Latest / HAVE FAITH LET IT BEGIN® / Inspiring Journeys of Cancer Survivors with Talaya

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Inspiring Journeys of Cancer Survivors with Talaya · HAVE FAITH LET IT BEGIN®

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  Music.
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  Howdy Croc Nation. Dr. Tommy and Ellie here with you with another amazing Croc podcast.
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  Along with me is my page, my valet, my co-host, my best buddy,
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  the master of disaster, the professor of the seminary, Angel Santana,
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  have faith. Let it begin.
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  Angel, I am so excited today. We get to talk to my favorite guest of all time.
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  There's nothing better than being on the other side, there's a great segue,
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  to be with one of our, you know, definitely one of our favorite creators and
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  podcasters out there, but more importantly, coming together and reuniting and
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  to do a collaboration is what this is all about.
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  Yes, Dr. E, I have been waiting and I have, we said offline,
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  I am strapped in, my tray tables are in the upright position and Kroc Airlines is ready to take flight.
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  Fantastic. And I want to just kind of sort of a little background.
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  So in the clinic, we get so many magazines and so many cancer journals and cancer
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  survivor journals and cancer survivor stories. And.
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  You know, we get inundated and I just happened to be looking or leafing through one of them.
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  And I came upon an article about a cancer doula.
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  So anyone who doesn't know what a doula is, it's someone who facilitates or
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  assists a patient during a process. So you can have a birth doula,
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  you can have a death doula.
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  And I had never heard of a cancer doula.
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  So I read the article and the spirit and the soul, the energy,
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  the kindness, the goodness of this woman was just jumping off of the magazine.
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  It was just, the magazine was like, it was like the burning bush of articles.
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  And I thought, do you think this lady would even talk to us?
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  I sent her an email And she was so kind and receptive and such an elegant and dignified person.
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  And she was so kind to come on. And we did an episode about what is a cancer doula.
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  And I think what I love the most about Talaya is the fact that she is a survivor thriver.
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  And I think, again, Angel, we say it every week. We do these podcasts for the
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  benefit of our survivor thrivers, to give them the tools they need to have a
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  better survivorship, to enjoy their life's journey with cancer after beating cancer.
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  But we've never been sitting in that chair yet.
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  It's not our turn. We will one day, but certainly not now. So it limits us.
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  So when we get people like Talaya, who has
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  a personal experience and the profound impact of her diagnosis and how she was
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  told that she had cancer while she was Friday night leaving corporate America
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  on a freeway and getting a call from a nurse and being told that she has cancer
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  and then pulling over to a mall and stepping into a store,
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  not knowing where she was or what she was doing,
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  couldn't even process the information and took that as sort of a...
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  As an inspiration after her cure and her survivorship began to then circle back
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  and change her life's destiny to be an advocate and a doula for cancer survivors.
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  Angel, your thoughts before we introduce this amazing saint and angel.
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  They say that the man upstairs does not make mistakes. They put people at the
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  right time, at the right place, and they're about to sit front Center for this.
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  Helaya, welcome. Dr. Ian Angel, thank you so much. I'm so honored to be here with you today.
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  And every time I come here, you make me want to cry, but good tears, good tears.
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  It's just so nice to have someone see you and really see what you're trying to do in the world.
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  So thank you gentlemen so much. And I'm happy to be here with you.
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  Well, we thank you and we thank you for your time. So I told you I was going
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  to ask you this question. So it's not like I'm rabbit punching you.
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  Give us an update on Talaya and on the other side, and please tell us how our
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  listeners can get to you and your work and your podcast and your website.
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  Yes. So Dr. E, I am still working on creating awareness about what a cancer
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  doula is. A lot of people still are not aware.
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  January 1st, to be exact, I was featured in an article with Sky News in the
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  UK, and they actually did an article on myself and several other women who are doing work as doulas.
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  So quickly, there are all kinds of doulas now.
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  It goes beyond birth and death and cancer. There's divorce, menopause.
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  I think there was one who lost their job, so they help people find jobs and things like that.
