Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone who is well-known, successful, and/or influential, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
“We were told I needed to get my affairs in order. I had maybe two weeks, but I wasn’t going to make it more than six months.”
The words no one wants to hear. The married father of one biological child and four non-biological children couldn’t process what the doctor was saying.
“It was PTSD and anxiety through the roof. My wife was freaking out. I was freaking out. But I had my Bible with me. I’ve never been a fan of opening up the Bible and pointing to a verse, but I just opened the Bible and Psalm 23 was right there.”
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
The doctor said the man needed surgery. The man said he needed a second opinion. He went to The University of Texas MD Anderson Center in Houston.
“If they would have done surgery,” the Houston doctor said, “they probably would have killed you.”
The man took a few weeks of oral chemotherapy, which only made his pancreatic cancer worse. So, he stopped the treatments. He stopped listening to doctors. He started to fight with his own non-medical weapons.
“The good news is that there are no changes with the mass on my pancreas,” the man said of his most recent scan. The really good news is that my liver and adrenal glands are clear, without any metastasis.”
Mark Woods, who lives in Shreveport and plans on turning 54 years old in December, told me this story, and his story, during lunch at Cracker Barrel. Mark had a salad (the restaurant was out of olive oil, so Mark ate his salad dry), and a cup of coffee. I enjoyed two pieces of grilled catfish, with sides of carrots and corn, and water to drink.
“I have to be really, really careful about what I’m consuming. This war I’m fighting with the cancer in my body, there are certain things of which cancer feeds off. All that stuff I was eating before, a lot of ground beef, protein, fats, a lot of granulate bad sugars, one you cut off that food source, the cancer is in trouble.”
Four years ago, Mark had a feeling something wasn’t right. But he didn’t have any real symptoms until one day when he went to the bathroom. He bled. And bled. And kept bleeding.
“It started about 5pm and the next morning, it was still going. I went to stand up and got light-headed. That’s when I knew I was on the front steps of Hemorrhagic shock, which means you are bleeding out. I had lost way too much blood.”
But Mark had not lost his sense of humor.
“I told my wife, ‘Ok, honey. Go ahead and finish your cup of coffee. Then, I need to go to the hospital.’”
Once Mark got to the ER, “They started doing all kinds of scans, and that’s when the doctor came in and said, ‘You’ve got a tumor. You’ve got several tumors. The one in the pancreas, we’re going to check first.’”
Cancer.
“The tumor was wrapped around a blood vein. It was very serious.”
The doctor was able to stop the bleeding. Mark went home and, as he was told, got his affairs in order. A few weeks later, Mark was at M.D. Anderson, one of the world’s most respected cancer treatment centers.
“Your best hope is we’re going to give you Chemo for a year, and then hope (the tumor) backs off the vein,” Mark was told. ‘Once it backs off the vein, then we’re going to do what’s called the Whipple surgery. We take out all the pancreas and your upper stuff. You will be on medicine the rest of your life. If that works, you might be okay.”
But after taking five or six weeks of chemo, Mark stopped.
“With the chemo, my cancer grew. The chemo was not effective at all.”
Instead of optimism, Mark felt “a lot of despair, just knowing this is it. This is probably the end.”
But Mark’s a fighter. He saw his father, a police officer, live with a broken back suffered while on duty breaking up a bar fight. Mark spent 20 years active in the Army and Air Force, which included tours to Kosovo and Iraq. Down but not out yet, Mark started researching ways to beat pancreatic cancer. He watched videos and read studies from the National Institutes of Health, and MD Anderson.
“The light bulb went off. I started understanding that fighting cancer is not about chemo . . . . Our cells go through a growth process. They live and die. But cancer cells don’t die. They feed off certain things, grow, and mess up everything.”
So, Mark began denying those cells of their food.
“I went total Vegan, Vegan as much as I possibly could. I was choking down as much kale as I possibly could. I ate so much kale that first month, that even now, when I walk into the store and look at kale, my stomach turns.”
Mark, who was a “husky” 280 pounds, lost 50 pounds.
“When you go Vegan, you drop weight quick.”
Mark began juicing carrots. “I was going through about 12 pounds of carrots a week.”
Just three weeks later, Mark could feel a difference”
“I wasn’t feeling as sluggish as I used to. I started getting more energy.”
That led to exercising.
“I started running like crazy, like I used to do back in the Army days. I started walking around the block, then I started doing this little jog around the block. I got up to eight miles.”
Mark kept getting scanned.
“The doctors didn’t want to use the word ‘remission’. But there was some improvement.”
Mark also sensed his Houston doctor didn’t want to treat someone who wouldn’t follow doctor’s orders.
“Once I told him I wasn’t going to do chemo anymore, I would go for appointments, and he would have his nurse talk to me.”
Mark got the same feeling outside of Houston.
“I went to an oncologist here in town. I went to his office one day feeling motivated. I was feeling good. He was like, ‘Well, let’s get you back on some chemo.’ I said, ‘No, I’m fighting cancer. I’m killing it.’ The doctors said, ‘Well, have a good day.’”
For the past year or so, Mark has worked as a mail carrier. Not because he loves delivering mail, but because he loves what results of his work deliver to his body.
“Sweating is part of the detox. It’s the body’s natural mechanism to detox chemicals out of the skin.”
And then there’s being in the sun.
“Radiation hits the skin, and the skin produces D-3, as well as Vitamin D, which helps the body fight stuff. It’s so important to make sure you get a certain amount of sunlight radiation.”
Mark has added some things to his daily intake:
-Eggs once every two weeks for B-12.
-Apricot seeds. “I think the bag says you can take three bags a day. I take 12.”
-A gram of Dog Dewormer.
-“Massive” amounts of Turmeric. “At the least, I put two or three tablespoons on a salad.”
-Curry. “I eat so much curry, I reek of it. My wife hates that.”
Mark and I visited on one of his vacation days. Not wanting to take up more time he could be spending with his family, I asked my final question. As always, what is it about his story that can be helpful to others. Mark didn’t hesitate to answer.
“Don’t ever quit. If I’m talking to someone about cancer and what they’re going through, I understand it’s hard. There’s a lot of pain and a lot of hurt, and you have to make a lot of decisions. But I want you to have the attitude of don’t you dare judge me by how hard I get knocked down. Judge me by how fast I come up swinging.”
Now, it’s cancer on the canvas, struggling to get up.
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.
The Journal’s weekly “What’s Your Story?” series is sponsored by Morris & Dewett Injury Lawyers.