Eddie Enever is a champion. He lost his testical ("Mr Righty") to cancer followed by 3 relapses over the next couple of years. He realised that his life priorities needed to change; and quickly! Eddie's journey of transformation came through a deeper understanding of self which dramatically improved his health. The knowledge gained has empowered Eddie to assist hundred's of other people diagnosed with cancer.
Eddie Enever is a champion. He lost his testical ("Mr Righty") to cancer followed by 3 relapses over the next couple of years. He realised that his life priorities needed to change; and quickly! Eddie's journey of transformation came through a deeper understanding of self which dramatically improved his health. The knowledge gained has empowered Eddie to assist hundred's of other people diagnosed with cancer.
Eddie Enever, we go back some time. hope you remember, but we worked together I'm thinking maybe 2008 or 2019? Something like that.
Eddie Enever:Yeah, yeah, a while ago, a lot has happened
Daniel Baden:A lot has happened. And this is probably one of the most interesting podcasts, I think we're going to come across because your story is quite extraordinary. And you went from cancer three times, laced with anxiety and depression. You had a marriage breakup, you had financial issues associated with all of that. Now you are like this thriving, deeply connected human being with lots of meaning and purpose in your life. And there's a whole story in between that. So I'm really keen on exploring how people in your situation or your old situation, get to be where you are today. How are you mate?
Eddie Enever:yeah, very good. Thank you for having me on. I'm really enjoy doing these just to have a really important conversations around this. Because as you know, it's very, very common. I think it's the latest Australian stats. 43% of Australians in their lifetime are going to be met with a cancer diagnosis. So it's good to be able to talk and give some people some insight why maybe what it can be like, I
Daniel Baden:I think one of the most important things is that people in the cancer community understand and start to have a real sense of what they can do to improve their own life. And I think that's what's really good about speaking to people like you, so it's cool.
Eddie Enever:Yeah, and I thank you. Yeah, like I always say it takes one person to prove that as possible. I have an extraordinary outcome. But I'm not the only one. There's 1000s. There's books written on this stuff like Kellyanne Turner's, and Jeff radicals in his book cured, documenting, you know, hundreds and 1000s of patients that have had these and only takes one person to prove that that is possible. So it's nice to be able to talk about it, say, hey, it is actually possible. Don't Don't give up hope. There is hope in
Daniel Baden:your type of cancer was testicular cancer. It was and you discovered it yourself. Could you just let me know how you discovered?
Eddie Enever:Yeah, with a lot of shock. Personal share; overshare, in the shower, doing a self examination, and I went all odia that shouldn't be like that. So the artist, he was incredibly large and hard, which it shouldn't be. It was just lucky that I had a friend who was a very good doctor who was also a doctor. So I could consult with him and say, hey, something's not right there. So he managed to expediate that process, which then took me on the chaotic journey of diagnosis. But yeah, it started with me just noticing something wasn't right. And to be honest, though, there were probably lots of little whispers from my body. But you know, I'm sure we'll get into it. You know, where I was in my, my health journey, my life journey at that stage. I couldn't hear those whispers. So they sort of fell on deaf ears because it was too much in my head and my stress in my business in on, on retrospect, looking there were there were telltale signs that hey, something wasn't right. But it all started with just noticing that that wasn't right.
Daniel Baden:You said the teste was was hard and large, was that one lump that was sticking out? Or was
Unknown:the whole thing the whole thing. So my margin was quite deep inside the teste so basically, it took over most of the teste. So it just ended up not being like a weird, Lumpy, odd shape. It was just larger, but hard. Hard was the thing. They shouldn't be rock hard. And this was clearly rock hard. And I was getting some pain in the inguinal canal, that sort of pelvis area crease area. And that was also just another sign that all maybe things aren't quite right.
Daniel Baden:And did you have other body symptoms or fever or inflammation?
Eddie Enever:No. Nothing like that. Again, there were probably things on retrospect if I was to dig around if I could actually remember back that far, that there probably were some things but you know, a lot of the symptoms sometimes we can't see you know, the the nonspecific there could be a lot of things you know, maybe some skin conditions or maybe not feeling quite right or like you say fever, what could be fatal all sorts of things, especially in this day and age with viruses and colds and flus and all this stuff.
Daniel Baden:How old were you when you discovered it?
Unknown:I was 33, 10 days before Christmas. It was a an interesting Christmas that one
Daniel Baden:Scary Christmas, I'm sure how long after the first you first discovered the difference in your testes? Was the diagnosis of cancer made?
Eddie Enever:Yeah, so diagnosis came very quickly like within days. So that was I was diagnosed 10 days before Christmas and other six days later I was in surgery. So getting Mr. Right here as I affectionately refer to him as chopped off, never to be seen again. So yeah, that then launched me into what the fuck follow up care was which was a little bit of rest. And then what was recommended at that stage was one dose of a single chemotherapy agent called carboplatin in early February, after a lot of deliberation, obviously as a naturopath it was in the health world naturally sort of had a natural bias and the big C chemo, very scary. Just I think anyone who sort of thinks about chemo probably thinks toxic poisons. So it was very hard for me to get my head around just having that one obviously, my my mind built it up into something massive. I was going to be debilitated and fading her away gone in the face for one dose of chemo, but it certainly wasn't anything like that. But you know, the mind goes there, which it does with it but can't say no to that worst case scenario catastrophizing, that anxiety around it.
Daniel Baden:Sure. And had you had any children by them?