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  So there are so many doulas and it's really picking up now.
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  Another thing that I'm really excited to be working on, Dr. E,
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  is I am trying to create a platform.
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  I'm calling it Navigating Cancer Together, Cancer Community Platform,
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  and a forum, I should say.
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  And so it is going to be a space where survivor, thrivers, caregivers can come
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  to a space that is not on social media where they can see a lot of the information that I have to share.
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  Videos, it's just like social media, but not on social media.
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  Post, information, updates, but then they will be able to communicate and comment
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  in the privacy of a group.
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  So they won't have to be fearful of what they share, how people will respond.
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  It's all going to be in a private group. And so that is something that I'm really
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  hoping to be able to launch in the next couple months.
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  I just released the waiting list for it
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  and they can go to my website ontheotherside.life to join the wait list.
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  And when they join and when the wait list is ready,
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  They will get notification from me that, hey, it's open.
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  Come on over. Let's start these
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  discussions. Let's share information to support and uplift each other.
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  Navigating Cancer Together is still going strong. That is my podcast.
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  I think I'm at 157 episodes. I will be working or participating in podcast on this year.
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  And so what it is, is a very special event hosted by Podcast Thon.
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  And it goes from, I want to say, March 15th, I think, through like the 21st, if I'm not mistaken.
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  And it is an opportunity where podcasters have an ability to highlight a specific
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  organization, a nonprofit.
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  And so this might be something Angel and Dr. E, you might want to take part in.
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  You dedicate a episode sharing information about this particular organization
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  to help create awareness.
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  And if money's raised, great, but it's really about creating awareness.
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  And it's a really great opportunity. So I hope that people will keep an eye
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  out for that. I am planning to release that special episode March 19th.
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  Yes, March 19th. That's a Wednesday.
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  And so keep an eye out for podcasts on. And again, it's an opportunity for podcasters
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  to highlight their favorite nonprofit organization to get more eyes on it and
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  eventually support more people.
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  So those are some of the things that I'm working on.
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  I have some other things cooking, but I kind of want to keep quiet on it a little
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  bit to kind of see what happens.
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  Most recently, I released another site on the other side, and it is where I
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  support healthcare providers and nurses.
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  And I provide them with health and wellness coaching for nurses and other healthcare
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  workers who are suffering from burnout, overwhelmed, fatigue.
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  They're just kind of frustrated. They feel like they don't have work-life balance
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  because that's the other part of it.
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  They need support just as well as the patient.
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  And so just trying to be in the middle and support both sides,
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  but then also create a way for them to better communicate with each other as well.
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  So those are some things that I have going on and we'll see how it goes.
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  You are one busy lady, and we are very grateful for you. Angel,
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  did you take notes? Because you're fired.
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  Talaya, you're the new co-host of half of the Crock podcast.
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  And now, Angel, you'll be missed.
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  I'm already packing my bags. You're the best, Angel. Don't listen.
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  So, Talaya, we ended the year with a podcast, I guess, triad of miracles.
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  So our survivor thrivers who are told that they're not going to make it or given
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  bad news and their miraculous stories, their miraculous journeys,
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  and we've done two of them.
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  And we thought that having you on as a guest with some of your experiences would
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  be a nice way to round out our, as I said, our three podcasts,
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  I guess, theme of miracles. Angel, does that sound right?
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  Absolutely. Right on the button. And, you know, it was a great time for me to share with her.
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  And of course, as we continue on with this, I kind of like almost like our own
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  type of module, if you want to call modules.
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  But it was really just a great opportunity for me to reach out to her and say,
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  hey, look at the two episodes we've done.
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  And, you know, I mean, I'll let you comment on that. But I think it was really
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  a perfect time for her to come back.
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  Yes. Thank you so much for sharing those with me, Angel. I thought they were so timely.
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  Mary's story was just heart touching. also Dee, and perfect timing around Christmas.
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  Mary, Joseph, everyone, I'm like, they did a great job with this.
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  And I really understood, Dr.
