Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year, and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare Annual Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th.
If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage. It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. Hello. This is Hey Dude Shoes.
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Find parts for everything from your classic coupe to your brand new truck at eBayMotors.com. Let's ride. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, a story by Tim Hennessey. He's an IT professional from Texas, and like so many families in America, grappled with his own health issues, primarily pain. Here is Tim Hennessey on the story of his own health journey. The late 90s, I was in my late 30s, and I had all kind of health problems. On the outside, physically, I looked pretty darn good. You know, I worked out a couple hours a day. I played racquetball for two or three hours. I lifted weights.
So on the outside, I looked pretty good. But on the inside, I felt like I was dying because I had chronic pains all day long. My elbow, my knees, my back. I had a hard time sleeping. I had migraines literally a couple times a month. The kind of migraines where you got to shut the light out from your eyes. I used to put ice on my neck, lay down.
I had this pulsing, almost like you hear a drum, boom, boom, boom. I had higher blood pressure. I had skin issues. I would play racquetball, and the next day, I could barely walk down the stairs.
And I'm in my late 30s thinking, what's it going to be like if I make it to 50? So it was recommended to visit a doctor in Calabasas, California, where I lived. And he was a pretty famous doctor.
A lot of Hollywood people would go see him. And he took a look at me, and he basically diagnosed me with a form of autoimmune disease. When I looked at him, I said to him, doctor, could it be what I'm eating and drinking? Could it be my diet? Because I knew a secret that he didn't know.
I knew my diet was horrible. He kind of gave me an out. He says, no, Tim, it's nothing you're doing that caused this. It's more likely hereditary.
So I'm like, oh, good, I'm relieved. And he says, these things kind of happen to people, but the good news is we can control it. And some people get heart disease. Some people get cancer.
You're lucky it isn't cancer as he pats me on the shoulder with his gentle bedside manner that he had. And I wanted to believe him because I wanted to continue drinking my diet, Dr. Pepper, for breakfast with four milk chocolate macadamia nut pepper charm cookies. That was my typical breakfast.
And I will alternate the next day. I'd have donuts instead of the cookies with my diet, Dr. Pepper. I wanted to be able to go to McDonald's or other fast food places at lunchtime. And I didn't want to think about what I was eating. So I didn't tell him that was my diet. But I thought, well, good, you can control this. I can continue eating crappy food. Great.
This is awesome. Then he handed me a prescription. He said, Tim, why don't you take a look?
It's a new drug. And I asked him, well, how long do I have to take this drug? And he said, most likely for the rest of your life, there is no cure for what you have. And he said, the best we can do is help control what you have.
And he said, I'm pretty confident that we could help you. So I drove home from the doctor's office with this prescription. And I didn't know quite what to do at first. So I talked to my wife.
And I said, she said, how'd it go? I said, well, the doctor gave me a prescription for this drug. And he told me to look it up. And I decided to look it up.
But the Internet in the late 90s isn't what it is today. But each company had a website. I went to this company's website. And I looked up this particular drug. The funny thing is, the first thing I noticed when I looked the drug up, it said, for the symptom of this, for the symptom of that. And what I was looking for, and maybe naively, I was looking for the word cure.
But I didn't see the word cure. I then saw the side effects. And the first thing I noticed was it said, lower your immune system. The second one was potentially increased risk of heart disease. And the third one was potentially increased risk of cancer. So I turned to my wife, Deb.
I go, wow, what could possibly go wrong? I take this drug to the rest of my life. And I have a lower immune system, a greater risk of heart disease and greater risk of cancer. But I got rid of my migraines and my pain. Needless to say, I didn't want to take this drug.
I wanted to see if I could find another way. Then there's a woman who came into my life through another friend of my wife's. And she handed me this book. It's called, You're Not Sick.
You Are Thirsty, by Dr. Bhat Malnjahal and something. It's a long Indian name. I call him Dr. Batman.
I think that's his nickname. So I decided I'm going to increase my water and get rid of my soda habit. And I haven't had one since.
