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Dr. David Lemmon- Hello.Welcome to the Natural Cancer Support Channel. I’m your host, Dr. David Lemmon, naturopathic cancer expert. I’m here with my guest, Trent Brock, four or five time cancer survivor, and he has an incredible story. So I’m excited to hear it and share it with you. Welcome to the show Trent.
Trent Brock- Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.
Dr. David Lemmon- So, yeah, just dive right in and share your story kind of where you were before, just really briefly your normal life and then what happened with the diagnosis.
Trent Brock- Sure, sure. Well I’m originally from North Louisiana and I traveled around the states in the world doing IT systems ended up in New Zealand and I was there doing it and I had an opportunity to start a kettle corn business.
On the weekends with a buddy the thing blew up. They didn’t have kettle corn in New Zealand at the time So I I kind of transitioned from the I.T. Thing over to the popcorn thing Working small business, you know growing we ended up being the number two popcorn manufacturer in the country after 14 years of business that I was in business for back in 2019 In the spring walking, you know, working in the popcorn factory that I called Popcorn Heaven because I was there so much I started limping around and I went to a couple of GPs.
They all kind of have the same, same diagnosis. You know, you’ve torn a butt muscle picking up something heavy in the factory. But this was going on for a couple of months, and it just wasn’t getting better. It was getting worse. You know, the more I used it, the longer it went on, the more, the more pain.
And, and it, you know, kind of got to the point where, you know, after work, I just go home and go straight to bed. And I was in bed until the next day, which isn’t normal for me. Usually I’m, I’m pretty much a busy body. Had to go into the hospital for some blood work, totally unrelated to the, to the hip thing.
And the hematologist said, look, Trent, something’s wrong. I think we’re going to do an x ray. Kind of bickered about it. I said, okay, whatever. You know, I’ve already had, I’ve, it’s just a torn butt muscle. I’ve already been diagnosed. It’s kind of a waste of time, but okay, whatever. Did the x ray, left, went back to work.
Week later, she calls me, because I’m leaving popcorn heaven on my way to lunch. And says, hey, Trent, just want to tell you that we’ve got the results of the x ray, and it is aggressive, massive, pelvic, hip cancer, and you have about a quarter inch of bone holding your leg on. Where are you at right now?
What are you doing? You need to come straight to the emergency room. Every step that you take, you’re in danger of breaking your leg. You break your leg. It’s coming off. We’re surprised you haven’t broken it yet. Get to the emergency room right now. That’s the introduction. Yeah, just, just, blown away, shocked, right?
And immediately, immediately my mind, you know, this human mind, man, went to the, one of the worst places it could have gone. Because about nine months before, this happened. My brother’s best friend, one of my good buddies, my aunt and uncle’s godson died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 38 and left his wife and kids.
So I’m thinking, oh my God. Right. And so that’s kinda where everything just just started. Yeah.
Dr. David Lemmon- So it was a rare form of you said, sarcoma?
Trent Brock- Sarcomatoid carcinoma. Very, very rare. Rare carcinoma. Yeah. They have no idea how I got it, where it came from. Anything. They just have no clue. Don’t know where it originated from, where, how it spreads throughout the body.
Don’t, you know, don’t, it’s just a bit of a mystery.
And it was dissolving your bone and muscle in the hip area. Yep. And that was your left hip. Correct. Yes. And then what happened from there?
Yeah, so obviously they just, well, they decided they were going to do a big surgery and so, you know, it’s public health care.
The process was, let’s do the scans. Let’s build the implant. A couple months later, we’ll put the implant in. Well, the cancer had progressed, so the implant wouldn’t fit. Third time through, they’re like, hey, we’re cutting your leg off. You know, it’s, it’s too much. It’s too far gone. We’re going to do that. I kind of lost it, right?
Yeah. And my, , my dad, you know, I, I’d gotten smarter after a few appointments cause, you know, and this is just maybe a little just a nugget of advice for people. If you’re going in to talk about something serious, take someone with you or have someone on the phone cause what’ll happen is, they’ll deliver this info and you black out.
You’re talking, you’re, you’re, you’re, you know, you’re talking about things, life and death, limb, you know, limb leaving, keeping decisions here. You’ve talked through this, and then at the end of the appointment, you don’t know what you talked about. You don’t remember anything. So I’d have my folks on the phone with me to kind of help me remember, let’s, you know, did we all understand this correctly?
Did we all, you know, what are we going to do, kind of thing? So they were my support person. And they really, you know, that’s something that’s really good for you to have. Have a support person with you if you think you need it, right? So, my dad stepped in and just said, Look , my son’s a fighter. He’s not a quitter.
You’re gonna leave the leg or we’re flying out tomorrow. We’re leaving New Zealand. You have to leave the leg. You know, he will make this work one way or another. Just give him a chance. If you cut it off, we’re done. You can cut it off later if you have to, but leave it for now. Just leave it for now. So the doctor reluctantly agreed and said, Hey, you know I won’t guarantee functionality.
I won’t guarantee any feeling. You know, we’re basically going to cut the leg off, sew it back on. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s going to be like a stump. It’ll be shorter than the other for sure. He’ll be handicapped for the rest of his life and he’ll never walk again. No matter what. Leave the leg, we don’t care.