Eddie Enever:I did. I did. So I had a two and a half year old son and I had a pregnant wife when I was diagnosed, she was heavily pregnant. Even my youngest was actually born in February, early Feb, so she was almost ready to pop. And so it was pretty, it's pretty hectic, you know, 33, prominent life and I expected to hear the C word you've got cancer, in the prime of having business and career here and raising a family and a young family and a home and all this stuff and then is suddenly dealt with cancer, life suddenly came crumbling down. It was very hard to swallow in that early stage.
Daniel Baden:I'm sure there was some pretty deep discussions over that Christmas there was but there
Eddie Enever:was also a lot of shock, you know, sort of freeze up Oh, holy moly, like what what? This wasn't, this wasn't in the agenda.
Daniel Baden:You were treated. You had the Teste removed, you had the chemo, the one dose, but over the next two years, you also had three, two more relapses, I believe
Eddie Enever:I had three relapses. In those two years, I had multiple dances with this thing. So I had that the surgery, a little bit of recovery time, and then one dose of carboplatin, which was supposed to be just a clean up insurance policy. From all intensive purposes, you know, the test he was involved, but there was some indication that the cancer got into my lymphatic system. So it's called lymphovascular infiltration that they they look at under the microscope, they could see that a control lymphatic system so the risk is that it travels up the lymphatic tract. And so the chemo is supposed to just basically clean up anything that might have gone into the bloodstream into the lymph and so went through with that. But six months later, I was really diagnosed certainly up that lymphatic tract. So the first train station if you'd like up the lymphatic tract from that in between or region is what's called the Para aortic lymph nodes. So it's a chain of lymph nodes that run up there, the major vessels in the abdomen, that the most common spot for a very lapse or a secondary testicular is in right in the center of the abdomen, and so on a PET scan and surveillance therapy, which just means when your your oncologist is monitoring you for early detection, you have periodic scans, and generally every three months or so, it showed up on a scan. I was like, Oh, here we go. It's unfortunately it did escape. This came I didn't clean it up. And then I was met with much, much stronger treatment that time around.
Daniel Baden:And much stronger treatment means more doses of carboplatin?
Eddie Enever:Yeah, well, more than that. So testicular cancer out of all the cancers, there's only a handful that are highly treatable from modern oncology. And we're chemotherapies very effective for testicular if you're lucky enough to have testes to get it is the best cancer to get. So they have very high success rate with with chemotherapy in the realms of sort of 94 98% success, but they really hit you hard. So what chemo looked like for me was on a Monday, I'd have three chemo therapies on a Monday. And then Tuesday through Sunday, I would have to chemotherapies every single day of the week. So a full week of a lot of chemotherapy, and then two weeks off, and that was a cycle a three week cycle. So it was very, very aggressive treatment. Most people out there to put it in perspective, if you've got a breast cancer or something. He may get maybe one chemo or chemo and another drug once a fortnight or once every 21 days. So it was very heavy, intense treatment because they know that they have a really good chance at targeting and destroying these germ cells and tumors that are cold. So yeah, it was very heavy, not fun to go through.
Daniel Baden:Because of carboplatin. And some of those drugs have a strong association with things like peripheral neuropathy is definitely deaf. Did you have any of those sorts of studies?
Eddie Enever:I did. So the cornerstone of chemo is cisplatin, so it's carbo platens. uglier grumpier cousin. We call it very aggressive chemotherapy. So it's a platinum based drugs. That's essentially platinum toxicity is what they're giving you. And the platinum loves nerves. And so I did get a lot of neuropathies in my feet in particular, but they've got very sort of timidly and quite numb, but I also got to meet years. So my hearing went quite tinny, which was quite bizarre. It did resolve after all my treatment many years later, it took a long time. Nerves are very slow to regenerate. But yeah, a lot of side effects. You know, that that sort of chemotherapy in the system toxic drugs, my digestive system would literally shut down On for that second week, I'd be alright that first week because you're sort of keep began with steroids through your chemo journey and you're, you're not too bad you're definitely not feeling good. But it's the second week when the steroids wean out of the system and then all the side effects of this chemo start to shine through. I was totally incapacitated for that second week, unable to move my digestive system and literally went offline for a week, which was very uncomfortable. Yeah, so it was really just trying to survive through that period. It's very hard.
Daniel Baden:Because you're a naturopath, did you consider any other supplements or herbs or dietary changes what you're going through?
Unknown:Absolutely, absolutely. I did . And in saying that, that area of the world is fantastic. But when you are absolutely capacitated literally feeling like death, it's it was quite hard to follow through on some things consistently, especially next week where I was bed bedridden, and literally out of it. It was very hard to the last week. So one week out or three, you were back on board some level. So you could obviously eat well and look at some supplementation. So I did I had a lot of skills, being a naturopath and I was already working with a lot of people with cancer. So I knew what I needed to do. But the application of it was tricky, to be honest.
Daniel Baden:It's hard to be your own physician as well. Yeah,
Eddie Enever:I luckily I had, you know, a lot of support and ended up where my marriage should break down through that journey. I did. I had no choice but I had to move in with dear old mum and so yes. Mother's love to to nourish you through, say I think she absolutely reveled in it.