And that was August 2004. And I have to tell you, I haven't had a migraine. I haven't had a headache.
Maybe a mild headache once in a while if I don't sleep enough. My blood pressure was back to normal and it continues to be back to normal. All my pains went away. So I thought, well, what can I do if I change my diet?
Here I am. I'm in my 60s now. I still have normal blood pressure. I have no more pains in my knees, back and elbow like I did originally.
I haven't had a migraine in 20 years. My diet's not perfect by any means. But I know if I get a little bit off track, I've got to get back to the green juices and making sure I exercise, making sure I get vitamin D and sunshine.
So the proof is in the pudding. I could have been 25 years ago on medication the rest of my life, as I mentioned. And who knows what my immune system would have been?
Who knows if I'd still be alive today being on medication for 25 years with an increased risk of cancer, increased risk of heart disease and a lower immune system? You know, for me personally, I have an open mind. I'll hear both sides. But let me decide. As an American, I should have the personal freedom to choose my doctor, to ignore my doctor if I don't agree with him, to choose an alternative health practitioner, to ignore the alternative health care practitioner's advice if I choose to. Let me decide what my health is. And I believe that's what all Americans really want. Let us choose. And a special thanks to Greg Hengler on the production of the story.
A special thanks to Tim Hennessey for sharing his story. And so many Americans grapple with these choices. Do I just work on my diet and health? Or do I go see a doctor? And it's not an either or.
You need doctors and you need to eat better. The story of Tim Hennessey's health journey, the story of so many Americans, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to miss. We're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do this show without you. Stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do this show without you. Stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do this show without you. Hey you guys, this is Tori and Jenni with the 9021 OMG Podcast. We have such a special episode brought to you by Nerd Tech ODT. We recorded it at I Heart Radio's 10th Poll event, Wango Tango. Did you know that NURTEC ODT Remedipant 75 mg can help migraine sufferers still attend such an exciting event like Wango Tango? It's true! I had one that night and I took my NURTEC ODT and I was present and had an amazing time.
Here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends. This episode was brought to you by NURTEC ODT Remedipant 75 mg. Life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family, but thankfully NURTEC ODT Remedipant 75 mg is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines in adults. So lively events like Wango Tango don't have to be missed. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year, and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare Annual Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.
It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot, and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. And we're back with our American stories, and up next, a story from Wat Hoang. Today, Wat is a surgeon, but his journey to getting there was far from ordinary.
He's here to share the story of his family fleeing Vietnam and arriving in America with nothing. Growing up in South Vietnam, I was really young at the time, but the things that we remember are the things that we did all the time. And so we were Catholic, so we went to the mass all the time. Every morning, we would go to church. Our village was along the seashore. It was a fishing village, and so my dad was a commercial fisherman. He would leave every morning, come in every night.
And so we would run out to the dock to see the day's catch. We didn't have running water. Though we had the electricity, it was really limited. So we had a light in the house, and my grandparents, my dad's parents, they had the only TV in the village.
And so all of us would swarm to his house and watch his TV. We didn't have an ice machine. We had an ice box. So my mother, if she needed ice, she would send me to the ice factory. She always ordered the bigger block of ice because I would walk along the beach in the hot sand when I picked up the big block of ice and started walking home. Ice is cold, so the ice would fall on the sand, and then it would start to melt. So then I would pick it up and start walking a little bit more, and it would fall again.
So by the time I made it home, that block of ice was a lot smaller than the block that I started with. So those are some of the simple fond memories of the things that happened all the time. But at that time, the North Vietnamese communists, which they were supported by China and by the Soviet Union, were trying to overtake South Vietnam, which was non-communist. So we were the democratic side of Vietnam, and there was a civil war going on during that time.
Ultimately, South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese communists. That's when I remember things such as the troops storming the South Vietnam and people just scrambling under military fire. I remember as a six-year-old hiding underneath the mattress, underneath the bed, and the North Vietnamese troops would run through our house and ransacking the house and hearing gunfire in the village and thinking, oh my goodness, this is not going to end well. I remember hearing them yelling, where's your dad? Because my dad was part of the South Vietnamese military.
