from colon cancer. But we spoke a little bit about you know, I lost my father to pancreatic cancer with the same the only indicator he had was back pain. By the time they diagnosed that was in the 70s. Right. But, you know, as I started doing research, my mother died into that bed. Come on, make it really quick. You know, cbds are such a great natural supplement. And you guys know, I don’t even really drink caffeine and I run around here. Like, we want to I just, you know, I’m running around like I don’t, I don’t belong in this building, you know, I’m just run around. Let’s go. But, you know, I took some cbds right before I didn’t sleep well last night I got up, I did a three and a half mile run at 430. And then I was just kind of wound up. I took some CB DS right before coming to this side of the building. And it’s great. I just got off a big phone call with a potential advertiser. And I’m telling you, it’s unbelievable, not just the relaxation that occurs because I used to suffer panic attacks, the focus that comes with it. Yeah, I think that’s a big factor as well. Now 100% In fact, just the other day, there is a young man indicator by the name of Clark and he recently was diagnosed I believe it was a exacerbation and metastasis of testicular cancer. Ooh. And unfortunately they, they his prognosis right now actually, the thing is going to be okay. But he began taking CBD to help with his pain. And he’s he’s run the gamut a little bit and Right now he says he doesn’t have the pain nearly at the level that he did before. And so obviously it comes without the side effects of everything that you just listed before. So one of the things that I’m getting a lot of questions of is, you know, all the other issues surrounding it, the pharmaceutical companies, we are going to be having guests on to actually cover the farm bill, which discusses that Texas on April 5, what’s happening April 5, April 5, hemp becomes completely non controlled substance and they bypassed basically the the act of legislative session if I understand it correctly, to where that’s not going to be an issue. So basically, in a week, we can not worry if you’re unaware and you’re listening from another location here in Texas, there’s 254 counties, but around 12 of them have got some I would consider overly active either enforcement trying to go after and shut down CBD usage and then basically it’s it I don’t think you’re trying to be mean, I just think there’s someone there. Yeah, I just think that they’re uninformed and we’re gonna be having you know that That’s going to be part of our mission night. My deal is I want to bridge the gaps in health I want to bring talk about geeky science stuff but also bridge the gap to natural solutions and I think that that is a good that’s just another puzzle piece that we’re going to be using hundred percent mark it has been an incredible show I can’t believe that we’ve already raised through two hours but this is Mark simplement. He soon will have up a website where he can basically share that you’re going to be a public speaker for hire. And you’re going to use it to benefit your chosen charity which is Raquel Wings for Life but you can find more out about it at raquel wings for life.com a transport patients down to get medical care for cancer at MD Anderson and usually up in Tulsa. Anything you want to add? That’s it. Go check out the site, every $5 every $5 very, very inspiring story and thank you for everything that you’re doing to get back. You get what you’re getting because you give what you give. What a great show. So Dr. Brown and Next week we’ll have gut project on again and I believe we’re gonna have a great guest. Stay tuned. Thank you so much for the support in the books. We’re done. All right, thanks Marc. Marc Semmelmann