Marla Miller 0:35

Welcome back to Open Minded Healing. Today, my guest, Dale Atkinson, is going to be talking about how he had been diagnosed with stage four cancer and was given one year to live. Throughout his journey to heal himself, he began building his own integrated protocol and also began understanding where the harmful gaps are in the healthcare system. So we'll dive into this thoroughly with Dale. Welcome.

Dale Atkinson 1:06

Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Mala. It's a pleasure to be here and to uh be joining you today.

Marla Miller 1:11

Well, you have such a fascinating story, very beneficial for others to hear. So I can't wait to dive into this. Before we dive into the diagnosis you received, maybe just give a little background of what you were doing before this. What was your career? What types of things had you been doing up to this point?

Dale Atkinson 1:32

Yeah, of course. So I'd spent nearly 20 years working in finance. And, you know, other than just selling money and all this kind of stuff, my actual job was investigating money launderers, fraudsters, and terrorist financing globally. So I investigated prime ministers, presidents worldwide. I built systems for various different big companies from HSBC's autent investment groups through to the Wellington Managements of the World, et cetera. Sat at board level for multiple of them for a number of years. And then was just in the process of launching my own consultancy. And I mean, just in the process, I was about two years down and just about to sign a really major life-changing contract to take on a hundred plus staff to do a big project with a high street retail bank over here. So yeah, it was an interesting career, shall we say? I was an original high flyer, as it were.

Marla Miller 2:25

Yeah, it sounds extremely interesting. Your background there. I can't wait to hear when you got this diagnosis, how it must have turned that world upside down. It sounds like you were at the top of your career there. Things are really going well for you. How did you realize something was wrong in the first place?

Dale Atkinson 2:43

I think that probably stems back a little while. And I think there's a various other things I should probably mention in the mix there as well. So I think starting as far back as I can think, about six or seven years before my diagnosis, I'd started to have heartburn. And it started out just as that little niggle of heat coming up, of a little bit of burning every so often. And it started to get worse and worse and worse. And I started to go into the doctor over it. And in about 2016, 2017, I started going quite often. And it started with just this heartburn. Then it progressed into me actually having acid coming up my throat during my sleep. And that was about 2017, 2018. I then started to have some gastrointestinal problems with it. And then I ended up in about 2022, 2023, starting to get pain up through my neck and shoulder as well. Now, in hindsight, I had something called Barrett's esophagus. But at the time, basically they kept telling me that I was too young, that it was my lifestyle, that I was too stressed, that I was obviously drinking a lot, and all these things they like to excuse it away as. And my doctors never stopped to think it could be something nefarious, even right the way up until my GP who actually put me forward for the endoscopy. And that was in early 2024. And he reassured me multiple times. He said, look, it's not going to be anything nefarious. It's not going to be anything too interesting. I think at most you've just got a stomach ulcer. You've been in a few times now. I'm referring you for an endoscopy just in case. You know, it's not urgent. We're not going to put you on an urgent pathway. I don't think it's anything high risk. Um, it's definitely not cancer, all these kind of things. And then it took for a young, I think it was a gastroenterologist, who picked up my file and went, oh wow, this was about September time. And there's something else I should mention in the middle of that as well. But in about September 2024, he picked up my file and went, oh wow, you're having pain up through your neck and your shoulder. You're struggling to swallow. You've been having these intestinal problems for a long time, you've been having heartburn, and you've lost somewhere around 40 or 50 kilos by that point in time as well. He said, I actually think this is quite urgent. I want to get you in ASAP. And then the reason I said there's something else I should mention is a little bit before that, my partner had also had a funny turn. So they thought she'd had a heart attack in the summer of 2024, rushed her into hospital, did all the tests, and a cardiologist went, you know, we can't find anything wrong, but there is obviously something going on with you. So we'll just do an x-ray, just to be extra sure. And on that x-ray, they found a tumor in her lung. Just completely by chance, you know, kiss mic, call it whatever you want to call it karma or all of these wonderful things. It was just chance. By absolute chance and luck, they found this very small under two centimeter carcinoma in her lung. At that point, they couldn't biopsy it because it was right in the middle of the lung, and obviously you breathe and it moves up and down. So they thought it was a bit too dangerous because they'd have to puncture the lung and all sorts of things. So they booked her in for a lobectomy. And that was the 3rd of October 2024. She went in to have olebectomy. The week before that, the gastroenterologist rang me and said, Look, we actually think this is urgent. Can we get you in on the 4th of October? And I, of course, had to say, look, I'm really sorry. No, my other half's in. I'm looking after my kids. I've got my in-laws over from the US at that point in time to help us as well. Can't do it. So they pushed it back a little bit to the 15th of October. So we had my other half in for major surgery, having the upper right lobe of her lung removed. We had her then coming home on the 5th of October, and then the 15th of October, which coincidentally happened to be our youngest little boy's first birthday, I went in to have this endoscopy. So yeah, it's a bit of a crazy sequence of events for us.