He had served a while back, but at that point, any grown man was considered a foe to them, and so they were looking for any men. So the North Vietnamese, as they came down, we knew democracy was going to end because Christianity was not going to be allowed. There was going to be a lot of tyranny as far as religion, as far as the economy, as far as finances, and my parents knew that was coming.
And so when South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese, and that was April 30th of 1975, when it happened, it happened in a hurry. The North Vietnamese troops came in rapidly, and my parents decided to flee. And so as the troops were storming the ground, the only place you can flee is to the ocean.
We knew that the U.S. had some presence in the ocean. And so we thought, okay, well, if we stay on land, you know, we're doomed. But maybe if we head out to the sea, maybe there would be somebody to receive us. We just had to flee.
We didn't have time really to say any goodbyes. My immediate family and cousins and aunts and uncles, we all jumped on my dad's boat. I had three siblings, and one of them was a newborn. And as we fled land and headed out, we saw a larger vessel, and we thought, oh, thank goodness, you know, here's somebody that can help us. And as we approached that ship, come to find out that was a communist ship. And so they started firing on us, and my grandmother was hit. And of course, she was hurting, and she told her husband, my grandfather, listen, we need to get back to land because I won't be able to survive this. So when we went back on shore, my grandfather told my dad, son, there's no life for you here. Take your family with you.
Take the kids. We've lived a good long life, and you go make a new life for yourself and your family. I think back now and I think, okay, so I'm a dad now with two kids, and I can't imagine my parents telling me that. And I had to choose between do I stay with my parents or do I take my family to a new opportunity, whatever that opportunity was. We didn't know that it was going to be better. We just knew if we stayed, it wasn't going to be good.
So my grandparents stayed, and I can't imagine my dad what he felt. We took the four kids, the wife, my mother, of course, and headed back to sea. And eventually, we came upon a US ship that received us.
We really had no idea of what a US ship was going to look like versus a communist ship. And so when we came and approached one, and it turned out to be friendly, my dad boarded first and then my mother handed me to my dad and then handed my youngest brother, who was a newborn at the time, to my dad. And so the three of us got on the naval ship first, and right then they cut off any more people coming onto the ship because the ship was full. So then my mother and two other siblings were still on my dad's boat. And so they separated us then because they had no more room. We were now parted from one another, and who knows when we would see each other again.
You just literally watch it float away. That was hard on my dad because my youngest brother was still breastfeeding at the time. And so here he is with a newborn baby being breastfed, and he can't feed the baby. I learned pretty quickly where to find milk in the ship. And so we just stumbled through it, but eventually got my younger brother fed. And I do remember the first good memory of being on that U.S. ship was when we were looking for something to eat. And the first U.S. food that I ever put in my mouth was a Hershey's chocolate bar. It was the best tasting thing I had ever put in my mouth.
Gosh, that Hershey's bar was good. So of course we were fearful and not knowing what we were getting ourselves into, but several weeks later we were all reunited. We all met together back again in Guam, which was U.S. owned at that time.
Basically we just stumbled across one another on that island. Then we were all brought to Florida. We were at an immigration camp there, and from there the different families were sponsored by American and U.S. families to different locations within the U.S. So there was a farming couple in Kentucky, Campbellville, Kentucky, that through the U.S. Catholic Charities Association, they sponsored my parents and the four kids. And so we packed up, got onto a Greyhound bus to Campbellville, Kentucky from Florida.
There my dad, who worked in the ocean his whole life, was now transplanted into a farming community. At the time none of us spoke English. The only English we knew was yes and no. So I started kindergarten in Kentucky, and somehow along the way we were supposed to bring a blanket to take a nap with while not understanding English.