Daniel Baden:Okay, so you're under a quite a bit of stress. You mentioned that you're under stress before the diagnosis because like many young people, you're trying to build a life with work and family and all that sort of thing. The cancer diagnosis and ongoing treatments would have increased the stress. And was that instrumental in your marriage breakup was
Unknown:was a big part of it. You know, we were young family, we took on too much too soon. You know, we believe that we got gifted a 10 year old existing business. So it was a health standard ahead. Around about 10-12 practitioners working from it subcontracted into it's everything from chiropractors to psychologist massage therapist, Reiki naturopath, things like that, we got gifted it for free by an absolute angel who was at the end of her ..she owned the place and she just wanted to pass it on to someone. And we had a beautiful relationship and she gave it to us. And so as a young family and an opportunity to take, here's an existing business that's all set up, ready to rock and roll and go for it. So I noticed that on but I was very young, naive naturopath, I've only been qualified for a handful of years and didn't as any naturalist thing in college, you don't get really get taught any business skills, you might be two units, you know, write a business plan for industry have no idea about and, you know, basic stuff. And so, but I did know how to work hard, you know, come from very high worth ethic in my sort of family. And so I worked hard. And then when things weren't working, I went harder, I did what I knew I could do and rinse and repeat that a few times. Start to get very, very stressed with it all, you know, start to develop that by you know, its peak, we had about 18 practitioners in their yoga Hall cafe, a shop that it all put on plus I was trying to be a naturopath trying to be an agile bath with all that stress and all the hats. And you know, that was driving me to get very stressed and I wasn't managing my emotions well, so I was going very internal and sinking myself into the business as a stress coping mechanism, which was disconnecting me from my then wife. And so it was taken its toll on a young young marriage with young kids and all the pressures of that. And, you know, just exposed the cracks that were already in now. What and I have choices, you know, on reflection, but eventually the brokers unfortunately, the stress of it was just too hard. And you know, I was so unwell that it just fractured. So unfortunately,
Daniel Baden:to top it off, I know that the financial burden of chronic illness is significant.
Eddie Enever:Yes, yeah. So you're really luckily we had to practice and so we had that, you know, that sort of income coming in, but it wasn't enough without my income of my practice. Because I couldn't work you can't work in that state at all. And it just, it just it just crippled us unfortunately.
Daniel Baden:Stress stress stress.
Eddie Enever:It was a big part of it for sure
Daniel Baden:And so do you have a family history as well of any type of cancer?
Eddie Enever:No, not really. Mom had a little melanoma on her head at one stage that had to be cut out. I think your mom had breast cancer not not a huge drama. Is that like it's showing up all the way through cardiovascular is absolutely a bigger thing within my paternal line for sure. A little bit with mum, but not absolutely nothing in the realms of prostate testicular. No history of that at all. Yeah.
Daniel Baden:Did you have any trauma to the testes as a young person? Not No, no. Okay.
Eddie Enever:The things I love obviously thought about this a lot like, why why why did this happen? Did you know before as a naturopath I did work in industries that were pretty toxic as in chemical exposure. So I was in the printing industry for a good 12 years. And so using a lot of volatile solvents, which are pretty nasty compounds linked to many cancers, so these acetate and acetone tones used in huge amounts, like literally almost bathing yourself in almost the inks, obviously, although the much cleaner probably still had heaps of goop. Going even further back, I was raised in New Zealand. So I grew up in QE for a country. And so kiwi fruit get highly, highly sprayed to keep them looking attractive. So you want to buy them and I would be a young 567 year old running around the otters were my playgrounds. And my mom telling me you know, when it was spraying season you come in because these guys are going up and down the aisles with spacesuits on pretty much hazmat suit spraying this, she called the Ag department many times and is this safe, I have a child here. It's perfectly safe, water soluble, blah, blah, blah. It's like, where I was from a place called the Bay of Islands carry carry, we had the highest rate of lymphoma in the whole of New Zealand. So is it connected? Who knows? Apparently. So I have no doubt these things played a role in, you know, setting up a milieu and environment with my body that's not conducive to the optimal sort of health of certain tissues.
Daniel Baden:I know that at some point, you had to take stock of your life, and say, I just can't do this anymore, and you sold your business and you made big decisions. And the word that you told me when we chatted some weeks ago is that you had a complete reset? Yeah, how did you get to that point in your life where you realize that you needed a reset,
Unknown:totally. So cancers got a good way of doing that. especially when you get it three times over, because I tried to maintain this, this complex show that I'd created, you know, part, partly consciously part, you know, just because of decisions. Maybe the cards that I was also dealt a little bit as well. But, you know, I tried to maintain this through my first diagnosis, you know, the first the second, because, you know, I didn't want to drop that business, it was providing a lot for me, although it was creating a lot of issues in my life, it wasn't giving me some validation and some, some good stuff there some self confidence because of look what I've created, you know, sort of thing ego getting involved there. And so I was very unwilling to drop, drop it, even though I was incredibly unwell and through, you know, two of those relapses, and that's when the some people call it a light bulb moment, I call it more like a fry pan to the head, cast iron one, I had to take a step back and discuss that because it kept coming back and my colleagues had no idea what was going on. It's just like, this is really unusual. This doesn't happen. Testicular cancer is usually sorted out first line therapy. So that first dose of carboplatin that I mentioned, that's usually enough, you know, you shouldn't be getting relapses of this sort of treatment, maybe one but not not three. They really didn't understand what was going on. And that was the point where I had to like, take a step back and discuss it, what am I missing here, I'm doing what I'm being told to do. I'm trying my best to support my my treatments, the best that I can as well. And then it came to me it's not what I'm doing is the problems. The way that I'm doing it is the problem, really, the way that I was doing life was the problem. And so I had to and that was that moment was a sight, right? I've missed the point here, I've got to change the environment that I'm trying to get well within. I was trying to force the healing process. If I look at it now I was trying to just add more to the treatment. In more aggressive treatment, more diet, more supplements were the the path to healing for me wasn't clear. It was fraught with massive big roadblocks of cortisol and stress and all the stuff in the way. And so my mindset had to shift and I had to look at well, can I create an environment that's more conducive to the outcome that I want. And a big part of that was, well look at the stress in my life like this isn't working at all. So that's when the big decisions have to come in right? sell a home sell a business, like get my allostatic load total stress load down as quickly as possible. And for me, then going on the internal journey of can I manage my stress better inside of myself. So the way I interface with stress and my emotion because that was pretty, pretty unhealthy.
