There’s a difference between surviving and winning.
Surviving is breath and heartbeat.
Winning is fighting back.
I came into this with stage IV colorectal cancer. No illusions. No soft landings. Just a brutal honesty between me and the thing trying to kill me. And for months now, I’ve been waging war on its terms, but with my weapons. Fasting. Chemo. Plant medicine. Relentless metabolic pressure.
And this week, I got the scan.
They called it “stable.” That sterile, cautious word they use when they don’t want to over promise. But I’ve learned to read between the lines. I taught myself to interpret lab reports. I know what stable really means when you’re this deep in it.
Right lower lobe: 13 mm (was solid, now cavitating – a good sign of response)
Left lower lobe: Reduced from 16 mm → 12 mm
Interpretation: Lung nodules are shrinking and may not even be metastatic, very promising
No new lung nodules or lymphadenopathy
It means no new tumors.
It means no spread to my lungs, liver, or anywhere else they were watching.
It means lung nodules shrinking, one of them even cavitating, which is a sign the tumor’s dying from the inside out.
It means the primary tumor is still there, but it hasn’t grown, hasn’t advanced. It’s been held.
And that’s not luck. That’s work. That’s every fasted chemo cycle. Every dose of psilocybin or ayahuasca taken not to escape, but to aim, to recalibrate, to see what needed killing inside me, and what still deserved to live.
It’s months without sugar, months in ketosis.
It’s breathwork until I shake. Ice baths until I scream.
It’s swallowing herbs and hope and fear, chasing healing through every root and fungus that carries a whisper of fire.
It’s rage and surrender. It’s prayer when I don’t believe in anything but movement.
This body? It hurts. It aches in places I didn’t know I had. But it’s still moving. Still waking up every morning to stare this thing down again.
I won’t lie to you. This is hard.
There are days where I feel hunted from the inside out.
Days where every cell feels like it’s shaking from fatigue.
But I’m still here.
And here’s the truth: this isn’t just “stable.”
This is me holding the line.
This is me taking ground back, inch by painful inch.
This is me winning. Quietly. Brutally. Unapologetically.
So if you’re reading this, thank you.
For checking in.
For holding space.
For knowing I’m still in it.
I don’t need miracles. I’ve got work.
I don’t need promises. I’ve got the protocol.
And I don’t need hope. I’ve got fight.
Please everyone take the time to read this book, if you can’t buy it let me know I will send you a copy, between Dr. Thomas Seyfreid at Boston College and this book written by a doctor, and cancer survivor I can’t recommend this enough.
Also what the fuck is up with embeds Substack? It’s broken fix it!
Read this on Substack where it first appeared — if you’re into that sort of thing.