So they left the leg. Right? Thank God. But, the surgery was successful. Caused a chronic infection. Several, several Several more surgeries. IV antibiotics over four months. And recovery and everything. Never got rid of the infection, but I healed up enough to get out of the hospital. So they released me.
Mom and dad went home back to the factory and I had never I never stopped working the whole way through. You know, I mean, I own the business. I didn’t want the doors to close, so I just didn’t feel like I had a choice. So I’m running the thing from a hospital bed. Literally, I wasn’t allowed out of bed for 60 entire days straight.
You know, to go to the bathroom, they would kind of put me like on the board and roll me over to roll me back and Do my business and then, you know, roll me back over and, you know, it’s very humbling, very humbling, but yeah, so anyways, right? Get back to work, just trying to get back to routine. My yeah, mom and dad went home, next scan, pancreatic and lung cancer, okay?
I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. Well, pancreatic is obviously the more serious, and it’s less than a 5 percent chance to make it or a lot of what the statistics say. Okay. So that being the more serious thing, we’re going to do that surgery first. It’s on the bottom end of the pancreas. We’re just going to cut that tumor off.
And you’ll be fine. You’ll have the rest of your pancreas and everything will work fine. Okay. All right. COVID hit. They locked us down between the diagnosis and the surgery. You know, no support in the hospital. You’re all alone. Okay, fine. Surgery went well. You know, but on the debrief, it kind of got spun on me.
It was like, well, you know, congratulations, it wasn’t cancer. And I’m like, well, okay, well, what was it, right? Ended up, long story short, being a blood clot mistaken for a tumor from the scans and things. I just don’t understand, you know, how they couldn’t have picked that up. So, it doesn’t matter though, it doesn’t matter.
No consequences in public health care in that situation. Because. You know, you can fill out a complaint form, but there’s, there’s nothing. So just move on. Right. You know, we beat pancreatic cancer, so to speak. Let’s just be happy. Move on, take the positive. Then we had the lung surgery. So had the lung surgery that got infected.
And then they had decided when I had the original hip surgery, this is kind of what it looks like. I kind of use a few props to help people. So this is what my pelvis looks like. That would be the spine. This is the right side of the bone. This is what’s, this is what’s been removed, and they put a wire right here, and this kind of helps to keep the leg from moving up.
Well, they’re like, you know, Trent, you know, it’s been a year, it’s infected, this is what’s causing the infection, the wire. Let’s take the wire out, right? Now, just a week or so later, Just had this massive lung surgery. Okay, whatever. I don’t care. I’m on the drugs, you know, I’m no family there, no bodies, you know, there to really talk.
I said, okay, whatever. Well, they did the surgery. Got the, you know, took the wire out. Still had the infection. That never, that never got resolved. But what it did is, my leg had no, it had nothing to stop it. So over some time, it just kept migrating up to about four inches. So this is where my normal leg bone is.
This is the other side to a shoe that was this big, you know, crazy. So I’m on crutches with this thing, a couple of weeks turned into a couple of months, finally got rid of it, got over the hit, then the lung infection. The hip thing was still there, but they let me out. So I got out, you know, back to work, just trying to get back into routine.
Then the pancreatic thing. So then I really, the next scan is no, you really do have pancreas cancer. And they found it on the scan. It was kind of, it was this size, about the size of a couple of nickels. I was getting the scam reports by then, reading kind of how it progressed. In about four or five months, it had grown to the size of a tennis ball.
I was like, you know what? Waiting around with this public thing with this, with these delays and these long lead times between appointments and biopsies and results. I’m going to die here. Can’t eat. Losing weight. Look in the mirror. I’m pale as a ghost. I’m, I’m dying. I go to a private oncologist, I go to a private pancreatic doctor, and a private radiologist.
I’m like, I got to get some traction. We gotta get moving. The private radiologist said, look, you know, this has progressed too far, nothing we can do. , you know, no surgery, that’s too risky. No radiation, too risky. I’m not having any of that on my conscience, that potentially , anything that we do could kill you, so you can go home.
And what, wait to die? Point blank, that’s what I asked him. And he said, look, I, there’s nothing I can do for you. And I said, we know the percentages. You’re telling me to go home and wait to die. And he said, well, I can’t do anything for you and you may make it. Okay. Went to the private oncologist.
Gave me a year. My orthopedic that had done the lump thing, you’re done for, you should go home and be with your family. Lung doctor, same kind of thing. So, everybody started kind of counting me out. And the thing was, I just thought, you know, I didn’t realize, I was in New Zealand for like 17 years, I didn’t realize that some of the health care laws had changed.
You know, and, and, you know, back a while back, Pre existing conditions, you can’t get insurance. So I felt like I was stuck in this public thing because I was there and that’s the only insurance and I lived there for so long, right? I can’t come back to the states. Well, my dad and I kind of figured it out with the Affordable Care Act that You can get insurance.
It’s expensive. But there’s a stopping point to the limit you’re gonna pay, right? And you know, , I wasn’t gonna come home, bankrupt my family, and die on them. Because the chances were I was gonna die, right? I was most likely gonna die. And I just thought, well, when I die, you know, they can just ship me home, and it’s better to be sad.
Then, you know, be sad and broke is what I thought We found, you know, kind of loophole and I said, you know what it just changed my mindset and one day I was on the phone My folks after we’d had an appointment with one of the pancreas doctors, you know, and my folks are solid man, you know You know i’ve raised, you know, I was a christian and my folks are good firm christian people, you know, they’re firm They’re awesome.
