November 17, 2024 • 32 mins
TV Personality, actress, and activist Maria Menounos has braved her own health battles while caring for her mother and father.She faced a brain tumor, a pancreatic tumor, and the loss of her parents but never gave up. In this episode she talks about the treatments she tried, the role spirituality plays, and why it's so important to tune into what your body is trying to tell you.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is let's be clear with Shannon Dorny. Hey, let's
be clear, family. I'm Mariama Nunos, your guest host here today.
I am really excited to be with you guys today. First,
I'm just gonna ask God for a little guidance today
so I can be as useful as possible and as
(00:23):
helpful as possible to all of you, because that is
my goal today. I've gone through a lot of stuff
health wise in the last seven years along with my
mom and previously my entire life with my dad as
a Type one diabetics, so I think that there's a
lot of stuff that I can probably share that could
(00:44):
be helpful. I also host my own health and wellness
podcast called Heel Squad that has been a wonderful training
ground for me because I have experts from all over
the world coming in sharing their insights, sharing their her
incredible wisdom and information, and it's you know, saved my
(01:05):
life on many occasions, along with my moms and so
many others. So hopefully I can do Shannon proud today
and all of you proud. I literally cannot believe that
I'm on this show right now without Shannon, and that
she is no longer with us in the physical I
watched her growing up on nine oh two and oh
(01:27):
and of course that was my favorite show at the time,
and it's just a crazy world, you know. One day
we're here, one day we're not. I remember she was
getting treatments with my mom's radiologist, doctor Murhatti, and I
was just praying for her. But you know, God has
(01:50):
a plan for all of us, and obviously this was
his plan. So I am happy to be with you
guys today. I think first I'll kind of give you
a little background on what's gone on with me, so
you understand some of the things that I'm going to
share with you that will hopefully help you in your
healing journeys, because I know a lot of you are
on that journey. First, I grew up with my Type
(02:15):
one diabetic dad. My parents were immigrants from Greece, and
my mom and dad had a lot of jobs, but
cleaning nightclubs was the biggest one because they didn't speak
the language and it was just the easiest thing that
they could do, and they couldn't afford babysitters. So my
brother and I used to go and from the time
we could hold them up or a broom, we would
(02:36):
be working with them and helping to get done, because
the faster we would get done, the faster we could
go to the next place in the next place, and
then that meant the faster we could get home, or
the faster we could get to my cousin's house to
actually enjoy life. But throughout the process, because my dad
did such manual labor, and because of the language barrier,
(02:58):
and because of the financial situation and the times at
the time, type one diabetes was a lot more life
and death. Thirty years ago, there was no CGM monitors,
there were no pumps, there were none of that. So
my dad, with the manual labor, his blood suggers would
(03:18):
drop on the regular NonStop, and if he wasn't with
us and didn't show up at home at the time
we expected him, my mom would start to fret and
start calling hospitals looking for him. She'd call police stations
because sometimes when he would have a diabetic episode, people
wouldn't be able to interpret that it was that. They
(03:40):
would think he was just this wild man who was
maybe drunk. So we grew up in a lot of
fight or flight. My mom and I really grew up
learning how to be in tune. We're both very intuitive.
Whether that was cultivated by need or granted by God,
I don't know. But we learned learned to be so
(04:01):
in touch with him that we knew, whether we were
three thousand miles away from him or twenty miles away,
that he wasn't okay. It was just how do we
find him and then how do we revive him? So
I remember one time I was in school and I
just felt the tug in my heart and I knew
he wasn't okay. I ran home and I found him
collapsed in the bathroom and had to bring him back.
(04:25):
And that just was a normal thing. We knew the
firefighters by first name, and the ambulance burgers. They were
always at our house. And you know, it's no coincidence now,
knowing what I know, that my mom got a thyroid condition,
it's no coincidence that I later got hashimotos. And you know,
(04:47):
my parents, you know, ate very healthy, we very healthy,
but she did get a thyroid condition, and my dad
was Type one diabetic, and you know, those were all
these things in the back of my head. But once
my career started taking off, I started eating fast food,
and you know, working eighteen hour days, seven days a week,
(05:11):
and career, career, career and success, success, success, and make money,
and all of that kind of took front seat. And
you know, I always say, that's kind of how we're trained.
We're trained from a young age to get good grades, succeed,
go to a great college, succeed, make a lot of money,
(05:32):
and then sometimes after that it's like marriage and kids
and then health not a peep. No one teaches us
how to be healthy. No one teaches us the foundational
kind of rules of health that were set out by
nature and by God. And so it's it's challenging in
this climate to even understand health until it happens to you.
(05:57):
And I always say it's only a matter of time.
No one really evades the health thing. There's always going
to be something. Now what that something's going to be
is the question. So in twenty sixteen, my mom that
(06:18):
whole year wasn't feeling well. Something was wrong, we didn't
know what it was, and she was finally diagnosed with
a malignant brain tumor in September twenty sixteen. It was
called leoblastoma Dudley's cancer, stage four brain cancer shook our
whole family, but I was determined to keep her alive.
(06:38):
So I threw the ferocity that I had put behind
my career into her. And at the same time, I
had to make sure I maintained all of my jobs
in an even higher level so no one thought I
was slipping. So, whether it was e news or serious excem,
I was overperforming to make sure that they didn't think
that I was not focused. And so I started having
(07:00):
symptoms myself. My head's my head was exploding. I was
needing multiple coffees to get through the day. I started
learning my speech, and then I got this ear pain
in my right ear. The finally sent me to the
doctor because I thought I must have an ear infection.
This is crazy. Thirty eight or whatever. I was thirty
eight or thirty nine, and when I went, mind you,
(07:24):
this is months after, He's like, you don't have an
ear infection. What else are you feeling? So I told
him the symptoms that I just laid out to you guys,
and he said, I don't think this is oh oh.
So I said, uh, I'm feeling you know, headaches, this
not the other thing. And I go, oh my god,
and he goes what I go. I think I have
a brain tumor like my mom. Where that came from,
(07:47):
I have no idea, but flash forward to get an
MRI and I too have a brain tumor. Months later,
I'm having brain surgery at Cedar SINAI, the same room
as my mom, by the same doctor, the brilliant doctor
Keith Black. Mine was benign and it was a long surgery.