Daniel Baden:It's quite difficult to achieve this moment of absolute clarity like you did when you're going through the condition and the chemo and chemo brain, which is a you know, like a brain fog . So it's quite extraordinary to get to that point.
Eddie Enever:You know, I went from stage one to stage four. So when I was at my worst I had a nine centimeter by eight by three centimeter tumor in my abdomen. So that's the heretic lymph node, it was between aorta and vena cava. So really dangerous spot, big sheet tumor, they call it big, high and wide and skinny. But I also had a couple of tumors in my chest couple under my collarbone one of my neck one model, and so it's riddled with this stuff. And so I was stage four and said There's nothing like getting into stage four. And literally I've, I'm a big guy, you've met me, I'm six foot seven. Believe it or not, I usually run out around about 117 kilos. 20 kilos. When I was at my worst, I was 84 kilos. So I looked like I always laugh, I look like a very tall cross between the alerts and Uncle Fester. Like I looked, I looked rough. Yeah, I wasn't even light as light and was very, very unwell. And so that's pretty close to rock bottom. That's, you know, when things change, you'd have to change, otherwise, nothing changes.
Daniel Baden:What was the first thing you did you push the reset button. What was the first activity I guess, for one of a better word where you thought this is how I'm going to start looking after myself better.
Eddie Enever:Big ones for me and continues to be is balance. It's probably the biggest lesson that I learned in getting cancer was you know, my life was so out of balance, like my work life balance, my mental health, everything was out of whack. And it was a really powerful PhD in balance I always laugh about and it's still to this day, it's something that I'm very, very protective over in my life, making sure like my work life balance, in particular, how much I push my body? Am I doing five, six days a week? And you know, answering the phone 24/7? You know, to all the clients, no, I don't I put very strong boundaries into place, which was incredibly hard for me to do, because I wasn't good at boundaries, clearly. So a big part of it was how to have been more balance to my life, I can create that environment that's more conducive to the outcome that I want. So that was probably the very first thing like what it looked like back then was obviously selling the business and the higher and trying to create a different environment.
Daniel Baden:So did you take on a life coach? Or did you do a course? Or is it just something that came to you,
Eddie Enever:a lot of it came to me through my own sort of exploration, but it was very deep in the personal development world, in that sort of stage of my life and cancer just sort of escalate that as well. So it's very much looking at human behavior with the likes of John F de martini, who's a very famous author and sort of lecturer around the world. And early in my cancer journey actually went up to the call of foundation. So in GORLA, amazing man who has to call a foundation, which unfortunately had to shut down and they were running retreats back then so I went over East at that stage, we lost everything I had literally no money. Beautiful, beautiful angel friend of mine paid for me to go over to the gold retreat, which was called the life and living retreat. 10 days in the Yarra Valley, their beautiful spot purpose built just for this purpose is to get people there's 24 of us, they're all at different stages of their cancer journey. And the beautiful polar Maya Betson who are running all the retreats guide you over 10 days just peeling the layers of going deeper and deeper into yourself into emotions into obviously diet and food as medicine and they are very, very big on stress management because it played such a huge role in Ian's health and the very strong meditation. So I was already meditating before then. But this just took meditation, my understanding how important and powerful it actually is to a whole nother level. So that was a very, very important retreat for me because it helped me reframe what was going on in in my body and my nervous system with my stress my emotions, and helped me to change tact to start to address that internal journey in a different way. So that was super important.
Daniel Baden:One of the things I've noticed from speaking to a number of people that have got through their cancer was before their diagnosis, they had an inability perhaps to accept love or to feel self worth. And as they grew as individuals, they had to learn how to accept love and accept compliments and accept that they are worthy people. How do you look at yourself? In view of all of that?
Unknown:Yeah absolutely. 100% Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I've counseled hundreds of cancer patients now since becoming a well I've worked a lot with oncology patients and I get to talk to them really deeply about the stuff and they tick the boxes. So many times 85 to 90% of patients that come in tick all those boxes as well. All for different reasons. Like for me, as I sort of alluded to with my business, I was getting a lot from my business, I was getting that love and appreciation out of my business that I wasn't perceiving I was getting in my marriage and from family members and so my ability to receive love was really poor. Honestly, my trust and love had been broken from early age. And so it was really hard for me to receive that. So it has been one of the biggest and continues to be one of the biggest journeys for me is to reconnect a love of my trust in it and to be able to receive it purely be able to receive it without agenda. So absolutely, you know, this is this stuff. You know, you've probably explored this this has been studied for decades in psycho oncology, the psychology of a cancer patient this so called C type personality or behavior. We'll trade cancer prone personality type. And you know, they, for the most part cannot receive love. Well, they've been givers of love abundance, but don't receive overly well. And also the other hallmark is repression of emotion, which is absolutely what I was doing. I wasn't expressing my emotions healthily, because I'd learned from a really early age, it wasn't safe to express motions, and I wasn't comfortable with my emotional intelligence to be able to express. So, you know, having to learn that has been another really big journey for me, but it plays a huge part in the healing process, you know, to be able to receive help, to receive somebody wants to buy a ticket to the koala foundation, you reckon that was easy? Hell no. Yeah, it's a huge part of the cancer puzzle. It's not just about the physical treatments, it's this other aspect as well as psychological aspect, which is equally as powerful.