My parents didn't pack a blanket, and so when I showed up for the first day of school and all the other kids are napping and they all had their blankets and I'm standing around looking at the kids, I don't have a blanket to take a nap with. And so we quickly learned and adapted. I do remember things that made it easy, for example, math, because two plus two will always be four regardless of whatever language you speak. And whether you attend a Catholic mass in Vietnam or you attend one in Campbellville, Kentucky, it's hey we all worship the same God, we all have the same Savior, and we're all trying to get to the same location.
But the rest of it, it comes quickly when you have to speak that language. The material things that you accumulate over time, all of that you set aside hoping you'd find a new life, a better opportunity for yourself and for your kids. And you're listening to Watt Wong tell the story of what happened to so many families when Saigon fell, when South Vietnam was captured by the communists, and there were consequences when we left Vietnam, but my goodness, Americans did step up.
The role the Catholic Charities plays in so much of this and all kinds of Protestant Charities as well in stepping up and taking care of the least of these. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, Watt Wong's story, here on Our American Story. Hey, you guys, this is Tori and Jenni with the 9021 OMG podcast. We have such a special episode brought to you by NerdTech ODT. We recorded it at iHeartRadio's 10th Poll event, Wingo Tango. Did you know that NerdTech ODT Remigipant 75 mg can help migraine sufferers still attend such an exciting event like Wingo Tango?
It's true. I had one that night and I took my NerdTech ODT and I was present and had an amazing time. Here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends. This episode was brought to you by NerdTech ODT Remigipant 75 mg. Life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family.
But thankfully, NerdTech ODT Remigipant 75 mg is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines in adults. So lively events like Wingo Tango don't have to be missed. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.
It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. And we return to our American stories and to the story of Wat Hoang. After fleeing Vietnam, we'd heard about how he and his family had begun to assimilate into American life.
Here's Wat to tell us about more of his adventures here in America. I think in growing up and in hindsight, you see the things that your parents do or did. You appreciate their efforts. You know, my parents made a lot of sacrifices along the way and I hear stories like, for example, growing up in South Vietnamese culture, we eat a lot of rice and in Kentucky it was all potatoes. And so my dad would come back and come home from a hard day's work and the farming couple that sponsored us, they would have a little bit of rice and so we would cook it up and there really wasn't enough to go around. And so my dad would just go hungry and sacrificed it and saved it for us.
And so there's no telling how many countless sacrifices that I don't know about. They've made, but they instilled on us the work ethic, the faith that is required through life. And so I tried to teach that to our kids as well.
So in South Vietnam, Catholicism was not necessarily the most prevalent religion, but it was for us and it was impactful for us and my parents, if they had their preferences, I would be a priest right now. But I didn't go that route, much to their dismay, so I went to med school instead. That's a funny story. My younger brother was asleep and my cousin and I were playing while he was taking a nap and we had a coin, I don't know, maybe a quarter or something like that and we were just spinning it on top of my brother who was asleep on his forehead thinking, oh, this is kind of fun. That quarter landed in his mouth. He woke up and inhaled and swallowed that coin.
So that got us in so much trouble. So we went to the emergency department, the doctor came to see him, took him to surgery, took the coin out, saved the day, came back out. My mother, of course, is still mad at us, but her son is saved. And I thought to myself, you know what, that's pretty neat.
He saved my younger brother's life. I think I want to do that one day. It was just by chance doing something silly, something I shouldn't have been doing that kind of piqued an interest. We never know what's in front of us and the experiences that we go through.
At the time that we go through it, sometimes you don't really appreciate it until much after the fact. When we were growing up, we were poor and in the U.S. we were poor and my parents were not educated, so they did mostly labor jobs. One of the jobs that my mother did was we worked in a crab factory. We picked the meat out of the crabs. And so here I was, middle school and in high school, picking a stinky crab and why am I doing this?
You know, all my friends during the summer were hanging out at the house, watching TV and all that. And I'm going to a stupid crab factory. We were paid by production, so that the more crabs you crack, the more meat you get, the more you get paid.