It was long, I don't know, at least six and
(08:09):
a half hours, and luckily I got through that, and
then the rest of the health crises kind of followed after.
So two years ago, I was feeling some stuff. I
was bloated and not feeling right my stomach, and I
kept searching for answers. Now at this point, I've been
hosting my own podcast, Heel Squad for a couple of
(08:33):
years because when my mom was diagnosed, I wanted to
find answers, and then I needed answers, So I started
bringing in all these healers and practitioners and people with
other thoughts and modalities to help us. And so, you know,
my mom because of all of this, I say so
first as God. Second was her amazing outlook and positivity.
(08:57):
Third was all the alternative things that we did to
counter the effects of the treatments on the western side.
So I love Eastmeats West. I think that it's too
scary to not do the West, and so I mean,
I'm learning more and more and more now, but at
the time, I was like, we're going to do East
(09:18):
meats West, and I know that a body that's ravaged
by cancer is already so weak. So my spidey sense said, well,
wouldn't you want to counter the negative effects of that
with some optimization of the immune system. So I researched
this facility in Mexico called Baja Medgate run by Jennifer
(09:41):
Mealy who got cancer taking care of her mom with cancer,
so she knew that the caretaker needed as much attention
as the patient. And my mom went down there and
we did two weeks of you know, whether it was
high dose vitamin sea drips, clean food while she was there,
and coffee and IMA's and they did this whole protocol.
(10:02):
All of that really helped her a lot with the
chemo fog as well. And we did the ketogenic diet.
They kind of laughed at me when I proposed it,
and my mom we did a modified ketodiet because I
didn't like the idea of a long term, high fat
(10:24):
content diet and I wanted my mom to live long term.
So I said, Mom, listen, we're going to cut sugar,
but you can have cream and cheeses and you know
all the fat you want bacon, And so we did
that and we did some supplements. I have her whole
journey on my show, and if you go into heal
(10:47):
squad dot com, you can look up the different health
journeys and find all of those interviews I did back
twenty sixteen through twenty twenty before she passed. If you
guys want more information, that doctor MURHATI funny enough. Going
(11:15):
back to Shannon, he pulled me aside once and he said,
I one hundred percent believe that your mom's success is
due to what you guys have been doing in Mexico,
because my mom went back again. And so that made
me feel really, really good, and I knew it was helpful.
So my mom eventually got COVID, and while she was
(11:39):
in the hospital with COVID, I knew mentally I could
lose her. So I had an idea where nobody was
allowed to visit. As you know, at the time in hospitals.
I put her phone on a little phone stand my
husband made with a magnet before war, making them, and
(12:01):
I gave it to the hospital. I said, plug the
sin and let's keep her on FaceTime with me so
I can keep talking to her. So what happened was
I was able to see that people weren't going to
see her. Doctors weren't going to see her. Only nurses.
And two days after she was admitted with COVID and
was very serious. I said, oh, she's responsive now, and
(12:25):
we're you know, what do they say, not dismissing her,
but releasing her? And I said, wait, you're releasing a
COVID patient with stage four brain cancer. To me, what
am I supposed to do? I don't know how to
do this. I can't even go into her room to
help her. No, No, she's responsive now. I'm like, that's
funny because I've never seen her be responsive. I said,
and I've never met you, And she's like, excuse me.
(12:47):
I go, well, I've been on twenty four hour FaceTime
with her. She's been in the shower with me, she's
been in the car with me, she's been in bed
with me. I've never left her side and I've never
met you, and the doctor was in shock. I said,
I've met the nurses, I know them all by name,
I don't know you. And so at that moment I
knew I had to get her out of there. So
I transferred her to Cedar Sinai and at that point
(13:11):
she was in great hands, great care, and I continued
to sing to her, to talk to her. Sometimes it
would take hours, guys, to get her to respond back.
But my whole goal was keep her brain fresh. And
eventually she was discharged to me in LA and we
got a brain scan and we saw that in the
(13:32):
time she had COVID. Yes, we got her out. She
survived COVID. The brain tumor without the treatment's quadrupled in size.
And this was it. So a new friend I just met,
I'm incidentally at lunch with him, and I said, yeah,
I got a research into some kind of flight to
get my mom back because she's bedridden and I need
(13:55):
to get her home so she can have safe passage
with her family. And he was like, well, why don't
you just take my plane me And while guys, I
had no idea he even had a plane. This is
just God, and I go what and go I can't
do that. So then later the next that next day,
my friend calls me. She's like, are you going to
do it? Are you going to take him up on it?
And I go, no, I can't do that. Are you crazy?
I don't even know him, like I just did his
(14:16):
podcast once and she's like, Marie, he's serious. His name
is Edma led Guys, he's a wonderful person. And he
gave me his plane and I flew my mom home safely.
And that was January, oh gosh, twenty twenty one, and
(14:38):
I learned so much in the caretaking journey because I
think it was later that month her primary care physician
out here was like she came to visit her and
she loved her, so she was, you know, I think
just kind of jumping into conclusion. She's like, your mother
is an organ failure, multiple organ failure. She's dying. Let
her die. Just let her die. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa?
Who do you think you are telling me to let
(15:01):
her die? I'm not in charge here, God's in charge.
I'm going to do everything I can and make her
journey comfortable and heal whatever I can heal in the interim.
If she's got anything going on, I'm fixing it, and
then God will take her when it's time. So I
had to. I was like, you know, why don't we
just get some evidence of this. Let's get some blood work.
(15:24):
By the way, he learned a lot about hospice. They
apparently get budgets and whatever they don't spend they get
to keep, so they didn't want to spend on getting
blood work done from my mom. I'm grateful that I
was able to do it on my own. And what
did it reveal. Oh, my mom's blood was like a
twenty five healthy year old person, So I guess she
(15:45):
wasn't a multiple organ failure and I wasn't gonna morpho out.
So it was a long journey and I just kept
saying to everybody, we don't know how this is going
to end. We don't know if God's going to give
her a miracle and she's going to walk out. I'm
going to keep on keeping on with her everything that
I can. It was hard, it was long, and I
(16:06):
learned a lot of things like, oh my gosh, if
you have anybody in hospice listened to my episodes on
that because there's a company called Purewic for women. It's
an external female catheter that was life saving because the
problem when you have someone in bed is bed sores,
and so the ear mattresses will only do so much
if you're wedding diapers and not changing them fast enough.