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  E, with Mary, why she may not have wanted to personally come on,
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  but her story was just so timely and so relevant and it shined through,
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  even though she wasn't the one telling her story, you were. So you did a fabulous job.
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  And thank you, Dr. E for, you know, really, it was almost like you were speaking
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  from your perspective as well, but you were telling Mary's story.
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  And I think it's so important to hear that from, you know, the doctor,
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  the healthcare team as well.
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  It makes it more personal. And with Dee, wow, the way that you gain trust with
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  Dee, I'm like, we need more Dr. E's everywhere.
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  I love how you said you let her guide you. You let her lead.
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  You were patient. You didn't just come in and say, hey, I need you to get it together.
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  I need you to trust me. You worked with Dee and you understood why she may,
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  you know, why she had those trust concerns. And, you know.
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  You honored that. You respected that. And that's what all of us need.
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  We need doctors who are going to take the time to understand past traumas that
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  we may have experienced in healthcare.
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  And so wonderful job. Wonderful. I enjoy listening to them.
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  And I just want to give a shout out to both ladies, Mary and Dee.
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  You are amazing. Keep going. And God has the final say, you know,
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  and just continue to advocate for yourselves.
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  In Dr. E. I know you're going to do it, but keep being you.
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  Keep being you because we need more doctors and healthcare providers like you
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  who are going to take the time to make that connection, to hear and see the patients,
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  and to love them as human beings.
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  And that's what you do, Dr. E. And I felt it in each episode. So great job.
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  Oh, thank you so much. I will say that with D, I used every trick in my 40 year old bag.
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  I was running out of tricks to Leah and thank God she, she came around because
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  I didn't really have anything else smart to do.
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  So, you know, it just, so it just worked out. And again, as Angel always says,
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  it's always meant to be in our creator.
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  Our, our God is always so good to us and gives us because we're just,
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  we're just the vehicles for these cures. It's not us.
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  We're just the hands and the mouths and the minds of God is really what we are.
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  Yeah, I agree with that. But great job making that connection and forming a
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  human bond because that's so important.
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  And I think that's often overlooked is seeing that person as a human being,
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  not just seeing the cancer, but then also respecting their background,
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  their perspectives, their experiences, and their traumas.
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  All of that's so important, Dr. Ian, you got the whole package.
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  So, hey, you're on a roll, buddy.
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  Yeah. And I have hair now. So, it's all coming together.
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  Talaya, give us a little background on the patient that you'd like to discuss.
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  Yes, I would like to tell you about Kelly. And Kelly was actually on my show.
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  She has since written a book and she advocates for others.
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  Now, Kelly was diagnosed with head and neck cancer, which some people roll it
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  all together and call it oral cancer.
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  And so Kelly was diagnosed with oral cancer in October of 2014.
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  In 2016, she was told that she was terminal and she had about four to six months to live.
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  Well, despite all the surgeries, all the treatments, disconfiguration of her
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  face, all the different hurdles, not being able to eat, swallow,
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  all of these things, Kelly is still with us today.
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  And Kelly is still thriving.
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  And Kelly has written a book. It's called Expiration Date Straight from the
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  Terminal Oral Cancer Ward.
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  And I just think it's so amazing how for a woman, you know, it can be really
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  hard to show your face when you go through all these different changes.
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  Just think about some women won't even leave the house without makeup on.
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  And so to navigate through life with this change that has happened to your face
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  and to still show up, to advocate for others,
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  to guide others, I think is just a testament to her strength, her resilience,
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  and her will to live and in the power of God as well.
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  Because this woman was told she only had four to six months to live in 2016.
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  Today, she's thriving. She's not at home laying in bed and doing all these things. She has a blog.
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  She's written a book. She does all these different things with her family. She has a life.
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  And I think Kelly's story is so important because it shows you that you can
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  go through something really hard. You can be written off.
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  You could be told that, hey, your days are numbered.
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  And God will say, well, that's not what I said. And here we go.
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  I love it. And just to give the listeners a little background on head and neck
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  cancer, it's actually a subject that's very near and dear to my heart.