Daniel Baden:I guess that's quite a challenge in some cultural environment environments. And Australia is one of the cultural environments where men don't speak about their emotions, and men have to be tough and don't cry. And yeah, and I'll talk about stuff so that
Eddie Enever:I think the tides are changing a little bit with the new generation, but certainly for the couple of generations, you know, the gen two Gen X's and you know, the and older it is it's seen as almost a sign of weakness, you know, toughen up, don't cry, Boys Don't Cry, get on with it, you know, which is essentially the same swallow it down, repress that emotion, get home, whether it's a work very well, clearly doesn't work very well with the mental health issues we have in Australia, and also, chronic disease epidemic, but it's this whole mind body medicine is plays part of that. So you know, I really encourage people that are going through cancer, there is that journey to go as well, which I considered that but the healing journey, you know, there's a difference between that curative path trying to go for cure and new treatments for the lumps and the bumps. But there's also this healing journey, which is more what is this disease mean, in the context of your life? Which when you're met with your mortality, you start to ask those questions.
Daniel Baden:Yeah, I get that. So just changing the topic slightly. At some point, you went to the Philippines to seek some hyperthermia therapy did? Yes. And I remember going to some hypothermia conferences a long, long time ago. But what was your experience of it?
Eddie Enever:Hyperthermia saved my life. I can't say it was the only thing that absolutely wasn't the only thing. There was a few things that really are the reason why I'm still here today. One was that stress reduction that I talked about. The second one was hyperthermia. The third one was modern oncology. We got there in the end with the with the drugs, but I don't think if I isolated each any of those sort of aspects out that either one of those was going to cure me in isolation, it was that combination that was important for me. And certainly for me hyperthermia, I went over to the Philippines for eight weeks. So hyperthermia is where we raise the body temperature up either the whole body systemic hypothermia or like a localized hyperthermia. So you can just target the tumor and try to bake it essentially. So I think the magic number in hyperthermia is 42.1 degrees Celsius. If you get a tumor to that site, that that temperature they don't do well they don't dissipate heat so they can basically spontaneously apoptosis or die. So I went over to the Philippines for eight weeks of systemic and localized hypothermia really brutal treatment in the little old provinces of the Philippines. You know, there's me big old six foot seven Gandalf gray walking through the streets with four foot Filipinos looking at it be like What the hell is this, this walk to the supermarket? Beautiful People beautiful culture, so loving, but hard work hard work in the provinces. But you know, systemic hypothermia to take your oral temperature up to 40 degrees Celsius and try to maintain that for 30 to 60 minutes isn't easy.
Daniel Baden:So what's the mechanics of that? How do they do that?
Eddie Enever:Essentially, it's a hyperthermia machine. It looks like a metal like a sauna, a dome, sauna or almost set, you might lie in your heads poking out, you can keep your face nice and cool with a fan and cold flannel. But essentially the hypothermia machine is heating the body up and so constantly monitoring oral temperature to watch it rise up and it can take good 20 odd minutes to get to high 39 to 40 which is a steaming fever. It's not pleasant at all, and then trying to maintain yourself there. For like I said anywhere between 30 to 60 minutes, which is grueling lucky, you're really altered state of consciousness, you're not feeling good at all. So I was doing that three times a week and then filling in all the gaps with localized hypothermia. So my intention was I'll go over there. I'm going to come back here to free Anna so I went over there for eight weeks did this and by the end of it I was not feeling good at all. So that tumor in my abdomen so instead of all my cancer disappeared, it actually tripled in size. So I was worried that it was pushing my ballot against my abdominal wall. It was in a lot of pain, a lot of back flank pain from that and I was getting weaker and losing weight and I was was not in a good state at all. So I came back to Australia and that When I sat in front of my oncologist, he said, Matt, we got to do something because he was fantastic. He understood me, there was a young guy just like me kids, similar sort of age, he understood what I did for a profession. And he understood that I needed to go and do this stuff for me. So he's very supportive, which is a blessing because not all I can do. And so I came back and said, Listen, man, we got to move on this, we got to boogie had my last sort of treatment, which is another story about why we chose that that treatment we might get to. But it was at that stage that it just melted away, like it disappeared so quickly, like he to this day still can't explain can't understand as to what was on the ground, it's just disappearing at a rate of knots. And that was eight years ago, that it disappeared and never returned. And so I know that hyperthermia hyper sensitized the tumors because that's what the research also shows us. If it doesn't kill, it can also really sensitize the cancer massively. And that's certainly what it seemed to do to these more aggressive pro oxidant type treatments like chemotherapy that I was on.
Daniel Baden:So what was the final therapy that the oncologist put you on?
Eddie Enever:Well, when I was at that, that last relapse, they literally didn't know what to do. They said yes, and there's not enough people worldwide that get into this state. So we don't have enough data to know what to do next. We've got a couple of ideas here, you know, based on what limited research we have, we've got this regime a and we've got this one B. We didn't know what to do. And then they basically said to me, what do you want to do? And I sort of looked at my going what you want me to eeny, meeny, miny, moe it. But I had actually earlier in the journey, I'd actually done some sensitivity testing on my cancer. So I sent my circulating tumor cells overseas, to Greece to get tested against all the chemo therapies on the market and all the oncology drugs to see what is my cancer most sensitive to? Now, I did that really early in the piece, but unfortunately, was Australian on college, then I'm open to these chemo sensitivity tests. Not yet, at least. So he said it's nice information, but I can't act on that. And so when I got presented with that ARB option, I said, Well, hey, shall we have a look at these tests that I did, and let's, let's maybe let that make the decision for us. And it clearly showed that chemotherapy regime B was the right choice as compared to the other one. And so we ran with that. So that's when I say, you know, modern oncology and the right, choice for me was a really important part as well, I don't know if I had done that, by itself that would have cleared the cancer, I think, I feel I know that the hypothermia played a massive role in helping those drugs to work more efficaciously. And then also, my environment by that stage had changed very drastically, the way that I was interacting with my journey and my own mindset and internal environment was was different as well. So the whole environment for healing was was quite different. And I think, for me, that was the combination that worked for me.