(16:28):
So this was a game changer. But there's so many
other things that I learned along the way too that
I've shared there. So I just kept saying, Mom, you're
a miracle, and you've been a miracle. My mom lived
five years with stage four brain cancer, and I just
think at the end of the day, I just kept saying,
I want to believe in possibility, and I've led my
(16:51):
life like that. I'd rather believe in possibility than subscribe
to any diagnosis statistics or any Google and interpretation or
even doctor's interpretations. I want to believe in possibility because
I know miracles happen every single day. You read the
book Radical Remission, you see examples of it all the time.
(17:11):
Why can't you be that example? Why can't you be
that story? So I would say it to my mom,
we don't know how the story is going to end.
So eventually on Greek Easter, God took her on his
holiest day in the most peaceful ways, surrounded by all
of us. We felt our heart was going slow, brought
(17:32):
family in, we all hugged her. We all literally were
hanging over her bed. And she passed, and that's what
was meant to be, and so ugh it was obviously
really hard, but I knew that we did everything that
(17:54):
we could, and we did give her a safe passage.
And now she was with God and she was safe.
And I learned a tremendous amount about caretaking. I learned
so much about healing that helped me on my journey.
Because thereafter I'd gotten the COVID vaccines for my mom
and dad to protect them, I didn't want to. I
could feel my body screaming no, but I didn't listen.
(18:16):
And then soon after I got diagnosed with a pancreas
tumor called neuroendercontumor. Before that, I got diagnosed to type
one diabetes, which if you start to do the research,
you'll see that a lot of people after COVID got
type one or diabetes in general. Now we're hearing all
about the turboive cancers and so many other things, and
so I've had the brain tumor, the pancreas cancer, the
(18:38):
type one diabetes, a bunch of other things. Spots here,
spots there. Last year, they thought I had liver cancer.
So I went to the Equator and I did a
whole healing journey there. I have been learning so much
on my show that has saved my life. And Doctor Allison,
my natural path here in Connecticut, has been incredibly powerful
(19:02):
in my healing journey because she's really taught me about
nature and all of the elements of healing that we ignore.
Whether it's the sun, whether it's grounding, those things can
be really really powerful. And so everything I've been studying
about blue light, Like right now, I'm wearing my blue
light glasses. I see every sunrise and every sunset, and
(19:26):
I make sure that I'm grounding and all of those things.
And I'll tell you when they thought I had liver cancer,
I was like, I don't have this. I'm like, I
think this is just my body is not filtering things
out easily enough. So I'm going to go to the Equator.
From everything I've learned from this other doctor Cruz and
doctor Allison, I'm going to go create my own protocol.
(19:49):
And I did so for two and a half weeks,
I grounded, never wore shoes grounded. And we're only the
We're the only primates that have sweat glands in our
hands and feet. So when you ground you take in
negative electrons that go into your body and neutralize the
positive electrons. The positive is illness. So knowing that, I
(20:12):
was like, Okay, I'll try it. Let's see if it works.
I don't know. I got every sunrise, I got that
sun on my skin, I got the sunset. I sweat
so I could help detalks. And grounding in the ocean
is really really powerful. It helps. So if you go
to the edge of the water and you put your
hands and feet there, you sit on your butt and
(20:32):
you put your hands and feet down, that's like supercharged.
So I did that and in two and a half weeks,
all the lesions in my liver shrunk and I was like,
holy shit, this works. So it's been a journey, and
it's been a journey of like lessening the toxin load,
which has helped me tremendously, helped me with fatigue, with pains,
(20:57):
with headaches and so many things. I really gone baby
stepping into the clean world where it's like clean skin products,
clean hair. I mean, if you think about it, your
skin is your largest organ Anything you put on your
skin goes in. So if you want to transition, they
give you like estrogen patches or whatever, and it helps
(21:19):
change that. So why would shampoo or anything else be
any different. Now, we're not going to be perfect. There
are going to be things that we're just not gonna
want to change. I get it, but we have to
lessen our loads a little bit. And so I've tried
to clean out my food, my products, my beauty products,
(21:40):
and it's made a big difference. I do my non
negotiables in the morning is I get my sun rise,
I get my Fascia release work done. So I have
this whole fashion release program that Lauren Russbroo taught me
on Heel Squad that has also been on my Instagram.
You can check it out. The Fascia stores everything and
and it's really really powerful and there's a whole list
(22:04):
of what it does there. I'll do ice face baths
at times. That's not just for vanity, it's actually really healing.
I do red light and meditation. So if you are
wanting to heal, who and you want to use your
brain in your mind. I've had mind blowing results with
(22:25):
doctor Joe Despenza's program. So he has a program called
the Formula, and it's of course you can take online.
Within three days, my anxiety completely went away. And I
never thought I could go to a meditation event. I
thought I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out, and I'm not
like I never could really figure out the meditation thing.
(22:47):
But with his program, oh my, it was life changing.
He teaches you that in order to heal, you have
to change you. Your personality creates your reality, and he
teaches you all of this, and it's unbelievable, scientifically backed,
(23:08):
scientifically studied and tested. He healed his spine with his
mind after a car wreck. And so basically, when I'm
doing these meditations, I create this movie in my mind
of what I want. I want doctor Black to tell
me the tumor is gone. I want doctor Allison to
tell me my A and C went from a ten
point six to a five point three. And I will
(23:30):
celebrate the victory of her telling me this as if
it's happening in real time and your body and your
brain don't know the difference between perception and reality. So
whatever you tell yourself is what your body and your
brain thinks is real. So I'm telling myself that I'm healed,
and guys, it would actually happen. I'd be in the
middle of my meditation, playing my movie and I'd hear
(23:54):
and see doctor Allison tell me your A and C
is a five point three. Holy shit. And then I
was like, oh my god, you told me that today. Oh,
oh my god, you told me that yesterday. And that
just kept happening. I had an allsion in my breast.