They’re they’re they’ve been solid But I could feel it. You know, they were starting to lose hope. You know, their kids, their kids on the other side of the world in the middle of this COVID thing. And, you know, he’s gonna die there. And I just thought, you know what? I’m tired of watching sad parents bury their kids.
And I had a friend, I had a friend as well, about six months before I was diagnosed. My buddy that owned the, the cantina down on the waterfront, the Mexican restaurant and everything, got sideways in a business deal and went bankrupt. Went out in the woods and off-ed himself. So, I had to watch all that happen as well, right?
And I just thought, this is too much, man. I owe it to my folks. To fight this thing. I just can’t give up. I sat around the house a couple weeks playing the give up game and you know, waiting around like that. It was horrible. Just waiting around, counting the days, like, well, you know, to die, right? And I thought, I can’t do this.
I mean, I’m gonna go out, I’m gonna go out fighting. I’m not gonna quit. And, and I just, something clicked in me and said, I’m a fighter. I’m not a quitter. You know, if anybody can do this, I can. What my dad said, when this whole thing started, and I thought, you know what? A chance is a chance, and, and you know what?
You only really have one chance in life. And kinda, I got five. A five percent chance, I got five chances. Well, you know, one out of five, I can probably make this thing work somehow. I can figure this out. Every single problem I’ve ever had in business, I figured it out some way somehow we figured out a way to get there and I’m like this is nothing But a series of problems we can solve these problems, right?
And I thought but I had to change. You need a drastic result. You made it. You better make a drastic change So I started looking at my diet, you know, at my exercise, at my mind, you know, my will, my emotions, my body, , my spirit, you know, all the stuff and started thinking, whenever I’ve got free time and I’m not at work, I’m doing something to better my chances to win today.
And if you can win enough days in a row, you’ll stay alive. That’s kind of how it is. You’re not going to win every day. It’s not gonna happen, but let’s try that. So let’s make decisions, when you go to bed, when you get to tonight and you go to bed and you’re laying there all by yourself thinking about, I’ve only got a year to live.
Are you happy with your decisions today? Did you make decisions that better your chances? That just, just change these percentages just a little bit. Make it just a little bit better, right? So that’s kind of how I started out. That’s how I started out. You know, and, and, and just changing. You know, little things in each one.
But, you know, the whole way through. The diet, the exercise. That’s not that hard, right? It’s a decision. You either eat this or you don’t. You either go exercise or you don’t. That’s just self discipline. But the thing with the mind, you know, and that spiritual thing with your thoughts, that’s where the real battlefield was.
Because I’m practical. I’m factual. You know, these are the facts, this will be the outcome. I’m even, you know, kind of naturally wired up, a bit pessimistic. And I call myself a realist, right? So, I’m kind of going in already, negatively. And it took me, you know, I started with self help stuff. And I started finding stories, or, or, or anybody, some guy on the internet that had, that was in the same situation as me, that had beaten pancreatic cancer, right?
And how did he do it? What did he do? And, and, and, if, if I’m doing, you know, if he did this, And I’m doing all of this and more, well, I’ve got a better chance than him, you know, and, and, if I found something, you know, if I found something that resonated with me, let’s say it was a story, let’s say it was a book, let’s say it was, you know, a self help podcast of some sort, it kind of became my thing until It was, it was my thing.
And I would just listen to that, whatever it was like repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly, I would put it on repeat and I would, I would listen to it. I fall asleep, listen to it. I play it all night. I wake up, listen to it. And kind of my gauge was, I knew that if I woke up and the first thing I was thinking of was, was this thought or this thing, then it was getting in there.
Right. It was getting in my subconscious and then I knew I’m starting to win this game. Right. And then I’ll know that when something hits me, I’m going to react like this, you know, because my body was in just this, this, this, you know, fight mode for years, you know, this fight or flight thing. And it’s not good for you.
It’s not good to, for your body to heal in that, in that, the, you know, started with the meditation, you know, had a cancer counselor. I tried to do it on my own for a while. You know, that was tough. I needed somebody to talk to. And you know, we started with doing, doing some of the meditations and I combined a few of them kind of work for me with the leaves on a river and, you know, the body scan and then the tree and the forest thing, I kind of combine those in a way.
I mean, You know, you can, you make your own solution, right? And yeah, so some of those things kind of helped me. So that kind of gives you maybe, you know, a picture of, of, you know, how the, how the whole cancer thing started and, and where, where I, where I was like, I’m going to take myself. You know, I’ve got to start making some changes.
So I came back to the States. As they give me a year to live and I thought, you know what, let’s fight this from the home front with mom and dad. You know, they were down there with the hip thing. This was just, it was so hard on them staying in hotels and having to jump around and to the hospital every day and all, you know, tough.
And I just thought, We’re in northwest Arkansas. I’ve researched. It’s a little pocket of medicine here. They’re really working hard to make this thing. This place, you know, world class health care on a local level kind of thing is there is their thing. And I thought this would be better than going all over the country.
Let’s start at home. Went to the local clinic five minutes up the road and the radiologist, you know, walked in. I told him all my concerns, and told him what had happened. He said, Look, I think we can zap this thing. What about all these, you know, issues? Well, if we don’t do something, it’s gonna get ya. It’s gonna kill ya.