Daniel Baden:And at the same time, were you using any other nutritional supplements at all?
Eddie Enever:Yeah, I was using, you know, lots of things like anti inflammatories and some immune stimulation to drive racks, you know, fantastic product. What else was I using, I was doing obviously try my best with different sorts of dietary regimes, but the throw of chemo was who was pretty tough, pretty tough, especially when there wasn't even a lot anyway, that's why I dropped so much weight. So there was a few things I was I was using, but I wasn't going to full on I just wasn't, wasn't the right state for doing that, like I was really quite debilitated. So it's very hard.
Daniel Baden:Did you develop any sort of chemo resistance throughout the journey as well.
Unknown:yeah, the relapses I think, were the chemo resistance. You know, by the end, I was classified as chemo resistant. I think, because I've had so many unsuccessful lines of treatment, the weaker stuff had been cleared up. And maybe these cancer like stem cells left behind these ones that are more robust, and more chemo resistant, I think I was just working on growing my population of those with each relapse, it was clear that the weaker stuff leaving behind the more strong STEM like cells, and then go through my next letter treatment, cleaning up the weaker ones of those or any other sort of just normal cancerous tumor cells, and then leaving the mode robust, robust and robust. And I think, by that third relapse, the population within me was just so aggressive, very fast, growing and very resistant to treatment that it was going to take and above and beyond effort to get rid of those ones.
Daniel Baden:I know from patients I've had as well, and friends that have had cancer. There's this continual fear of the cancer returning at some point. Yeah. How did you deal with that? Or how do you deal with that?
Unknown:Yeah, so canxiety is a very real thing I call it cancanxiety. You know, every cancer patient knows that intimately. It's that fear when a lymph node pops up under your armpit or in your neck, and it might just be because you've got a sick kid in the house, but the mind doesn't know that in the mind just goes to that worst case scenario. She had his back then then you get all that emotional trigger of what it was like to hear those words and for me three times over, sorry, it's back to Alright back in how that makes you feel. And so it can be really debilitating for people. Luckily for me, I've had a very strong mind through most of the journey, I am not an anxious type person anyway. So I think one it's part of just how I'm my mum nervous system, my mind is made up but also I have done a lot of meditation, a lot of nervous system regulation stuff because it's been such an important part of the journey. I think I've got quite a good skill set on handling my nervous system and if there are any sort of catastrophizing thoughts, I don't hang around a lot for me personally. So that's that's really helped me a lot. But I'd be lying if I said that it hasn't been there a while many, many, many times. Now. Even when you're waiting for them apologist appointment, and you're in the waiting room, it's there. And then they come out and then you look at him and they won't make eye contact. You're like, oh, no, here it is as bad. And then he got in this has happened to me personally, and then I'm absolutely freaking out because he's won't make eye contact. He's not smiling, and he's not looking at me too easily would sit down now. Everything's fine. Everything's great. It's a roller coaster mate. And understand. So you know, I've, I think mindset plays a really big role, obviously, your skill set around managing your nervous system, but also mindset in relationship to cancer. For me very early in the piece I, because I was in that personal development world already. I really went into my cat and I was looking at it like, well, first of all that the mindset was, whatever it takes, whatever I need to do, I've got a, you know, two and a half year old kid and a pregnant wife, bring it anything, I will do whatever I need to do. So you know, failure wasn't an option. There was that aspect of it. And then I went into cancer. And for me where I was at that stage is, how is this going to be the best thing in my life? How's this going to redefine my life? I asked that question actually, really early in the piece. And I did this exercise, which is a John F de Martini exercise where you count your blessings, how's this going to be the biggest blessing in my life? Physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, spiritually, financially, my career and my relationships? And so I spent a few days really delving into that question or writing all my answers down in in two days, it was only about four hours. And over those two days, I wrote over 800 different benefits for blessings for it. And that was really the reason why I mentioned it was it was really important for my mindset towards it was like, I'd pulled that apart and picked it apart and seen so much benefit in it in such a hard thing to be met with. And I found so much benefit and it was almost looked at cancels, I happen to be mad at you. For me, it's very woowoo I just knew this was here for a reason. And I need to learn from that. And for me, it just helped with my mindset, and it continues to help with the Kansas City side of things because the reality is you don't know what tomorrow holds. It'd be really dark rediagnosis tomorrow, and I could have no senescence cells, you know, hibernating cells with me and and tomorrow, they wake up for whatever reason, yeah, might have a big traumatic event, someone might die. And that's enough stress. Just to spark things up. Again, that's a reality. I think through my journey and getting so close to checking out I feel my relationship to death is quite a healthy one, quite a balanced one. I'm not not fearful of it at all. I don't want to go because I've got kids I don't want to see grow up. I don't want to be that annoying grandfather that comes over and has all the things. But I think my relationship to life and death is quite healthy. So it helps me not get too debilitated by these thoughts of shit. If it comes back, this could be endgame.
Daniel Baden:I noticed on your website when I had a brief look, that you also identify what you do as a cancer coach, which I think is actually some nice terminology. And you know, if you're talking to a cancer patient, what are the two or three most critical points that you tried to get over in the consultation? Is it the management of the chemo? Or is it more the emotion deep dive into the emotional aspects of it? Or how did they handled themselves you know, with their families because I know that from patients that a lot of fear is saying what if I'm not around for my family and all that sort of stuff?