What I'm getting at is the motor dexterity that's required to crack a claw precisely to get that meat out so that there aren't any shells in that meat. It helped improve my hand speed, my manual dexterity, so my left hand is as good as my right hand. And yes, my mother woke us up at four o'clock in the morning every day to go to the crab factory and it smelled horrible. And I hated it and I dreaded it.
But here I am as a surgeon 30 years later with finger and hand dexterity that could not have been more polished than because of that manual work that I did. So another something that I thought, gosh, why am I doing this, which then I later appreciate. So in college at LSU, during my freshman year, as I was walking around campus thinking about what I was going to do for a summer job, I saw a flyer about the Southwestern Publishing Company. And I had no idea what the Southwestern Publishing Company was, but it said $400 a week summer job. And I thought, man, $400 a week, that's good money for a college student in 1987. And so I went to one of their seminars not knowing what I was getting myself into. And so come to find out it was door to door book sales, blind cold calls, knocking on the door, seeing if a mom or dad might want to buy educational books for their kids. And I thought, there's no way.
But I gave it a try. So we learned how to approach someone, a complete stranger, try to determine what their needs were and maybe provide a product or service that can help them and their children do better for themselves. So fast forward 20 years later, I'm sitting with a patient who I've never met before. This person could be from any walk of life, and they have a problem, an unmet need. And so you try to identify with that person, see what their needs are, and how can I make their life a little better. And so that experience as a 19-year-old college student knocking on 180 doors per week, cold calling, really shaped how I communicate with people to this very day, trying to identify what their needs are and hopefully make a difference in their life. As you're going through these experiences in life, most of the time it's there for a reason.
We just don't realize it at the moment, but you do learn to appreciate those things later on. As I was growing up, I had a lot of horrible dreams about the troops storming the village and crawling under the bed and the nightmares with them, and that lasted for decades. It took a long time for those dreams to go away. The U.S., and I say we because I feel like obviously I'm part of the U.S. now, we're a welcoming society, and every one of us has a culture and a background that's interwoven into one another, and so the U.S. was welcoming, and the U.S. Catholic Charities Association really did a great job with bringing us in and finding families and assimilating us within the U.S. I just remember the kindness of our sponsoring families. They had kids and grandkids that were about our ages, and so my siblings and I played with them and ran around the farm and did silly things, but I just remember their kindness.
If it wasn't for them and what all they did for us, we wouldn't be where we are now. I can't imagine what my parents went through. Everything is falling apart around you. You're leaving your parents. You don't speak the language. The only thing that we had was literally the clothes on our backs.
Who knows where you're going? Not everyone came to the U.S. It all depended on the immigration services and where they decided, so we just happened to be within that group that came to the U.S. You never know what happens in life and how that might impact you later on, but appreciate it for what it is when you're going through it and try to make the most of it. And great work by Madison on the production, and a special thanks to Wat Wong for sharing his story with us and what a quintessentially American story it was. His parents wanted him to be a priest. He disappointed them and became a doctor. His work at the Crab Factory, well, that helped him with his hand dexterity and also his discipline. He had to get up at 4 a.m. His door-to-door book sales gig taught him to listen, taught him empathy. That helped him with his bedside manner.
He had bad dreams, he said, from all that happened in South Vietnam, but they diminished. And the U.S., he said, well, it's a welcoming society. Our cultures are interwoven.
My Sicilian grandparents, my Lebanese grandparents would agree, and a special thanks to Catholic Charities for all the great work they do. The story of Wat Wong, the story of America, in the end, here on Our American Stories. Hey, you guys, this is Tori and Jenny with the 90210MG podcast. We have such a special episode brought to you by NerdTech ODT. We recorded it at iHeartRadio's 10th Poll event, Wango Tango. Did you know that NerdTech ODT Remedipant 75mg can help migraine sufferers still attend such an exciting event like Wango Tango?
It's true. I had one that night and I took my NerdTech ODT and I was present and had an amazing time. Here's a little glimpse of our conversation with some of our closest friends. This episode was brought to you by NerdTech ODT Remedipant 75mg. Life with migraine attacks can mean missing out on big moments with friends and family.