For sure. I mean, this thing is growing. You know, at an exponential rate, I said, okay, well, let’s zap it. And my thought was, I just need a little bit of outside help to kind of change this path. You know, I’m going to, I need something to just do this one 80 because I’m changing, you know, I’m in the process of working on my mental and my spiritual and my diet and my exercise and everything else, but I need a little outside help here.
And so it had grown to the size of a softball. Yeah. When they zapped it, and we got it. We got the thing, waited three months, had a scan, and they’re like, Well, we’re, we’re, we’re deeming this, you know, successful. Evidence of no disease. And I thought, wow, this is, this is unbelievable, you know? And we decided, let’s do some immunotherapy.
So, you know, I strongly evaluated that. And, you know, I didn’t like the idea of the chemicals, the, you know, the synthetic chemical thing in my body because your immune system is the only thing you’ve got when you fight cancer, right? It’s kind of the cancer. It’s that or the cancer. It’s one of the two, right?
And so I’m trying to protect my immune system and, and do things to build it up. Don’t want to tear it down, but I thought, you know, I’ve already had cancer three times. I better do something right. I was against chemo. I did not want chemo. For me, it wasn’t it wasn’t an option for what I have. I didn’t think it was going to work.
So we did the immunotherapy and, you know, I’m basically almost 3 years cancer free now. The infection thing, still had the infection, so, okay, you’re alive. You know, you’re here for your folks, but you’re handicapped. You’re still in these crutches, man, and this is miserable. I hate this. You know, I hate being on the crutch.
I want my hands back. I’m tired of people staring at me with this big old shoe I’m wearing. You know, this thing, I mean, goodness gracious, you know? It’s just embarrassing. I want to walk again. When all over the country, research about doctors all over the world talk to people, no, no, no, no, no. They did this, they did a replica of my pelvis.
This is what my pelvis looks like, right? And they’re like, we can’t, we have anything, we don’t have anything to bolt it to, and you’ve got this infection. Okay, so we gotta try to get over this chronic infection I’ve had for two years, dragging this leg around, shriveled up like a toothpick. And Found a doctor again here in Northwest Arkansas through my referral network.
This guy’s like, you know, one of these little bulldog fighter guys like me. And he just said, look, we’re going to get this thing. We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to get this infection and we’re going to give you a crack at doing this implant. He said, I’ll go to bat for you. You’re my guy. So, you know, I’ve learned.
I started building my team, right? I had my pancreatic doctor, my pancreatic radiation doctor. He was on my team. We had a plan. We created some hope, right? You know, I found somebody. It’s like if that wasn’t the right guy for me, then go to the next one. You know, find someone that fits with you. Not every, you know, that’s what’s so beautiful about the world.
Everybody’s different. Not everybody works together. Well, you know, this is a project. Let me pick. I’m the quarterback here. Let me pick my team. I’m picking my team. So I’m building my team. So, you know, I have this infectious disease doctor. We did three months of antibiotics IV two hours every day.
At the same time, you know, after a few weeks, Started getting sick, stomach problems, made me ill, but you know what, I did a three month course, instead of two, we decided we’re gonna zap this thing, I just said, look, let’s make sure we kill this thing, I don’t have to come back and ever do this thing again, and he’s like, well, we’re kind of pushing the limits of how much we can do, and I just said, well, let’s go to the limit, but no, so we did three months, remedied the infection, had all sorts of scans, aspirations, biopsies, blood tests, everything, we’re It’s gone.
It’s gone, right? So to speak. So to speak, right? It’s not, it’s not detectable. Well, I find this guy at Mayo, you know, I’ve been all going all over the country for the hip, for the hip pain and my orthopedic advisor that had kind of been with me since the, from the time I got here, kind of advised me, we’d check in every few months and he’s like, wow, man, like you beat this cancer, you know, and and, and, and now like, you know, we’ve beaten the infection and I said, well, I, you know, all this is to walk again.
You know, I just want to walk again that just simply, that’s all I said. I can’t find anybody said, Well, I got a guy for you at Mayo and I think I think he can do something. I said, But I’ve already been to Mayo. They’ve told me no, it’s not gonna work. He said, You haven’t seen this guy. I’m going to personally refer you to me, who worked under me as a student.
He does hips and knees that no one in the world will even attempt to do. This is his thing. This is his specialty. Think he could do something for you. Okay, went up there, we came up with a three part plan to try to get the four inches back. A couple of inches with a hip implant, a couple of inches with a with a bone lengthening procedure where they cut the femur, lengthen it with some keys over ratchet system kind of thing over some time the bone will grow and that’s kind of where I get the length back.
With, with the four and a quarter inches, you just can’t stretch things as far after they shrink, kind of what they say. or you’ll paralyze the nerves and there’s just so far you can go. So we kind of, you know, we got two and three quarter inches back. So, you know, this is a shoe I wear now. A lot closer to the ground, a lot more stable, got something to pull against.
It has some functionality there now. So what they did at Mayo is they put in the largest, most complex hip implant ever done in the world with some procedures that have never been attempted. This is kind of my little million dollar little implant piece. It goes like this, and you can see that’s where the ball is, so you can see kind of where it fits, and you can see the ball is a lot higher on this side than it would be on the other side.