Marla Miller 6:39

Oh my gosh. Talk about stress. I can't imagine how that also impacted you during that time. Well, that's incredible. So your other half there, she was able to recover.

Dale Atkinson 6:52

Yeah, she was able to recover in general. So after the surgery, she took a couple of days in hospital, came home on the 5th, and then it was a three to five month recovery period. She couldn't pick the kids up, she couldn't lift anything heavy, she was missing part of her lung, so she she dropped her, you know, ability to breathe by quite a significant amount for a little while as well. But thankfully, the body's quite an incredible thing. And the other lobe of her lung on the right-hand side, because there's three on the right, two on the left to make allowance for the heart. The two on the right, the upper one, actually expands to fill the hole where they removed the upper right lobe. So in totality, she she's recovered really well. She was classed as surgically cured. There's been nothing further. She's had a follow-up scan since. They're pretty content that there is no more cancer and that she is cured, cured, and she's fully recovered and barely notices these days.

Marla Miller 7:46

Well, that's wonderful news, especially too when you have children at home. And I can't imagine with both parents going through something scary like that. I'm so glad she's on a good path now. So your path, it started, you go in for the endoscopy, the 15th. And when did you get the results of that? And who delivered those results? How did they tell you?

Dale Atkinson 8:11

Well, I didn't really need results, to be honest with you, Mahala. Because my other half had been in for surgery, and because my in-laws, obviously being American citizens, didn't have driving licenses in the US, I drove myself to my endoscopy. And instead of having the anesthetic as they normally give people, I just had a numbing spray. I hate banana anyway. It's that one food that I just can't get on with. I never have been able to. And the numbing spray was like a rancid banana taste, and that taste will never leave me, unfortunately. But it's one of these. I was there completely awake, completely compass mentis, as it were, for the whole thing, full gags and everything. It was not pleasant, not fun. I pity anybody who has to have an endoscopy done. It is not a nice procedure. But I saw it on the screen and I heard the doctors and nurses around me talking about it. And it was one of those where it was too big, too hard to miss. And it was right on the screen in front of me. And I think the doctor's words were, it's a very large, I think it was probably or very probably cancerous uh mass. It's heavily calcified, it looks particularly aggressive, and I'm there hearing all of this. And then at the end of the procedure, she turned around, cleared half the room, sat on the bed next to me, and went, look, I'm really sorry. This isn't normally my job to do. Normally people are under an aesthetic, and normally we refer this on to an oncologist. But you saw it on the screen, you heard us talking about it. You're obviously not a stupid person, so I'm just going to level with you. I'm pretty sure it's cancer. I'm sorry. She said, I can't tell you stages, I can't tell you anything else. We've done the biopsy and it'll be referred on to an MDT meeting, which is a mixed disciplinary team meeting where they get, you know, a surgeon, an oncologist, etc., in all together into a room to decide on what's happening and what they can see in front of them. And she said, That's what's going to happen next. They will then contact you, and I would expect an oncologist to be in touch quite quickly. She said, I think this is not a good case. And that was it. Smiled at me, and and that was it. I I walked off out of the room, spent 10 minutes in the waiting room recovering before I then got in the car, drove home.

Marla Miller 10:23

Oh my gosh. To drive home after hearing that news must have been difficult.

Dale Atkinson 10:28

It wasn't easy. I'm surprised I made it home.

Marla Miller 10:32

I know. Well, were you thinking the absolute worst at that point then? Were you thinking at stage four?

Dale Atkinson 10:39

No. Not at all.

Marla Miller 10:41

Yeah.

Dale Atkinson 10:41

I thought, you know, considering I've been given all these reassurances the whole way along this journey, I was told multiple times it's going to be nothing serious, you know, your symptoms aren't that bad, all this kind of stuff. I was convinced it was just going to be a bit like my partner had just had, oh look, well, we'll do some surgery, we'll take it out. I should also point out the very ironic thing was I then went down to tell my mum a few days later, who was a palliative care nurse her entire career, and she then sadly died a few days after that, before I got the actual diagnosis, etc. And, you know, just to go in the theme of that month, we found out she died on the Sunday night, and we found out on the Monday morning on my eldest little son's third birthday, was when we got the news that she passed. And then it was that Thursday that I then went in to have the news of it being terminal stage four, all these fun things, inoperable, incurable, etc., etc. All in the space of a month, all of this was.