I was shrinking that that trunk. There's been so many
amazing health recoveries just by doing Doctor Joe. So I
(24:19):
always highly recommend that to people because it's a very
very accessible thing to do. If you're looking for something.
By the way, relaxing yoga Nidra is amazing. I love
yoga Nidra. You can go on YouTube, just YouTube Yoga
Nidra if you want something that's going to relax you
(24:40):
and recharge you in fifteen or twenty minutes. It's freaking amazing.
But this meditation thing is more than meditation. With Doctor Joe,
it changes your whole life. So he says at some point,
you'll feel like there's so much joy coming out of
you for no good reason. And I remember walking into
my kitchen like two months after doing this, and I
looked at Kevin, my husband, and I said, honey, I
(25:01):
could lift a car with my joy. I didn't even
know this joy existed. So that was really powerful in
my journey as well. And I think being open, you know,
(25:26):
what do you have to lose by trying a high
dose vitamin C drip? Obviously you have to do it
with somebody that you trust, who's going to test your
blood levels and make sure you're good. You know what
is I don't like hyper bearer chambers. It didn't feel
right to me. But there's a lot of stuff out
there that you can do. But definitely cutting sugar has
(25:46):
been a game changer, I think, and some of the
treatments that we did in Mexico, and so I guess
my goal today was just to kind of share what
we've done, what we've gone through, and to help you
believe impossibility and in those moments when life strikes, like
(26:08):
when they told me I had paint Grace cancer, I
was on my knees. I had just found out that
we were pregnant maybe two months before. I was carrying
with the surrogate, not me, because the brain tumor prohibited
me from getting pregnant. Just found out we had a
baby after ten years of trying, and I was like,
how could God finally bless me with a baby, and
(26:30):
now he's going to take me. This doesn't make any sense.
And the next morning after being diagnosed, I was just
in the fetal position and I was looking at my
church icons and I was like, this doesn't make sense.
And then finally I thought of something I'd learned on
my show and with my hypnotherapist, and she said, choose
(26:52):
wonder over worry. So I said, I wonder what it's
going to be like when the doctor calls me next
with good news, And guys, did I wonder what it's
going to be like when I get through surgery and
I'm safe. I wonder what it's going to be like
my first pet scan comes back and I'm safe and
I'm clear. It all kept happening, and so I think
(27:12):
we have choices in life, right, doesn't mean we're not
going to get knocked down. I was on the floor.
I was like, holy shit, I can't even believe this
is happening. Oh my god, Oh my god, pancreast cancer
after a brain tumor crazy. But I remembered that it's
not my story to write. My story's in someone else's hands.
(27:36):
So all I can do is control how I react,
how I act, and my kind of belief system. And
so choosing wonder over worry was really helpful. And believing
impossibility and realizing that I don't want to create the
ending to the story because we are really powerful and
(27:57):
I know that. And so if I keep thinking I'm
going to die, and I keep thinking the worst is
going to happen, maybe I'll contribute that to that. I
don't know. But what's going to help me get through
this easier, what's gonna help me get through this easier
is believing in possibility and believing that I could be
a miracle. And so I chose that again. It takes
(28:19):
a minute, and I'm really grateful to be here with
you guys right now to be able to say that
I feel vibrant and healthy and doesn't mean that everything's
perfect under the hood. In fact, whenever I go to
the doctor and a new tech is looking up my records,
they're like this, isn't you right, And I'm like, oh, yeah,
(28:41):
that's me. But I'm thriving despite and I'm learning how
to heal, and I'm learning how to use what God
has provided, that red light from the sun in the morning,
the grounding from the earth, and so much more to
heal and to get back to nature. The problem is
(29:02):
is we've created our environment rather than living in the
real environment. And so I think that we have to
start focusing on that and realizing that the answers are
within us if we listen to ourselves, if we listen
to our inner guidance, And that's something that you really
have to cultivate, and I cultivated that. When my mom
(29:22):
was sick, I would ask God for help, and you
can ask whoever it is. You can ask Buddha, you
can ask whoever the universe. You know, God. I would
go ahead be like God, I don't know what to
do next with her, this is what's happening. I don't
know what to do, and the answer would come in
the craziest of ways. Asking for signs is something that
(29:43):
I was inadvertently doing. But then doctor Joe really taught
me in his courses to ask for signs and it's
so rewarding when you do it. But the answers always came.
I was never abandoned. I was always always guided and
assisted through the journey. And Saint Nctarios is our healing saint,
and Saint Nctarios will heal anybody of any faith that
(30:07):
believes in him. And by the way, there's an amazing
movie called Man of God that was made about his
journey and how slandered he was and the jealousy that
people had because he was so pure, and like you're
watching priests and patriarchs and bishops and stuff be jealous
of him. It's a really good movie. It's not just
like a church movie or anything. But I highly recommend it.
(30:32):
And I think I think that you know, we have
to believe, and so I will leave you with that.
I know the journeys are really really hard and really
really painful, but we have to believe in something greater.
And I hope that I hope that this was helpful,
(30:52):
and you know, just know that you're loved and you
are being guided and that your journey is yours for
a reason. And I always have believed the life is
happening for me not to me, and so when these
things happen, I say, Okay, well, maybe this is meant
(31:13):
to happen to me because I'm strong enough to handle it.
Maybe it's happening to me because I can communicate to
other people and I can share, and I'm a problem
solver and I can figure it out, and so I
feel like that's what I'm trying to do with it
all is be able to share. But it's not just me,
it's you too. And if you can affect one person
(31:34):
with your journey and your story, you've done your job
and helped somebody else. So I tell people all the time,
share your stories and share your journey because people need
to hear it, and everyone's going to have a different way,
and everyone's going to have something that resonates with them
and doesn't resonate with them. So you got to listen
to you. You know yourself better than any doctor is
(31:56):
ever going to know you. And the second you start
to farm out your power outside of you, that's when
you start to lose. So listen to yourselves, listen, ask
for guidance, and at the end of the day, go
with what you feel is right for you. Don't be
afraid everything you want is on the other side of
(32:16):
fear is a great quote from Georgia Dare and so
ah with that, guys, I hope you have a wonderful,
blessed day, and I hope you guys will tune into
my new holiday movie get a good escape. It's called
Christmas at Plumb Hill, Manor, and they'll share all the
(32:37):
details for that, and then come join the Heel Squad
if you want to go on the healing journey with us.