But thankfully, NerdTech ODT Remedipant 75mg is the only medication that is proven to treat a migraine attack and prevent episodic migraines in adults. So lively events like Wango Tango don't have to be missed. One million will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year, and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare Annual Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.
It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCMedicareHealthPlans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot, and I stay cool and confident.
See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. This is Our American Stories, and now we bring you a story brought to us by the Coalition for Better Health at Lower Costs. At Loma Linda University Health, they've sought not to see patients as customers, but as people, and they seek to treat the whole person through lifestyle disciplines inspired by Blue Zone principles.
You can find out more about Blue Zones through Dan Buettner's book, The Blue Zones. Andrew Millard's primary work is with Loma Linda's proton cancer patients. Here's Andrew. I tried to get out of healthcare a couple different times, and I just kept getting pulled back into it. I've got experience in the whole nursing home industry. I did a year doing nursing home administration for a company that used to own about 50 nursing homes in California. I didn't like being a part of that experience because, one, it kind of just felt like a trap people come, and they stay, and they kind of have to be there, and they don't want to be there.
They don't like to be there. It's complete opposite from the way Loma Linda is with our patients now because people are here by choice now, and they want to be here, and they love this. The experience is just completely flipped on its back here because in nursing homes there's no quality of life, but here that's all that we're doing is teaching the quality of life and showing people what quality of life can be like. I manage the patient services department here in Loma Linda, a very unique department down here.
There's actually only two of us, but we're very connected with the patients and providing them with housing and connecting them with resources in the community so that they can come and be here because coming and being here is like a nine-week, 10-week investment, so it really kind of unplugs you from your life to come down here, so we get to kind of be there with them, assisting them in that process and in the journey while they're down here. We use these Blue Zones topics. We have educational speakers that come in all the time and speak to our patients once a week during our special support group. We bring in a speaker, and we talk about Blue Zone nutrition and what it means to eat healthy, to get away from foods that are more processed and get into the less processed, less refined, just more natural foods and natural existence. They talk about that sort of thing. They talk about the Blue Zone community and how really connecting with people and having a community to belong to can add, I think Dan Buettner said, four to 14 years to your life of extra life expectancy.
We talk about all that kind of stuff with our patients, and they're here for this journey for nine weeks while they're down here, and they learn all this stuff. They get to be a part of all of this while they're here. It's so, so much fun to be involved with and just see the transformation that happens in people when it clicks with them, and you can tell when it's clicked because then all of a sudden they're interested, and they're asking questions, and they want to know more, and they're really connected with it. It's like they've got something. They don't want to let it go, but the camaraderie, the experience here is not unlike an experience about going to war. These guys, they go to war, and they're sleeping in tents together. They're sleeping behind rocks.
They're day in and day out. They're at war. They're in the front lines. These people here are in the front lines of fighting cancer, and so it's a similar experience. They're going through this with their buddy next to them, and they have to rely on their buddy next to them because they've got questions. They've got experiences. They've got difficult things that they're going through while they're down here too, and lots of times just having somebody to talk to about those sorts of difficult things is really, really helpful for them. This kind of thing, these two people, three people, we have 25 people come into our group. They just get together, and they share with each other, and they lift each other and encourage each other. These people are bringing...
I mean, it's incredible what they end up doing as a result. They're here being treated for cancer, but they're going around the hospital, and they're praying for other people in the hospital because they want to be part of the healing experience. They're building wooden toys. I had a guy recently built a bunch of wooden toys and brought them into the children's hospital around Christmas time to give the kids something to do. They're here, and they're in the middle of the healing, and they're contributing to the healing of others.
That's just mind-boggling for me. Our proton patients in the community are well-known for being just incredible patients. The restaurants we go to are like, hey, what are we celebrating this evening?
Is there a birthday? People are like, oh, we're here being treated for cancer. Then we hear our waitress say, wait, what? You guys have been laughing and joking around this whole time.