And you know, I like to kind of show this x-ray to people. This is what kind of a typical, a typical hip implant would maybe look like, right? You just kind of see the little, little stem there, something kind of simple. This is what mine looks like, right? Got the rods and the screws going into the spine.
You got screws going all the way across and the other side and some stuff down below for support and you can see the stem there. So that’s where we’re at, man. That’s where
we’re at before that surgery.
Dr. David Lemmon- Did you still have your original hit femur bone with the ball or was that replaced already at that point?
Trent Brock- Yeah, you know a little bit of a shaving of some sort had come off. They aren’t sure if there was some infection from that, but kind of the top of the head was gone, basically. Not sure if someone had cut it off in a surgery, or, or something, but it was pretty much there. So, yeah, they, you know, they basically, you know, kind of removed part of the femur and stuck the stem down in there.
Dr. David Lemmon- And how’s walking now?
Trent Brock- Well I’m on one crutch now. So you know, it’s been five years. I’ve been on two crutches and, you know, I’m on one crutch now. I’ll be going to a cane soon and I think I’ll be walking. I’m already kind of walking. Let’s say like, you know, from, you know, the bedroom to the living room.
Yeah. I can do that. Or, you know, like maybe walk out, you know, from the front door to the car some, you know, things like that, but, but no long distances yet. And I’m still kind of doing the one crutch, but man, you know, progress, right? And, you know, the progress breeds progress.
Dr. David Lemmon- So do you, do you see yourself running in the future, or do you see it kind of stopping at walking? What’s your vision right now?
Trent Brock- Absolutely. You know, they said, you’re not going to run marathons. Okay, no problem. But you know what? I lift weights. I lift weights and you know, I’m just careful. I have to be careful, you know, to put the load on that engineering system that they built, you know, I mean, it, , you know, it could break, right?
That’s, that’s the concern and it’s a one shot deal. Some of these screws and bolts and stuff, it’s a one shot deal. They get loose, they come out, it’s over with, you’re back to where you were and there’s no way, I don’t look back, right? I leave that back there, I’m a go forward kind of person.
So. I’m not going to put myself at risk for that. But yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, I’m getting around, you know, I could do yoga. I did yoga for years before to prepare to get myself ready. That was one of the self help things that really, you know, work for me was the yoga with the strength and the balance and the mental and.
You know, the relaxation and, and, and the meditation and everything, you know, there’s, there’s something really cool about yoga. Because I was kind of a weightlifter guy, you know? I always lifted weights, I played sports, you know, that kind of thing, yoga, what’s that? But you know, hey man, right, right, you know, I said give it a try, I’m open minded to try anything.
I’ll tell you what, you’ve been told you’re dying enough times, you’ll try anything. To think, if you think it’s going to work, and you know what, most of the things that work are the things that just make simple common sense, that aren’t real difficult, that aren’t real complex, just the things that just, I mean, what did they do a hundred years ago, right?
They didn’t have all this stuff a hundred years ago, all the conventional medicine, and that’s kind of where my perspective was. You know, let’s use conventional medicine as part of it, but, you know, a hundred years ago, you know, they go out in the woods, right? They had everything they needed around them.
They used herbal supplements. They used, you know, practices like yoga and meditation, because they didn’t have surgery or, you know, counselors or, you know, synthetic medications and things like that. So my thought was, you know, let’s use this stuff when we can and let’s use it because we have it.
Let’s not put our, you know, head in the sand, but if there’s a natural alternative, there’s a natural option. Let’s explore that. Let’s try that. For me, my thought was, I think a combination of conventional and non-conventional is going to be the solution that’s going to work for me. My tailored solution is going to be only for me, going to work only for me, because I’m the only person that’s made like this in the world.
So, you know, you take the information that you get from the bits and pieces, you think about it, you put it together, and you get to make the final call, not someone else that’s trying to help you, right? That’s kind of my angle.
Dr. David Lemmon- Awesome. So do you feel like there’s any one therapy or treatment that you learned about that you did on your own that made the biggest difference for you? Or was it that holistic picture of building that mind, body, spirit plan around conventional care?
Trent Brock- You know, the holistic thing was good because it, because it all kind of begins to shape together. Right. And as it shapes together and as time goes on and you continue It gets bigger, you know, and the snowball gets bigger and that begins to take over your head space.
When, you know, you had this, this thing in here that was a bunch of negative thoughts and, and, you know, and a bad outlook and, you know, and everything that could be, that could be horrible. And, and, you know, that thing starts, you know, as a small little kind of pea and as it grows, it kind of just takes over your whole head.
But one of the things that helped me the most was meditation. Okay. Really. I mean, I’m just a regular guy, man. I’m not super like, you know, like super spiritual I’m not kind of like out there, you know crazy with it. I’m pretty realistic I’m you know, I’m pretty grounded with facts But I’m open minded and I’ll try something and I’ll give it a good chance And I just thought you know my counselor my cancer counselor saying try these meditations.
I think they’ll help you. Okay, I’ll do anything. Cause man, my head, my head was the fight, it was the game. How are you gonna beat this? Five professional surgeons have told you, you’re gonna die. How are you gonna, how are you gonna say, no way. Look them in the face and say, you know what, thank you for your opinion.