That's a leve
This is let's be clear with Shannon Dorny. Hey, let's
be clear, family. I'm Mariama Nunos, your guest host here today.
I am really excited to be with you guys today. First,
I'm just gonna ask God for a little guidance today
so I can be as useful as possible and as
(00:23):
helpful as possible to all of you, because that is
my goal today. I've gone through a lot of stuff
health wise in the last seven years along with my
mom and previously my entire life with my dad as
a Type one diabetics, so I think that there's a
lot of stuff that I can probably share that could
(00:44):
be helpful. I also host my own health and wellness
podcast called Heel Squad that has been a wonderful training
ground for me because I have experts from all over
the world coming in sharing their insights, sharing their her
incredible wisdom and information, and it's you know, saved my
(01:05):
life on many occasions, along with my moms and so
many others. So hopefully I can do Shannon proud today
and all of you proud. I literally cannot believe that
I'm on this show right now without Shannon, and that
she is no longer with us in the physical I
watched her growing up on nine oh two and oh
(01:27):
and of course that was my favorite show at the time,
and it's just a crazy world, you know. One day
we're here, one day we're not. I remember she was
getting treatments with my mom's radiologist, doctor Murhatti, and I
was just praying for her. But you know, God has
(01:50):
a plan for all of us, and obviously this was
his plan. So I am happy to be with you
guys today. I think first I'll kind of give you
a little background on what's gone on with me, so
you understand some of the things that I'm going to
share with you that will hopefully help you in your
healing journeys, because I know a lot of you are
on that journey. First, I grew up with my Type
(02:15):
one diabetic dad. My parents were immigrants from Greece, and
my mom and dad had a lot of jobs, but
cleaning nightclubs was the biggest one because they didn't speak
the language and it was just the easiest thing that
they could do, and they couldn't afford babysitters. So my
brother and I used to go and from the time
we could hold them up or a broom, we would
(02:36):
be working with them and helping to get done, because
the faster we would get done, the faster we could
go to the next place in the next place, and
then that meant the faster we could get home, or
the faster we could get to my cousin's house to
actually enjoy life. But throughout the process, because my dad
did such manual labor, and because of the language barrier,
(02:58):
and because of the financial situation and the times at
the time, type one diabetes was a lot more life
and death. Thirty years ago, there was no CGM monitors,
there were no pumps, there were none of that. So
my dad, with the manual labor, his blood suggers would
(03:18):
drop on the regular NonStop, and if he wasn't with
us and didn't show up at home at the time
we expected him, my mom would start to fret and
start calling hospitals looking for him. She'd call police stations
because sometimes when he would have a diabetic episode, people
wouldn't be able to interpret that it was that. They
(03:40):
would think he was just this wild man who was
maybe drunk. So we grew up in a lot of
fight or flight. My mom and I really grew up
learning how to be in tune. We're both very intuitive.
Whether that was cultivated by need or granted by God,
I don't know. But we learned learned to be so
(04:01):
in touch with him that we knew, whether we were
three thousand miles away from him or twenty miles away,
that he wasn't okay. It was just how do we
find him and then how do we revive him? So
I remember one time I was in school and I
just felt the tug in my heart and I knew
he wasn't okay. I ran home and I found him
collapsed in the bathroom and had to bring him back.
(04:25):
And that just was a normal thing. We knew the
firefighters by first name, and the ambulance burgers. They were
always at our house. And you know, it's no coincidence now,
knowing what I know, that my mom got a thyroid condition,
it's no coincidence that I later got hashimotos. And you know,
(04:47):
my parents, you know, ate very healthy, we very healthy,
but she did get a thyroid condition, and my dad
was Type one diabetic, and you know, those were all
these things in the back of my head. But once
my career started taking off, I started eating fast food,
and you know, working eighteen hour days, seven days a week,
(05:11):
and career, career, career and success, success, success, and make money,
and all of that kind of took front seat. And
you know, I always say, that's kind of how we're trained.
We're trained from a young age to get good grades, succeed,
go to a great college, succeed, make a lot of money,
(05:32):
and then sometimes after that it's like marriage and kids
and then health not a peep. No one teaches us
how to be healthy. No one teaches us the foundational
kind of rules of health that were set out by
nature and by God. And so it's it's challenging in
this climate to even understand health until it happens to you.
(05:57):
And I always say it's only a matter of time.
No one really evades the health thing. There's always going
to be something. Now what that something's going to be
is the question. So in twenty sixteen, my mom that
(06:18):
whole year wasn't feeling well. Something was wrong, we didn't
know what it was, and she was finally diagnosed with
a malignant brain tumor in September twenty sixteen. It was
called leoblastoma Dudley's cancer, stage four brain cancer shook our
whole family, but I was determined to keep her alive.
(06:38):
So I threw the ferocity that I had put behind
my career into her. And at the same time, I
had to make sure I maintained all of my jobs
in an even higher level so no one thought I
was slipping. So, whether it was e news or serious excem,
I was overperforming to make sure that they didn't think
that I was not focused. And so I started having
(07:00):
symptoms myself. My head's my head was exploding. I was
needing multiple coffees to get through the day. I started
learning my speech, and then I got this ear pain
in my right ear. The finally sent me to the
doctor because I thought I must have an ear infection.
This is crazy. Thirty eight or whatever. I was thirty
eight or thirty nine, and when I went, mind you,
(07:24):
this is months after, He's like, you don't have an
ear infection. What else are you feeling? So I told
him the symptoms that I just laid out to you guys,
and he said, I don't think this is oh oh.
So I said, uh, I'm feeling you know, headaches, this
not the other thing. And I go, oh my god,
and he goes what I go. I think I have
a brain tumor like my mom. Where that came from,
(07:47):
I have no idea, but flash forward to get an
MRI and I too have a brain tumor. Months later,
I'm having brain surgery at Cedar SINAI, the same room
as my mom, by the same doctor, the brilliant doctor
Keith Black. Mine was benign and it was a long surgery.
It was long, I don't know, at least six and
(08:09):
a half hours, and luckily I got through that, and
then the rest of the health crises kind of followed after.