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  And, you know, I go on these podcasts and I'm a very optimistic practitioner
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  and I'm extraordinarily, I try every possible way to make patients feel comfortable.
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  And have access to me. And I wear the jerseys and the whole thing.
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  And I have to tell you, the only time that I'm not me is when I have my first
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  visit with a head and neck cancer patient.
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  And there's a reason. So to really uplift and really.
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  You know, try to put Kelly's story into perspective, I become this very,
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  very transparent and negative Nelly.
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  And I go through head, neck cancer for an hour about all the terrible things
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  that are going to happen to them.
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  And not just for a day and not just for a week,
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  not just for a month, but it takes an entire year that not even get back to
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  normal, but hopefully get back to about 75% or 80% of normal.
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  Every single thing that's important to us, our ability to communicate with others,
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  our ability to enjoy a meal,
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  to have dinner with family and friends,
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  to be able to enjoy and taste and experience the beauty of cuisine.
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  Ethnic food, the beautiful spices and fragrances and textures and taste of food.
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  To be able to swallow, to be able to take food and without even thinking about
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  it, just chew it and suck it down.
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  And you're watching a football game and you're eating your wings and you're
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  not even thinking about what you're doing because it's so easy.
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  It comes so naturally. It's like breathing.
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  And also the thing that we think is disgusting, it's called spit.
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  Spit is the greatest thing that God has ever invented because it allows us to
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  do all the things we mentioned.
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  Then you take the inner linings of our mouth and the top of our.
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  Palates and the bottom of our tongues and all those tissues that coat in line
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  our aerodigestive tract,
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  and then you throw some chemotherapy and radiation therapy at it,
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  and this entire environment changes drastically.
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  Patients dry up.
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  Everything tastes like cardboard.
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  They can't swallow. They can't talk. They can't communicate.
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  And the worst thing about it is all the pain, but more so the thickening of
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  their secretion. So they're always feeling like they're drowning.
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  And then we just keep on pushing it and pushing it.
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  They start feeling this after week two, they go to week three,
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  they go to week four, five, six, seven.
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  They're in their seventh week of therapy.
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  And finally they see the light at the end of the tunnel, but is it really the
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  light at the end of the tunnel?
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  It's not because even though when they come back two weeks later,
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  they're, They're not the walking dead anymore, but they're still close to that.
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  And then they come back a month later and they're tiny, tiny increments of improvement. And then...
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  After the three-month mark, when they get their restaging, the PET scan,
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  which shows complete response and cure of the cancer, they still don't feel like who they were.
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  And it takes months and months and months.
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  And it's so important for me to change, to become, go from Dr. Jekyll to Mr.
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  Hyde, because I need these patients.
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  I need these survivor thrivers to be prepared.
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  Doctors are famous for under explaining and for not being accurate for what
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  a patient is going to go through.
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  We don't use words like pain. We say, you're going to be a little uncomfortable.
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  We're not going to say this hurts.
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  We're going to say, you're going to feel a little pressure.
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  So after all my decades of practice and after seeing the devastation that my
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  modality does to these patients.
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  I am the, I am the camp Pendleton, the, the, what a Paris Island Marine drill
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  sergeant just for that one hour.
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  And then after I break them down, then I bring them back together.
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  So I just want to, I'm sorry to kind of jump in on, on your,
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  you know, beautiful story.
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  Um, but I did want to add like a layer of complexity, a layer of another dimension
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  to it so everyone understood exactly what Kelly went through.
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  Thank you, Dr. E. I think that's so important. And I really love how real you
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  are, because that does help mentally prepare someone for what's to come.
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  You know, the part of uncertainty and not knowing what to expect can cause so
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  much anxiety for survivor thrivers.
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  And so I really love how you say, hey, there's going to be pain,
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  not just a little discomfort, you know, so people can mentally prepare for that.
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  And thank you so much for sharing that, Dr. E.
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  The other thing I think is really important to share about Kelly,
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  and her name is Kelly Uren Moody.
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  And Angel, I will share her information as well. So if people are interested,
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  they can check out her book or go to her blog.