But I just think you’re wrong on this. Right, how do you, how do you, how do you do that after thinking for two years. You know, this mindset, this thing, you’re down this path. How do you change that? One of the biggest things for me was the meditation leaves on a river, right? So if you’ve never done meditation I will tell you now, the first several times you do it, you’re going to think, this didn’t work.
This is hogwash. Why am I wasting my time? You have to build up. You have to build up to it. It’s kind of like riding a bike. First time you get on a bike, you don’t do it. You got to try it a few times. You got to get on it. Then you kind of get in the groove, right? And you know, you build, you build up, you kind of build that snowball.
And the leaves on the river, if you’ve never heard of it, then basically what it is, is Yeah. You’re by a stream, you know, you find yourself in a, in a forest, by a stream, and the leaves fall off the tree, those are your problems, they blow into the, into the river, you watch them go down the river to where you can’t see them anymore, and your problems go away.
I don’t know really, how this works, I don’t know, I don’t understand everything behind it. But I can tell you, I did that. And I would do it every day. It’s a 10 minute meditation. Right? And I did it, and then after a couple of months, any time I started getting worried about my cancer, I’m like, no, no, no, nope, nope.
It’s on the leaf. I picture this little cancer thing on a leaf, you know, in the stream, and just watch it go down. And as it goes down the stream, at the end of my stream is Niagara Falls. So that thing falls over, and it just gets crushed. So we’re going to smash this cancer one way or another, right?
And that, that helped, that was probably one of the biggest turning points for me in my mental outlook. And you know, using the internet. To find people that were in a similar situation, what did they do? How did they beat it? If they can beat it, I can beat it. If someone before me has done it, I can do it too.
I’m doing all these things. I, you know, I’m doing all these things to better my chances. And I, I mean, I’ve gotta be doing more than this guy. Can he beat it? I’m gonna beat this too.
Dr. David Lemmon- You’re just an amazing poster child for what I teach with integrative cancer care. You listen to the conventional doctors and what they have to say. Some will say there’s nothing I can do for you. Like some had told you and others say, well, we can do this radiation. We can do this surgery. We can do this chemo.
And listen to that and see what the odds are, what the probabilities are that they, they tell you. And then you can go use that as information of, well, if the chemo doesn’t have very much effect. then it’s probably better to do these other things and build this holistic plan. But if the chemotherapy is a common one that my certain cancer does respond to, then that’s the wisest option is to do that and do the holistic things around it.
So conventional therapy has this triangle of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation. And If you build that into a round circle with the holistic things and add in the diet and the spiritual and the meditation and the exercise and all the other things that doctors don’t teach you, then you get this perfect, well rounded bicycle wheel metaphor so you can roll forward on that bike.
But if you just have a triangle for a wheel and you only listen to the doctors, then you’re stuck and you can’t roll forward. on a triangle wheel. So you kind of intuitively started to build more and more of that holistic well rounded plan into your story. So that’s amazing.
Trent Brock- I appreciate it. You know what, that’s a great metaphor.
It’s a great way to put it where the holistic kind of smooths the edges. You know, yeah, you’re, you’re right. It does inflate the flat tire.
Yeah. That’s awesome, man. I’m going to use that if you don’t mind.
Dr. David Lemmon- Definitely the other thing that I talk about in the 1st part of my course is the hero’s journey and it just seems like you’ve really exemplified the hero’s journey.
That is kind of the pattern for Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings, and Back to the Future and all these great famous stories where you’re in your everyday normal life and you’re just in your business and then you have this cancer diagnosis, this call to adventure, and you’re brought out of the ordinary world and everyday life.
And you’re told you have cancer and you know, your life’s never going to be the same. And then you find the mentors and you had tons of different doctors and experts and surgeons and coaches and meditation coaches, and all these mentors that you kind of hand selected over time when you’re in New Zealand, it sounded like it was more of a finding or just giving what you can in the, in the, in the National medical system, right?
You didn’t get to shop around as much. But as soon as you came back home to the States, you had a lot more freedom to handpick your team. Like you said, your quarterback. So you handpick your mentors and then you go through all these trials and surgeries and the pain and the infection and the recurrence and the second recurrence and the third recurrence.
And it’s just Yeah. Just a total mess. But yeah, keeping that, that vision and that mindset and that focus on the future and getting better in that fighting spirit is such a key. And then you finally come back to the end of the journey receiving that treasure and ,that wisdom. Luke Skywalker getting that medal at the end of the original Star Wars movie is the symbol of that.
And. You getting to walk again after all these doctors told you you’re never going to walk again, and being alive after all these doctors told you you’re not going to be alive anymore after a year. So there are just layers of miracles in your story. And it’s an incredible, inspiring story, and just so exciting to be able to meet you and hear it from your own mouth.
What do you feel like you’ve learned from this cancer journey the most? About yourself and about life?
Trent Brock- Golly, I just, more than I ever thought I would. I, you know, I used to, you know, I used to kind of be one of those people that was busy. You know, I like to be busy. I like to be productive. And I kept myself so busy that I didn’t take time to really Sit down and think, right?
And evaluate. And I think that’s what happens in the world today. We live in a constant state of distraction. You know, with these phones and, you know, your phone’s going off all the time. And, you know, your computer, and then the TV, and then you got friends. And it’s just, you never have time. To sit and think and, human beings are unique creatures in that, you know, after a while, something that becomes normal, they take for granted, right?