So two years ago, I was feeling some stuff. I
was bloated and not feeling right my stomach, and I
kept searching for answers. Now at this point, I've been
hosting my own podcast, Heel Squad for a couple of
(08:33):
years because when my mom was diagnosed, I wanted to
find answers, and then I needed answers, So I started
bringing in all these healers and practitioners and people with
other thoughts and modalities to help us. And so, you know,
my mom because of all of this, I say so
first as God. Second was her amazing outlook and positivity.
(08:57):
Third was all the alternative things that we did to
counter the effects of the treatments on the western side.
So I love Eastmeats West. I think that it's too
scary to not do the West, and so I mean,
I'm learning more and more and more now, but at
the time, I was like, we're going to do East
(09:18):
meats West, and I know that a body that's ravaged
by cancer is already so weak. So my spidey sense said, well,
wouldn't you want to counter the negative effects of that
with some optimization of the immune system. So I researched
this facility in Mexico called Baja Medgate run by Jennifer
(09:41):
Mealy who got cancer taking care of her mom with cancer,
so she knew that the caretaker needed as much attention
as the patient. And my mom went down there and
we did two weeks of you know, whether it was
high dose vitamin sea drips, clean food while she was there,
and coffee and IMA's and they did this whole protocol.
(10:02):
All of that really helped her a lot with the
chemo fog as well. And we did the ketogenic diet.
They kind of laughed at me when I proposed it,
and my mom we did a modified ketodiet because I
didn't like the idea of a long term, high fat
(10:24):
content diet and I wanted my mom to live long term.
So I said, Mom, listen, we're going to cut sugar,
but you can have cream and cheeses and you know
all the fat you want bacon, And so we did
that and we did some supplements. I have her whole
journey on my show, and if you go into heal
(10:47):
squad dot com, you can look up the different health
journeys and find all of those interviews I did back
twenty sixteen through twenty twenty before she passed. If you
guys want more information, that doctor MURHATI funny enough. Going
(11:15):
back to Shannon, he pulled me aside once and he said,
I one hundred percent believe that your mom's success is
due to what you guys have been doing in Mexico,
because my mom went back again. And so that made
me feel really, really good, and I knew it was helpful.
So my mom eventually got COVID, and while she was
(11:39):
in the hospital with COVID, I knew mentally I could
lose her. So I had an idea where nobody was
allowed to visit. As you know, at the time in hospitals.
I put her phone on a little phone stand my
husband made with a magnet before war, making them, and
(12:01):
I gave it to the hospital. I said, plug the
sin and let's keep her on FaceTime with me so
I can keep talking to her. So what happened was
I was able to see that people weren't going to
see her. Doctors weren't going to see her. Only nurses.
And two days after she was admitted with COVID and
was very serious. I said, oh, she's responsive now, and
(12:25):
we're you know, what do they say, not dismissing her,
but releasing her? And I said, wait, you're releasing a
COVID patient with stage four brain cancer. To me, what
am I supposed to do? I don't know how to
do this. I can't even go into her room to
help her. No, No, she's responsive now. I'm like, that's
funny because I've never seen her be responsive. I said,
and I've never met you, And she's like, excuse me.
(12:47):
I go, well, I've been on twenty four hour FaceTime
with her. She's been in the shower with me, she's
been in the car with me, she's been in bed
with me. I've never left her side and I've never
met you, and the doctor was in shock. I said,
I've met the nurses, I know them all by name,
I don't know you. And so at that moment I
knew I had to get her out of there. So
I transferred her to Cedar Sinai and at that point
(13:11):
she was in great hands, great care, and I continued
to sing to her, to talk to her. Sometimes it
would take hours, guys, to get her to respond back.
But my whole goal was keep her brain fresh. And
eventually she was discharged to me in LA and we
got a brain scan and we saw that in the
(13:32):
time she had COVID. Yes, we got her out. She
survived COVID. The brain tumor without the treatment's quadrupled in size.
And this was it. So a new friend I just met,
I'm incidentally at lunch with him, and I said, yeah,
I got a research into some kind of flight to
get my mom back because she's bedridden and I need
(13:55):
to get her home so she can have safe passage
with her family. And he was like, well, why don't
you just take my plane me And while guys, I
had no idea he even had a plane. This is
just God, and I go what and go I can't
do that. So then later the next that next day,
my friend calls me. She's like, are you going to
do it? Are you going to take him up on it?
And I go, no, I can't do that. Are you crazy?
I don't even know him, like I just did his
(14:16):
podcast once and she's like, Marie, he's serious. His name
is Edma led Guys, he's a wonderful person. And he
gave me his plane and I flew my mom home safely.
And that was January, oh gosh, twenty twenty one, and
(14:38):
I learned so much in the caretaking journey because I
think it was later that month her primary care physician
out here was like she came to visit her and
she loved her, so she was, you know, I think
just kind of jumping into conclusion. She's like, your mother
is an organ failure, multiple organ failure. She's dying. Let
her die. Just let her die. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa?
Who do you think you are telling me to let
(15:01):
her die? I'm not in charge here, God's in charge.
I'm going to do everything I can and make her
journey comfortable and heal whatever I can heal in the interim.
If she's got anything going on, I'm fixing it, and
then God will take her when it's time. So I
had to. I was like, you know, why don't we
just get some evidence of this. Let's get some blood work.
(15:24):
By the way, he learned a lot about hospice. They
apparently get budgets and whatever they don't spend they get
to keep, so they didn't want to spend on getting
blood work done from my mom. I'm grateful that I
was able to do it on my own. And what
did it reveal. Oh, my mom's blood was like a
twenty five healthy year old person, So I guess she
(15:45):
wasn't a multiple organ failure and I wasn't gonna morpho out.
So it was a long journey and I just kept
saying to everybody, we don't know how this is going
to end. We don't know if God's going to give
her a miracle and she's going to walk out. I'm
going to keep on keeping on with her everything that
I can. It was hard, it was long, and I
(16:06):
learned a lot of things like, oh my gosh, if
you have anybody in hospice listened to my episodes on
that because there's a company called Purewic for women. It's
an external female catheter that was life saving because the
problem when you have someone in bed is bed sores,
and so the ear mattresses will only do so much
if you're wedding diapers and not changing them fast enough.
