Our Beamish Story
“Unapologetic Optimism, Determination, Confidence and Belief”
My story starts with my diagnosis of leukemia. I underwent 33 rounds of chemo over the space of two years. At times, I was unable to climb a flight of stairs. For almost an entire year, I lacked the mental endurance to unload a dishwasher.
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There’ll be sun
I still remember unloading the cups, and then lying down on the couch – completely exhausted. After an hour break, I unloaded the plates before retreating to the couch. After another hour of resting, I was able to start putting the cutlery away. I was going to lie down again, but I told myself I could do it. Crying with happiness and a sense of accomplishment, I finished putting away the last few remaining forks. I collapsed on the sofa. It had taken my three hours, and I was unable to do anything else all day, but I’d been able to unload the dishwasher. I tell this story, because I helps me explain the extent of this “bone crushing and debilitating” fatigue that I had to learn to live with during my chemo.
Formulating our first cream with my aunt and uncle deep in the Kooteny’s of BC. My aunt is chopping beeswax from their beehives out back
Just thinkin’ about tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow
Till there’s none
Eight months after chemo ended, I realized that I would never recover. I was fragile. My energy wasn’t good, and I’d lost my ability to recover. I felt like a fit 75 year old man. The problem is that I was 38 years old.
When I’m stuck with a day
That’s grey and lonely
I just stick out my chin
And grin, and say
The idea that I’d never recover from the chemo was unacceptable to me. What hurt the most is that I felt that I’d never be able to see what I was truly capable of. I just said “Cancer, I beat you, and now I’m going to beat the chemo as well. You hurt me, but you can’t stop me.”
Oh, the sun’ll come out tomorrow
So you gotta hang on till tomorrow
Come what may
I refused to accept this limitation. I realized that until I had my health back, nothing else mattered. While I was lying in a hospital bed with chemo flowing from an IV drip into my chest, I made a bucket list of things I was going to do once I was better. But, I couldn’t do the things on my list if I didn’t have the energy to do them. The only thing that existed in my life was the idea that I was going to get better.
We were married during my 4th (of 33) rounds of chemo and three days after I finished cranial radiation therapy. I was bald from the chemo. I thought it would be fun to have bright, blue hair.
Tomorrow, tomorrow
I love you tomorrow
You’re only a day away
This journey led me down the road of understanding how to heal myself with food and exercise. With the acknowledgement that correlation does not prove causation, my platelets were fine before I started consuming massive amounts of ginger. After 4 days, they dropped from 200 → 80. I didn’t bother checking the results of my blood test. Two weeks later, my platelets were down to 3, and I was in the hospital getting a bone marrow biopsy because the doctors were certain that I was having a relapse.
But, I didn’t have a relapse. I had Idiopathic Thrombocythemia. “Idiopathic” means “we don’t know what caused it” and “Thrombocythemia” means “low platelets. This is a disease that affects one out of 300,000 people every year. The chances of my randomly getting it in the space of 4 days is pretty low – one in 27 million to be precise.
Remember when you hit the brakes too soon?
Twenty stitches in the hospital room
When you started crying, baby, I did too
But when the sun came up, I was looking at you
-Taylor Swift
This song took on a more literal meaning. The sun came up, and I was still alive, looking at my wife.
My anthem for the next 9 years was “Long Live” by Taylor Swift.
Long live the walls we crashed through
I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you
-Taylor Swift
A bike Trip with my Buddy to Moab, UT, Aug, 2023
Over the next 9 years, my blood gradually returned to normal. During the time period, a few other strange things happened. My skin stopped tanning or burning. I’m of Swedish descent. It’s usually impossible for me to ride my bike in the summer without my skin burning. Not anymore. I didn’t have to wear sunscreen (but I did anyway).
I lost the ability to feel muscle pain in my legs, my metabolism went way up, and my recovery went through the roof. At one point, I tried to overtrain, but I couldn’t. I rode my bike 3 hrs every day, and did intervals the entire time. Not only could I not overtrain, but I couldn’t even TELL that I’d riddent the day before. My bloodwork didn’t change (I was getting weekly blood work at the time) and I eventually gave up trying to overtrain. My body switched from mTOR (muscle growth) to AMPK (Autophagy and repair). I lost quite a bit of muscle during this time period. I knew that it was because my body was putting all its energy into repair. Eventually, my muscles all came back, and it was a small price to pay – especially because even now, as a 47 year old male, I have absolutely ZERO aches and pains.