And then they, and then they begin to expect it, and then they don’t appreciate it. And for me, the simple example is walking. God, you know what I would give to just be able to walk? Down the road, you know, I mean, what I’d be what I give to have my hands back and not have to ask somebody. Can you please carry my plate for me, you know, or, you know, get my groceries or, or, you know, somebody needs a hand moving their house, help them out.
I can’t do a lot of those things right now. I haven’t been able to do it for many years, you know, and something that maybe you even hated to do. Like, yeah, man, who likes moving? Everybody hates moving. Right? Who wants to pick up a bunch of heavy stuff? But God, man, what I’d give to be able to help somebody do that now, you know?
And just, just really appreciating the things that I do have. The things that are precious and are important. And, You know back 15, 20 years ago, when I, you know, 25 years ago, right, when I started my career, success was the definition of owning your own business, making a lot of money, and having a lot of things.
That’s kind of what people viewed success as, right? Kind of a shallow definition. Now, you know, I feel like, you know, that’s changed. Things have changed. My mindset evolved with that. You know, success is not measured by that. It’s the value of the relationships, the legacy that you leave, you know, the, the, the impact that you have on your friends and family , and people that you’ve helped in life along the way.
To me, that’s where, you know, success is measured. The true value of success is to me. So you know, some of those things have changed. You know, I used to think I was a pretty tough guy, you know, and maybe I was physically, but now mentally, I’m, you know, I’m a pretty tough guy now.
And you know, I’ve just expanded. I’ve expanded my mind. I. I’ve expanded my spiritual outlook, you know, the way that I look at things. I’ve evolved more as a person. I think that I’m more aware of things. My surroundings and I try to check myself and not just take things for granted that I do. And I still catch myself, you know, I’m like, well, you know, three years cancer free now, you know, it’s kind of like that’s in the rear view mirror.
And you know, I get a scan every six months, you know, like, man. And That quick, I could just be right back into a situation being thankful, you know, that I have every day that I have every day, you know, and try to make it count.
Dr. David Lemmon- That’s beautiful. Thank you so much. A lot of cancer patients afterwards kind of say the cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me, or my life is better after the cancer than it was before.
I don’t know if you could really say that, but in some ways, I think you can see the growth that you’ve had. Just like lifting weights, you’re lifting against that incredible strain and stress. You’re going to get bigger muscles. So I think I can see through your journey, you’ve gained those mental, spiritual, and determination muscles.
And you can’t do as much physically as you could before. With walking and lifting weights and helping people move yet, that’s still growth in the future, right? You’re still rebuilding that in that long term recovery process. But do you have any regrets about the process? Do you feel like it has made you a better person?
Trent Brock- Overall, overall, it really has, you know, it definitely has made me a better person, made me a stronger person. I’m more aware. I just, you know I just see things more. I feel like, you know, I was, I was more shallow, you know, back then it was just kind of like work and play and not a whole lot in between.
I feel like now I take the time to kind of evaluate things, look at things, how do I feel about them. What do I want to do? What, you know, what, what’s, what, what am I going to do? I’ve sold the popcorn business. You know, I want to, you know, what am I going to do with myself? I want to make an impact, right?
What’s my, you know, I feel like maybe all this happened because My true calling is to go and talk, you know, share, share this, share my story with people and say, you know what, even though everybody counts you out and you’re down and out, if you, if you, if you stay with it and you don’t give up and you don’t count yourself out, you can make it, you can do it.
It’s hard. It’s not easy by any means, you know, and I still have tough days, you know, I mean, we all do, you know, I still get beat down on, on, on things and, you know, I have to. I have to renew and, you know, revamp and check in and do that kind of stuff. Still, I mean, it’s a long term maintenance thing.
You know, the worst thing you can do is get a little arrogant and stop doing the things that got you where you are. Because what’s going to happen is you’re going to slide back to where you were and not actually progress. Because just maintaining something is progressing. Because you’re not digressing and that’s kind of how I look at it.
Dr. David Lemmon- And so what are you doing now? It sounds like you, you’re doing some coaching and advocating for patients.
Trent Brock- Now that’s, you know, that’s really my plan. I just see a big need for people in the healthcare sector industry, public or private, to just better advocate for themselves. You know, people go in and they think that, you know, I’ve got to do everything that the doctor says. It’s the end all be all. It, you know, it’s very valuable. You should go to the doctor and get a professional opinion, but you get to make the final call and help people navigate through, you know, this medical system. I think people get caught up in You know, they have a major life, you know, thing happen and it’s like, I should be concentrating on this and my health and, you know, getting better and, you know, what my treatment plan is instead of getting caught up in this process of, you know, the doctor and how this works and what am I going to do and the billing and the insurance and all the stuff that it involves, right?
If you’ve never had a major event and it hits you, you know, you got two big things to deal with at once. And I think you end up, you know, getting frustrated and anxiety and, you know, losing time on the process when you should be, you know, confident and have empowerment and feel like you have control and choice over your situation.
So that’s kind of where I feel like I’m moving kind of like a patient advocate kind of ambassador. And, you know, obviously I can help people on the cancer journey along the way. Been through that. I know what that’s like. So, and I do a bit of speaking, you know, I speak, I do some speaking and I like to do the podcast stuff and, and that thing.