(16:28):
So this was a game changer. But there's so many
other things that I learned along the way too that
I've shared there. So I just kept saying, Mom, you're
a miracle, and you've been a miracle. My mom lived
five years with stage four brain cancer, and I just
think at the end of the day, I just kept saying,
I want to believe in possibility, and I've led my
(16:51):
life like that. I'd rather believe in possibility than subscribe
to any diagnosis statistics or any Google and interpretation or
even doctor's interpretations. I want to believe in possibility because
I know miracles happen every single day. You read the
book Radical Remission, you see examples of it all the time.
(17:11):
Why can't you be that example? Why can't you be
that story? So I would say it to my mom,
we don't know how the story is going to end.
So eventually on Greek Easter, God took her on his
holiest day in the most peaceful ways, surrounded by all
of us. We felt our heart was going slow, brought
(17:32):
family in, we all hugged her. We all literally were
hanging over her bed. And she passed, and that's what
was meant to be, and so ugh it was obviously
really hard, but I knew that we did everything that
(17:54):
we could, and we did give her a safe passage.
And now she was with God and she was safe.
And I learned a tremendous amount about caretaking. I learned
so much about healing that helped me on my journey.
Because thereafter I'd gotten the COVID vaccines for my mom
and dad to protect them, I didn't want to. I
could feel my body screaming no, but I didn't listen.
(18:16):
And then soon after I got diagnosed with a pancreas
tumor called neuroendercontumor. Before that, I got diagnosed to type
one diabetes, which if you start to do the research,
you'll see that a lot of people after COVID got
type one or diabetes in general. Now we're hearing all
about the turboive cancers and so many other things, and
so I've had the brain tumor, the pancreas cancer, the
(18:38):
type one diabetes, a bunch of other things. Spots here,
spots there. Last year, they thought I had liver cancer.
So I went to the Equator and I did a
whole healing journey there. I have been learning so much
on my show that has saved my life. And Doctor Allison,
my natural path here in Connecticut, has been incredibly powerful
(19:02):
in my healing journey because she's really taught me about
nature and all of the elements of healing that we ignore.
Whether it's the sun, whether it's grounding, those things can
be really really powerful. And so everything I've been studying
about blue light, Like right now, I'm wearing my blue
light glasses. I see every sunrise and every sunset, and
(19:26):
I make sure that I'm grounding and all of those things.
And I'll tell you when they thought I had liver cancer,
I was like, I don't have this. I'm like, I
think this is just my body is not filtering things
out easily enough. So I'm going to go to the Equator.
From everything I've learned from this other doctor Cruz and
doctor Allison, I'm going to go create my own protocol.
(19:49):
And I did so for two and a half weeks,
I grounded, never wore shoes grounded. And we're only the
We're the only primates that have sweat glands in our
hands and feet. So when you ground you take in
negative electrons that go into your body and neutralize the
positive electrons. The positive is illness. So knowing that, I
(20:12):
was like, Okay, I'll try it. Let's see if it works.
I don't know. I got every sunrise, I got that
sun on my skin, I got the sunset. I sweat
so I could help detalks. And grounding in the ocean
is really really powerful. It helps. So if you go
to the edge of the water and you put your
hands and feet there, you sit on your butt and
(20:32):
you put your hands and feet down, that's like supercharged.
So I did that and in two and a half weeks,
all the lesions in my liver shrunk and I was like,
holy shit, this works. So it's been a journey, and
it's been a journey of like lessening the toxin load,
which has helped me tremendously, helped me with fatigue, with pains,
(20:57):
with headaches and so many things. I really gone baby
stepping into the clean world where it's like clean skin products,
clean hair. I mean, if you think about it, your
skin is your largest organ Anything you put on your
skin goes in. So if you want to transition, they
give you like estrogen patches or whatever, and it helps
(21:19):
change that. So why would shampoo or anything else be
any different. Now, we're not going to be perfect. There
are going to be things that we're just not gonna
want to change. I get it, but we have to
lessen our loads a little bit. And so I've tried
to clean out my food, my products, my beauty products,
(21:40):
and it's made a big difference. I do my non
negotiables in the morning is I get my sun rise,
I get my Fascia release work done. So I have
this whole fashion release program that Lauren Russbroo taught me
on Heel Squad that has also been on my Instagram.
You can check it out. The Fascia stores everything and
and it's really really powerful and there's a whole list
(22:04):
of what it does there. I'll do ice face baths
at times. That's not just for vanity, it's actually really healing.
I do red light and meditation. So if you are
wanting to heal, who and you want to use your
brain in your mind. I've had mind blowing results with
(22:25):
doctor Joe Despenza's program. So he has a program called
the Formula, and it's of course you can take online.
Within three days, my anxiety completely went away. And I
never thought I could go to a meditation event. I
thought I'd rather gouge my eyeballs out, and I'm not
like I never could really figure out the meditation thing.
(22:47):
But with his program, oh my, it was life changing.
He teaches you that in order to heal, you have
to change you. Your personality creates your reality, and he
teaches you all of this, and it's unbelievable, scientifically backed,
(23:08):
scientifically studied and tested. He healed his spine with his
mind after a car wreck. And so basically, when I'm
doing these meditations, I create this movie in my mind
of what I want. I want doctor Black to tell
me the tumor is gone. I want doctor Allison to
tell me my A and C went from a ten
point six to a five point three. And I will
(23:30):
celebrate the victory of her telling me this as if
it's happening in real time and your body and your
brain don't know the difference between perception and reality. So
whatever you tell yourself is what your body and your
brain thinks is real. So I'm telling myself that I'm healed,
and guys, it would actually happen. I'd be in the
middle of my meditation, playing my movie and I'd hear
(23:54):
and see doctor Allison tell me your A and C
is a five point three. Holy shit. And then I
was like, oh my god, you told me that today. Oh,
oh my god, you told me that yesterday. And that
just kept happening. I had an allsion in my breast.
I was shrinking that that trunk. There's been so many
amazing health recoveries just by doing Doctor Joe. So I
(24:19):
always highly recommend that to people because it's a very
very accessible thing to do. If you're looking for something.