The sun’ll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There’ll be sun
It looks like I dramatically raised my glutathione levels, and they stayed significantly elevated for the next 10 years. This elevated glutathione is why I didn’t tan, burn, or get tired when I exercise. The glutathione was in overdrive. This meant that the ROS generated by sunlight or exercise was immediately neutralized by my antioxidant defense system. The ROS particles were neutralized before they could do any damage.
Because I didn’t have many free radicals, I had much more Histone acetylation then the average person. What this means is that “Acetylation of histones altered the accessibility of chromatin and allowed DNA binding proteins to interact with exposed sites to activate gene transcription and downstream cellular functions.”. Basically, my metabolism increased to that of a young child. My appetite increased, and I became bullet proof – I could instantly recover from anything.
Just thinkin’ about tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow
Till there’s none
-Annie
Two other things happened during this time. I was in my early 40’s, and I was starting to struggle to read small print. I was starting to hold things farther and farther from my eyes. I needed reading glasses, but didn’t want them. I didn’t realize this had improved until I went to my optometrist. She asked if I wanted bi-focals. I told her that I wasn’t old. She said yes you are…
I’ll show you. Read this. You won’t be able to. I was like “why not?” She said “Look thru the lens. The words are close, and you won’t be able to read them.” I told her “I think you made a mistake, the words are tiny, but they’re far away.” She was like “Oh yeah, read them to me.” Me “JHT 8FT”. I’m serious. I think you made a mistake. They’re not close at all. She checked and said “Yeah, you can read them. Weird”.
My optometrist did a retina scan and said “Oh wow. You have young eyes”. I was really excited about this, because I’d been worried that the chemo had affected my eyes, but evidently they were still “Young”. I’m 47 years old, and things get blurry at about 6 inches when I have my glasses on. When I take my glasses off, I can read things about three inches from my eyes.
I was starting to feel indestructible. The night before my wife took this videos of me, I had an ear infection. The pressure built up in my ear, and both of my ear drums ruptured. I couldn’t even really hear properly that day because I had tears in the skin on both my ear drums. It was a powder day, and I had to ski. My wife shot these videos of me. I remember thinking “I shouldn’t be able to do this.”
It wasn’t until my platelets returned to normal that I became confident that I’d fully recovered from the chemo. I was riding my bike faster and further than I could in my late 30’s – but my skin still looked old. My skin looked old for two reasons.
The first reason is that I didn’t take good care of my skin at all. I was a Swedish/Ukrainian youth that spent their entire life riding mountain bikes in the Sierra mountains and didn’t wear sunscreen. Wrinkles and damaged skin was an inevitable result. To make things worse, skin grows fast, and the chemo aged my skin much more than other parts of my body.
Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines
Wishing for right now
Taylor Swift
This song describes the years I was immobilized by fatigue from the chemo. I was on the sidelines of life, waiting to be able to get back into the game.
At this point, I knew that the ginger had worked. So, I set about making anti-aging skin for my face. Inevitably, I decided to put some on my legs before a bike ride. I didn’t get tired during the ride, and I started doing it every ride. Despite skepticism from myself, my wife, and everyone that tried it – the cream worked. It wasn’t soon after this that I decided to make some for my friend’s natural food store. Things took off pretty quickly after that.
We are the kings and the queens
You traded your baseball cap for a crown
When they gave us our trophies
And we held them up for our town
And the cynics were outraged
Screaming, “This is absurd”
‘Cause for a moment, a band of thieves
In ripped up jeans got to rule the world
Taylor Swift
I made a bucket list of things to do after I recovered from my chemo. The last item on my list was to see Taylor Swift sing this song. We crossed this item of the list with floor seating as I watched Taylor Swift belt out this anthem to me in Seattle, WA.
Rose 2 Toads, a 100km singletrack mtb ride in Lake Tahoe, NV