So moving towards that you know, slowly.
Dr. David Lemmon- And you kind of mentioned what you thought was maybe some of the original cause of the cancer. Yeah. Could you speak about that a little bit?
Trent Brock- Yeah. You know, looking back, looking back, you know, small business, wear many hats. We had a weekend outdoor, you know, like the festival craft market business that we started with.
And then the manufacturing started during the week where it was like professional production line stuff where we had bags. That would be on a supermarket shelf. We were busy eight days a week. Friday was, finish up, you know, manufacturing, start up for the weekends. And I thought in the beginning, this is a great idea.
I’ve got, you know, seven days a week to make money. Well, that means you’re also busy seven days a week. So for seven years straight, we did that. And I worked almost every day. And, you know, I remember, you know, clocking 100 hour weeks. If I wasn’t, you know, at the factory inevitably, you know, I got called out for something.
Somebody didn’t show up. Something broke. Something happened and you know, work too much. And I begin with the problem. My priority became my business and my work. Instead of taking care of myself. So I kind of slacked off on going to the gym that wasn’t a priority or eating right or taking some time for myself, taking a vacation or, you know, whatever, you know, a lot of those things.
And I think the stress, the lack of sleep, the you know, the, the crappy diet you know, no stress relief, all that kind of stuff definitely contributed. To, you know, I think I’m getting cancer because, you know, cancer, right? It’s abnormal cells. What, you know, what causes those, you know, pressure, pressure and stress.
It starts making these abnormal cells and these inflamed cells. And, you know, you have, you have them, your body makes those every day. But your immune system filters them out. So, when all that kind of gets out of whack, that’s when you kind of get the big “C”. and I think, you know, you have to balance those things out.
You gotta keep, you know, life is a, you know, a human being is made up of these different bits and pieces and you kind of gotta keep all these balls, you know, juggling and balanced, to be healthy.
Dr. David Lemmon- I think this is a beautiful illustration of how the Word of God with the Bible, you know, God taking that, one day out of seven as a Sabbath day of rest is such a massively important principle to have that balance of, of resting, and working.
We have these, waking and sleeping cycles every day. And then every week you have to have those working and resting cycles too. So that commandment from thousands and thousands of years ago, of you have to take one day out of the week and do nothing as far as your physical day to day work and then devote that to God.
Is such an incredible principle, even if you’re not a religious person or spiritual person, it’s still a principle that will support your wellness, support your health, no matter what. And I just think it’s an incredible law that makes so much sense when you think about it, and it came directly from God so you can’t really question it too much.
Trent Brock- Yeah, yeah, you know, it’s kind of like the meditation thing for me. It’s like, well, I don’t really know why, but I’m just going to do kind of what works, right? I mean, this is the rule. Just follow the rule. You don’t have to know the why on a lot of things. That’s kind of what faith is, right?
You know, that’s one of the things that I had to do because I’d be so hard on myself that it’s like you better do the things you need to do to put yourself in the right place. So, you better your chance to do this, and then, the part in between where you can’t control it, or you don’t know what’s gonna happen, that’s, you know, where the faith comes in, or the grace comes in, and that’s the difference, but, I like to have that feeling of, I’ve done my part, you know, you got to come to the table.
You can’t just, you know, sit around, just wishing, waiting and wanting for a miracle, you better put yourself in the right spot to get it right, to receive what you want. So I just firmly believe that I got to do my part. And the part I can’t do will take care of itself.
Dr. David Lemmon- Do you have any YouTube videos or anything that you’ve put up about your story yet?
Trent Brock- You know, I have a, I have a channel and I’ve done several podcasts in the last year, so I have a favorites kind of playlist that I have my podcast on that I’ve done so people can go out there and look at that if they want to see every podcast is a little different than I do, but it’s similar to, you know, talking about the cancer journey.
Dr. David Lemmon- And then if people wanted to work with you as a coach, it looks like trentbrockcoaching.com?
Trent Brock- Yep. That’s it. That’s my website. I do a little bit of speaking. I do some coaching. I’m in development of some courses for kind of the patient advocate field that went that I mentioned earlier. So, you know, it’s good.
I’m co-authoring a book, my second book that I’m co-authoring, working on right now, January, and I got to be a part of a project where there’s, there’s 20 authors in this book, and they’ve all, you know, had an obstacle that they overcame in some way, some manner, and I got a chapter, you know, and I was the one that, that was the cancer in the book. So that’s kind of cool, kind of neat I got to do that, yeah.
Dr. David Lemmon- Such an amazing story. So many miracles layered on top of each other and to see you kind of in the middle of that recovery journey of from walking to running and rebuilding your life from here. So we’re looking forward to hearing your unfolding story in the future.
And it’s been an absolute privilege to hear your story of survival and triumph and yeah, I just look forward to hearing all the great news in the future. I appreciate it.
Trent Brock- Thanks for having me on Dr. Lemmon. It’s been awesome. I appreciate it. And you know, I just hope we reach somebody that we haven’t reached and they just get a little something out of it.
And it’s like, you know, this makes my day better. This makes my situation outlook. You just shift that a little bit. You know, that’s really what I want to do is just, we just want to help people a little bit. Don’t we, you know?
Dr. David Lemmon- Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Trent Brock- Thank you. Appreciate it. Pleasure to be here.
https://trentbrockcoaching.com/