By the way, relaxing yoga Nidra is amazing. I love
yoga Nidra. You can go on YouTube, just YouTube Yoga
Nidra if you want something that's going to relax you
(24:40):
and recharge you in fifteen or twenty minutes. It's freaking amazing.
But this meditation thing is more than meditation. With Doctor Joe,
it changes your whole life. So he says at some point,
you'll feel like there's so much joy coming out of
you for no good reason. And I remember walking into
my kitchen like two months after doing this, and I
looked at Kevin, my husband, and I said, honey, I
(25:01):
could lift a car with my joy. I didn't even
know this joy existed. So that was really powerful in
my journey as well. And I think being open, you know,
(25:26):
what do you have to lose by trying a high
dose vitamin C drip? Obviously you have to do it
with somebody that you trust, who's going to test your
blood levels and make sure you're good. You know what
is I don't like hyper bearer chambers. It didn't feel
right to me. But there's a lot of stuff out
there that you can do. But definitely cutting sugar has
(25:46):
been a game changer, I think, and some of the
treatments that we did in Mexico, and so I guess
my goal today was just to kind of share what
we've done, what we've gone through, and to help you
believe impossibility and in those moments when life strikes, like
(26:08):
when they told me I had paint Grace cancer, I
was on my knees. I had just found out that
we were pregnant maybe two months before. I was carrying
with the surrogate, not me, because the brain tumor prohibited
me from getting pregnant. Just found out we had a
baby after ten years of trying, and I was like,
how could God finally bless me with a baby, and
(26:30):
now he's going to take me. This doesn't make any sense.
And the next morning after being diagnosed, I was just
in the fetal position and I was looking at my
church icons and I was like, this doesn't make sense.
And then finally I thought of something I'd learned on
my show and with my hypnotherapist, and she said, choose
(26:52):
wonder over worry. So I said, I wonder what it's
going to be like when the doctor calls me next
with good news, And guys, did I wonder what it's
going to be like when I get through surgery and
I'm safe. I wonder what it's going to be like
my first pet scan comes back and I'm safe and
I'm clear. It all kept happening, and so I think
(27:12):
we have choices in life, right, doesn't mean we're not
going to get knocked down. I was on the floor.
I was like, holy shit, I can't even believe this
is happening. Oh my god, Oh my god, pancreast cancer
after a brain tumor crazy. But I remembered that it's
not my story to write. My story's in someone else's hands.
(27:36):
So all I can do is control how I react,
how I act, and my kind of belief system. And
so choosing wonder over worry was really helpful. And believing
impossibility and realizing that I don't want to create the
ending to the story because we are really powerful and
(27:57):
I know that. And so if I keep thinking I'm
going to die, and I keep thinking the worst is
going to happen, maybe I'll contribute that to that. I
don't know. But what's going to help me get through
this easier, what's gonna help me get through this easier
is believing in possibility and believing that I could be
a miracle. And so I chose that again. It takes
(28:19):
a minute, and I'm really grateful to be here with
you guys right now to be able to say that
I feel vibrant and healthy and doesn't mean that everything's
perfect under the hood. In fact, whenever I go to
the doctor and a new tech is looking up my records,
they're like this, isn't you right, And I'm like, oh, yeah,
(28:41):
that's me. But I'm thriving despite and I'm learning how
to heal, and I'm learning how to use what God
has provided, that red light from the sun in the morning,
the grounding from the earth, and so much more to
heal and to get back to nature. The problem is
(29:02):
is we've created our environment rather than living in the
real environment. And so I think that we have to
start focusing on that and realizing that the answers are
within us if we listen to ourselves, if we listen
to our inner guidance, And that's something that you really
have to cultivate, and I cultivated that. When my mom
(29:22):
was sick, I would ask God for help, and you
can ask whoever it is. You can ask Buddha, you
can ask whoever the universe. You know, God. I would
go ahead be like God, I don't know what to
do next with her, this is what's happening. I don't
know what to do, and the answer would come in
the craziest of ways. Asking for signs is something that
(29:43):
I was inadvertently doing. But then doctor Joe really taught
me in his courses to ask for signs and it's
so rewarding when you do it. But the answers always came.
I was never abandoned. I was always always guided and
assisted through the journey. And Saint Nctarios is our healing saint,
and Saint Nctarios will heal anybody of any faith that
(30:07):
believes in him. And by the way, there's an amazing
movie called Man of God that was made about his
journey and how slandered he was and the jealousy that
people had because he was so pure, and like you're
watching priests and patriarchs and bishops and stuff be jealous
of him. It's a really good movie. It's not just
like a church movie or anything. But I highly recommend it.
(30:32):
And I think I think that you know, we have
to believe, and so I will leave you with that.
I know the journeys are really really hard and really
really painful, but we have to believe in something greater.
And I hope that I hope that this was helpful,
(30:52):
and you know, just know that you're loved and you
are being guided and that your journey is yours for
a reason. And I always have believed the life is
happening for me not to me, and so when these
things happen, I say, Okay, well, maybe this is meant
(31:13):
to happen to me because I'm strong enough to handle it.
Maybe it's happening to me because I can communicate to
other people and I can share, and I'm a problem
solver and I can figure it out, and so I
feel like that's what I'm trying to do with it
all is be able to share. But it's not just me,
it's you too. And if you can affect one person
(31:34):
with your journey and your story, you've done your job
and helped somebody else. So I tell people all the time,
share your stories and share your journey because people need
to hear it, and everyone's going to have a different way,
and everyone's going to have something that resonates with them
and doesn't resonate with them. So you got to listen
to you. You know yourself better than any doctor is
(31:56):
ever going to know you. And the second you start
to farm out your power outside of you, that's when
you start to lose. So listen to yourselves, listen, ask
for guidance, and at the end of the day, go
with what you feel is right for you. Don't be
afraid everything you want is on the other side of
(32:16):
fear is a great quote from Georgia Dare and so
ah with that, guys, I hope you have a wonderful,
blessed day, and I hope you guys will tune into
my new holiday movie get a good escape. It's called
Christmas at Plumb Hill, Manor, and they'll share all the
(32:37):
details for that, and then come join the Heel Squad
if you want to go on the healing journey with us.
That's a leve
Host
Shannen Doherty
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