What is going on here? You guys are kind of weird. It's just incredible what can happen with that. It's just the fact that people here, they care so much about getting the most out of life and just being alive to its fullest, whatever that means, physically, mentally or spiritually, just being alive, and they're excited about it. I'm in a unique position to where I get to kind of marry the Blue Zone community and mentality of this area, this community, I get to marry that with the treatment that we're doing here with Proton. Lots of them considered a new lease on life. There's a publication, a research publication, one of our patients shared recently about how men who are treated for prostate cancer lots of times take a new perspective on life after treatment. Once they've taken care of this cancer thing and it's behind them, they've recovered, they've healed, they're in better health than before. It's actually like a researched fact, there's statistical numbers on it.
It's pretty impressive. That sort of thing happens when we start to kind of think that our lifespan may be coming to an end. It really does a number on our psyche, it really does a number on our minds. People don't know what to do with that, they get scared, they don't know what to do with that. Am I going to die?
What's going to happen to my family? When they come down here and they start experiencing this sort of just uplifting wholesome environment, the body becomes like a more healing anti-inflammatory state because it's like all this positivity you're surrounding yourself with and this exercise that they're doing and all of this sort of thing. Not only do they get a better edge on cancer, a better chance to beat cancer, they learn about God. That helps with the mind, you think, even if the end is tomorrow, it doesn't have to be the end forever.
That's an interesting perspective. These people are thinking about this sort of thing. We talk about this sort of thing in our groups and that really helps with the healing too because we're not meant to be stressed out and fearful.
How many times does it say, have no fear, I have not given you a spirit of fear in the Bible. That's not something that people experience while they're here, they experience a love, a really unique love. The first week that I was here, I was taking pictures in the bathrooms. This could sound weird, but I was taking pictures in the bathrooms of the Bible verses that people put on the walls here. You go into the bathrooms and there's uplifting Bible verses in the stalls and stuff. For me, it was like, what kind of uplifting place is this? So I'd take these pictures and send it to my wife and she'd kind of get a giggle out of it. It was really cool.
It's amazing to me to be able to see the transformation that happened. We do a graduation ceremony for all of our patients that are leaving and Tuesday nights we get together, we have this potluck and we have the graduation programs. People that are getting up and leaving us, they tell about their journey and their experience and what's happened to them. Just last week we had a guy from Jersey who graduated and he started a journal while he came down here. The first entries in his journal he told us were, I didn't read his journal, but he told us about his journal and he said the first entries were things like, oh, we went to go get treatment today.
I had a sandwich at the cafeteria and then about six o'clock tonight I was going to catch the game and then we went to bed. It was just basic stuff like that. But at the end of his journal after his nine weeks of being here, the things that he was exploring about his beliefs and his spirituality and his growth, just the depth that he got into in his journal was just night and day from the beginning to the end because of this whole experience. He's writing about what's next for him and his family and his dreams and his visions of the future with these high hopes and dreams of affecting change in his community going home.
It's not writing about a sandwich that you ate for lunch, that's for sure. The transformation that he had was huge. He's one of the guys that left here and said, Andrew, this place is incredible. We consider this our radiation vacation. We came here for treatment of cancer and we got treatment for everything. It was a very heartfelt, I mean, we had a full blown church service that night because everybody was just like, we don't feel like we got here by accident. Nobody lands here by accident.
So I love hearing those stories. There's something happening here. And really, we've got to give credit where credit's due, man. God's responsible for this place. It's not a coincidence that this small institution in Southern California became the world's very first hospital-based proton treatment center. That's amazing. It should have been some huge organization to do that.
But no, Loma Linda was the first one to do it. It's incredible. And it just so happens to be one of the blue zones now and it's like, it's working. So I love being a part of it, man.
I love it. And you've been listening to Andrew Millard's voice. My goodness, calling something your radiation vacation, well, that's some kind of hospital.
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Whisper: medium.en / 2023-02-15 20:41:16 / 2023-02-15 21:00:17 / 19