Eddie Enever:I think you know, for me as a practitioner now because I work so much with oncology patients is meeting that person where they're at you know, some people are ready to go What does this mean in the context of my life you know, where my benefit to some people that's the last thing they want to hear? No, they are deep in fear and deep in the anxiety and the stress of the moment and so it's really been compassionate and sensitive to that and discount on you can understand that quite quickly when you meet someone where they're at with it and for me the priority is always you know, we've got a physical nature of this disease in its condition can be fatal if not acted upon quickly. So for me, the priority is always get the person physically their physical treatment or physical aspect of this condition. Solid first get this thing stable, hopefully regressing, with whatever regime dietary supplemental medicine, oncology, blend, integrative is My general advice together and get that solid and then you know, at some point that person may be ready to go Oh, what is this Lean in the broader context. So you know, it's trick this either this for me what I believe is the signs and symptoms of cancer, the lumps and the bumps, let's get that stable first and then let's look at the environment. Now, is this environment conducive to the outcome you desire? What can we change within this environment? Or what can we change the patient's relationship to this thing that may be causing the problem? Can we change relationship to if we can't change it, let's say career or financial state, or a failing marriage, like we may not be able to fix that straight away, but that person's relationship can change very quickly. So we can work at that level when that person is ready for that. And that's usually once a stable in their protocol, physical protocol. And then it's just how deep does someone want to go? Some people don't. And that's fine, you know, suits their life, they can do whatever you want. And I'm there to know, I don't force that agenda on anyone. It's just where this where is this person out? How can I best serve this? Sometimes it's just symptom management, you know, side effect management, because let's face it, the side effects of chemo are pretty rough, saying, Can I just make this on quality journey for this next five cycles of chemo? smoother for them? Yeah, then you got some people that go, what does this mean spiritually and this and that, that's, that's cool, too. That's where they're at? Yeah. So
Daniel Baden:I understand, I noticed, you put a statement on your website as well, which indicates that many of the patients education around chemo could probably be embellished a little bit. One study, you put up this at 69% of patients with lung cancer, and 81%, with colorectal cancer, didn't understand that the chemo was not likely to eliminate their tumors. Yeah. And that's contrary to what they think he was going to do. Totally. So I find that quite interesting. And I guess a big part of your job is education around those sorts of things. However, you also have a free ebook, which is wonderful and very kind of you. And it's called your oncologist is not your enemy. Interesting title, thank you. But to me, that was a bit of a, the stock art is certainly not the enemy. But it kind of with the lack of education that the patient has, there seems to be this big gap in what the oncologist does, and what the, what the patient understands. Yeah. What can we do to improve that?
Eddie Enever:Well, I think it's it's awareness, you know, to understanding you know, what, this person so for a patient to become fully informed, you know, and what does cure mean? No, sometimes, some most oncologists are very, very hesitant to use that C word cured, that when they talk about success, sometimes success to them just means five year survival, five years of life. Now, I think a little patient doesn't think in five year increments of life they want, am I going to be cured for the rest of my life to watch my kids grow up or not? So I think, quite often where it goes wrong with the communication is that that little old patient doesn't understand that's what we've been talked about, what's your five year survival rate? five more years, not, you're going to see your kids grow up. So I think that's so important for people to understand. So when they communicate to them college, they can talk in the right terminology, the right language. So are we talking about absolute cure here? Or are we talking about like a relative cure here, relative risk, which is, can sound really good with the numbers that get thrown at you yet? When you look at the bigger perspective? Oh, but it's actually not that flush. And if some for that that study that you mentioned there, you know, for 80%, eight out of 10 colorectal cancer patients that were under the illusion that chemo was going to be curative to them. Can you imagine that day when they were finally told no, this was never gonna kill you. If they'd known that earlier. Do you think maybe there might have gone above and beyond to try create a better statistic, whether that's changing their life exercising more, or utilizing integrative oncology? I think most people would if they saw the limitation of it. So I think for me, I have these conversations with my patients when they come in, you know, very early when that when they need it, is to really understand the scope of what the result can be in is, is that good enough for you is average Joe results good enough for you to want to do above average Joe, to become the outlier, so to speak, creating your own statistics and these extraordinary outcomes. They will take effort, big effort, massive effort, but totally possible to get people on the right page at what's possible. I think it's really, really important.
Daniel Baden:You were fortunate that you had an oncologist that was happy to work with you. But just from my experience throughout the profession for many years, I know that there's a lot of oncologists that really struggle with natural medicine, how do you bring that conversation with the oncologist or with the patient or both?