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  But Kelly had shared with me that her favorite word is gratitude.
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  And so despite all the things that she has been through, her body has been through,
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  the changes that she has had to go through due to surgery.
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  If I'm not mistaken, she doesn't have part of her tongue any longer,
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  if I'm not mistaken. She's still grateful.
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  She's still grateful to be alive. She's still grateful to have her loved ones, her life.
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  And so I just want people to know that it doesn't matter how you look.
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  It doesn't matter what you've been through.
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  Just keep showing up for life because that's so important and show up in the best form that you can.
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  None of this is easy. Cancer is not easy. But Kelly is definitely an inspiration.
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  And she is the real deal, too. Like you, Dr.
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  E, she will be honest about what she has experienced, what it has experienced.
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  Taken her through, what she has had to give up. And so in all the trials and
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  tribulations, I know sometimes that, you know, she's not feeling well and things like that.
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  That's still a part of her journey, but each day she continues to keep going.
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  And so check out Kelly Uren Moody and her website is faceitheadon.com.
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  So faceitheadon.com.
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  And I love the name of her website because that's exactly what she does.
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  She faces it head on every day. And she's been doing that since 2014.
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  So if that's not, you know, an example of hope and determination, I don't know what is.
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  Oh my God, what a great way to end a three podcast series, Kalaya,
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  so beautifully and compassionately relayed to us and to our survivor thrivers.
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  Angel, you always get the last word.
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  You know, I find it amazing as we're talking about Kelly and I was able to scroll
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  and see that she is at a five-star rating for this book.
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  And what I did was actually, as you were telling the story, is that I purchased
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  a book and we're going to donate that book to any listener that listens to our
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  episode. And we're going to give that book free.
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  So I have just purchased the book right now. It's available on Amazon hardcover.
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  So I did do that. And I think that it's important that this story lives on.
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  One of the greatest things that I saw was at the very end,
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  as you can now hear my little son in the background, but as you can hear,
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  one of the greatest things that we heard was the ending part of the description
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  of the book, which you were so great enough to paraphrase.
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  And it says that she does, however, emphasize that it's a okay to laugh while you cry.
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  In the end, the gratitude shines through. That is amazing.
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  Excellent. Talaya, in closing, any last thoughts or words about Kelly or about
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  yourself before we do our croc blessing?
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  Well, Angel, first of all, I want to thank you so much for purchasing a book
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  and gifting it to someone who could really benefit from it. Thank you. That's a blessing.
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  And I'm sure Kelly would appreciate it as well.
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  Dr. E, thank you so much for everything that you do.
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  Thank you for allowing me to share Kelly's story and be a part of the series.
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  It's such a blessing. And I love to be in community with doctors and physicians like you.
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  Angel, great job on everything that you do to keep the show going.
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  And I just, I just really love you guys. I'm so happy that we met and I look
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  forward to doing more. So thank you.
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  You will be on forever and ever and ever until you're 90.
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  So, you know, you, so you will get what you wish and you may wish that you didn't
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  wish what you did all kidding aside to Leah.
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  It is an honor to collaborate with you. It is an honor to be on this earth at the same time with you.
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  It is an honor to not only know you as a colleague, but to know you as a friend.
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  And you are always welcome here and your work, your life's work is, is a destiny.
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  It is a, it is not a job. It is not a something that you do. It's not a side hustle.
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  It is in your soul to help, to help others and change the care and the outcomes
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  for our survivor thrivers being one yourself.
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  So what better way to end, Angel, but with our croc blessing.
• 26:21
  And today, instead of, well, it's always a blessing for all of our Survivor Thrivers.
• 26:26
  But I'm going to ask this blessing specifically on Talaya.
• 26:29
  And I always say, and I ask our creator, our Lord or God, to give our Survivor
• 26:36
  Thrivers Talaya and allow them to live a very long, healthy,
• 26:41
  happy, and cancer-free life.
• 26:43
  God bless you, Talaya. God love you, Talaya.
• 26:47
  Music.