Eddie Enever:Yeah, yeah, listen, um, my experience in it may be different on the East Coast. I'm in Perth and so we don't have a lot of oncologists that are open minded to this. There's a couple that are that are good and they are the most popular one in particular the most popular in Perth and he is very supportive of patients doing what they need to do as long as he you inform him what you're doing. So he can, you know, make sure it's okay to do but I find the people that work with someone like that they have such a different journey much less stressful for them, but for for the patient, I let them know that listen, this probably won't go down overly well with the pharmacist who might review whatever you want to take, or your oncologist for me know what I find cancer patients need to do in their life, but also the cancer journey is to get agency over their journey again, many cancer patients, you know, and have, again, counseled hundreds they can feel like sometimes I've left the agency over their life. And so this cancer journey is almost a beautiful way for them to take some agency over their journey. And so always talk about you are driving this bus back to health. Who do you want on this path? Obviously, you want your oncologist on there, do you want to naturopath nutritionist on there might be a Chinese medicine practitioner, or a psychologist, maybe some family friends close confidants, things like that. But they've got to remember that they are driving, it's their life, they can do whatever the hell they want. As long as they're getting the right information from trusted practitioners that are on their team, let them do their job and what their zone their zone of genius is. But you're the one that's got to run with this. And so to sort of talk in those terms with people, just to get them on board them drive in it. So they are setting the rules for this. It's not about making silly, silly decisions here or blase decisions is a fully informed evidence based decisions. But there is so much more that you can do if you're wanting to create your own statistics, which when cancer especially metastatic cancer, you absolutely have to do. Yeah,
Daniel Baden:that is a beautiful analogy, because the one thing I know from a lot of patients with their diagnosis, and when they first present with their diagnosis to family and friends, everybody wants to help them. So everybody with good heart says I know this doctor, I know the surgeon, I heard this guy was the best guy. And then you have a myriad of doctors and nurses. And you've probably end up with 50 opinions by the end of the week.
Eddie Enever:totally confused, analysis paralysis.
Daniel Baden:So I really like your bus driver analogy that that really works.
Eddie Enever:I think the I think the risk is that, you know, when you obviously you met with Mr. C word, you know, to cancer, you know, it's got so much emotion around that word, you know, you go into panic stations in the shot, right? Do everything, throw everything at it, and hopefully something sticks. I call it the shotgun approach. I don't believe it's a wise approach. Now, because it can be a very confused approach, especially if you're starting to utilize medicines and supplements and different things in chemotherapies, you could have this confused chemistry and actually causing some interactions that might be decreasing the efficacy of your treatment, even though you think you're doing the right thing I'm putting more effort in. And I think it's not about doing more sometimes it's actually about just doing a smaller amount of things. But doing them really well. You know, don't be that that. What is it that jack of all trades master and none that saying, you know, just do it as you select things that you understand, or your practitioner understand what you're doing the mechanism of action using the right doses, which is most important to and it forms a framework that is synergistic with whatever your main treatment is, which is for the vast majority of people, it's modern oncology to chemotherapy, or medical oncology, plus or minus a surgery radiation.
Daniel Baden:And I think the most important word, you know, we've mentioned the last few minutes. So you mentioned it was trust. And I think it's so important for the patient to allow themselves to take a moment to really find the practitioners that they resonate with, and the people they resonate with and trust that decision. And trust for those people. I just think that's so critical.
Eddie Enever:For sure. Because if they're trying to self manage and and now they're trying to manage their their life, as well as a cancer diagnosis and do their research and staying up until midnight now on Dr. Google, they're not sleeping now and their self care is probably going to suffer. So it's just like you find your team. As long as you trust them, you know that they know what they're doing. And you're comfortable to place your trust in them, let them do what they need to do here. You focus on being new each day and in actually implementing these changes or these medicines or supplements or whatever it is in your self care in just take some pressure off that person being solely responsible for life and death to a lot of pressure. Yeah,
Daniel Baden:mate. I'm going to give you a time machine. You got to go back and visit 20 year old Eddie. Okay, what are you going to tell him?
Unknown:That's a great question. What would I tell him? I would probably advise him to start his journey of delving into love and his relationship to love earlier. Not not having to have these harsh lessons to force him to learn. I would gently nudge him in the direction of start looking down these wormholes starting to understand your trust and love relationship to love. Because out of all that came all the stress all the stuff that It was sort of talked about was almost like the, the side effect of all that stuff. So I think I nudged him in that direction.
Daniel Baden:Good nudge. Edie, you are amazing. And thank you so much. I know that you provide a number of resources, including a free ebook. Could you talk to what people can do to help themselves what resources you offer? or and or how people can find you? Yeah.
Eddie Enever:So, all over the socials, I'll go to my website, just Eddie another.com Lots of stuff on there. If you if you aren't doing the Instagram thing, you can go to the link in my bio and my Instagram page, which is just at Inova Sally wine me and there's lots of free resources in there, just click on them lots of ebooks on integrative oncology, or that one that you mentioned, your oncologist isn't your enemy to help you to understand how to communicate really effectively. To your oncologist, I've got a cancer support program for people that want an online video based program. It's just me talking to you through all different stages and elements and different levels of the cancer journey and takes you through and upskilled you on your knowledge, but also skill set around breathing to breath work meditation, we deep dive into trauma and this cancer prone personality type that we touched on. And really, it's just about giving you the knowledge and skills to be to be able to take agency over this journey. I'm really big on that. And that's why I created this program. It's you know, over 10 hours of video, footage of me talking and heaps of resources and free meditations and all sorts of things. That's really everything that I've got to give on one program. But there's lots of free stuff as well. You can get on my website, Instagram page and Facebook as well. Lots of lots of resources if you want them. Okay, so you can always just reach out as well. I do do 30 minute free calls where we can just chat and so I can understand where you're at and maybe ways that I can help you and it's no obligation. 30 minutes, you can book there's buttons all over my website where you can book a little free session and we can just have a chat.
Daniel Baden:Thats crazy generous well done. Eddieenever.com And that's Eddie with IE. Eddie is my what a pleasure. It has been for me and thank you so much. I'm so grateful. It's been so nice to reconnect with you after 15/20 years We have not changed what are you talking about ?
Eddie Enever:I'm getting shorter. I think that's supposed to happen. But no, thank you for having me on. It's it's really important conversations. I love what you're doing. It's a great podcast, and just this whole theme of what you do is amazing.
Daniel Baden:Great, thanks. Okay, take care. Thank you.