Marla Miller 11:38

Oh my gosh. So what did your mother pass from? Was it sudden?

Dale Atkinson 11:43

It was sudden, but it was also not unexpected, if you know what I mean. She'd had a long-term health condition. She had something called scleroderma, some autoimmune disease that had caused some fibrosis in her lungs. We didn't know at that point just how bad she was. She kept telling us it was fine and that this new treatment she was on was doing wonders. And, you know, we really didn't think she was going to pass anytime soon. She'd been with this for 10 plus years. Very sadly, she was in the process of moving her bedroom from the room upstairs. She had a friend round that week to help her move the bedroom upstairs to downstairs to make things a bit easier. And it was actually on the stairs. She ran out of breath, she just collapsed on the stairs, trying to get up the stairs on her own on that Sunday night. So you know, you can replay these things all you like and say, Well, if I'd gone and helped and done it earlier, but in the reality of things, she was going to pass at some point. It's just a shame that it had to happen at that sort of timing. And that also she didn't ever get to know that I was okay.

Marla Miller 12:43

Yeah. Well, she knows now. I hope so. So this is all going on. I cannot even imagine one of these uh incidents, let alone all three of those things going on at once, is just crazy. But I guess people are resilient and they do what they have to do in the moment to get through. So what were you doing? So eventually you find out you have stage four cancer. And and they're telling you what, that there's nothing to be done, or was there something that could have been done?

Dale Atkinson 13:18

So the initial conversation, which was just after mum's death, was that I had stage four, it was not prolibling curable, and that you know I couldn't have first-line curative, that it was palliative care only, and that essentially I was going to be declining quite quickly. They felt the prognosis wasn't fantastic, etc. At that point, they didn't give me a formal prognosis until I really heavily pushed for it a couple of weeks later. But yeah, they it was a three-minute meeting with a surgeon who I don't think he even knew my name, sort of thing. We got ushered into the room, he shook my hand, said, sit down, sir. This is what the situation is. I shook my hand three minutes later, sent us out the room, and that was it, over and done with. We were sent home with, you know, my partner still recovering. She actually came into that meeting with me. My partner still recovering, me in complete and utter shock, and two babies at home.

Marla Miller 14:10

Oh my gosh, I really can't even imagine that. So at that point, are you going to dark thoughts, or when does it kick in that I'm gonna fight for my life and I'm gonna try new things? What was your thought process?

Dale Atkinson 14:27

So, to be honest with you, I can't really remember exactly what the thought process about that moment was. Not because, you know, there really was a thought process, for one, but for two, I think there was just so much going on that it all just got muddled into a pot. I think it became so overwhelming that there isn't one singular thought, there isn't a thought process I could really pull out. The only thing I can sort of point towards is that the one active decision I did make was having just lost my own mother and facing the grief of losing a parent, I decided somewhere in that muddle and mess of shock and grief and anger and all of these other things that were going on, that I had to do everything I could to fight for my little boys. And having been told that I would and should be in a hospice by sort of the January, February time the following year, I didn't want to be the ailing, in a hospice, frail cancer patient that you see on television all the time. I wanted to try everything I possibly could to make memories with my kids. If I wasn't gonna have long left, I wanted to do it the best way I could. To, you know, roll around on the floor with them, play football in the garden, take them on a holiday, show them animals and all these things that parents get to do and just don't think much of. I wanted to do the bedtimes and the stories and all these sorts of things, and I was told I wouldn't be able to. So my whole thought process went to I'm going to, whether you like it or not, I will be doing these things and I will find a way to do them because my little boys need to have memories of me. And the worst thought I had at that point in time, the darkest thought for me, was always that my little boys might not remember me, that they might not know who I was, and they might not understand how hard I fought for them. And that pained me more than anything else. So, yeah, there were lots of dark thoughts. I think later on, when I ended up on a palliative care ward, which happened a few times, I think there were a lot more dark thoughts, and I think they went far, far darker in terms of when I heard people dying in the beds next to me. The hospital kept offering me, they kept offering me cheese sandwiches, plain white bread cheese sandwiches, to an esophageal cancer patient who couldn't swallow solid food. And that happened for like multiple days in a row. So I hadn't eaten in five or six days on a hospital ward. I had nights of people with dementia in the beds next to me screaming all night long. I had people dying in beds next to me over the course of a couple of hospital stays. And I honestly went to the dark place of I don't want my family to have to experience me like any of this. I don't want them to have to experience the frail cancer patient I was becoming. So maybe I do just go off and end it on my terms so they don't have to live this with me, so that they don't have to feel that suffering. Because I'd felt what it was like to be on the other side of these sorts of diagnoses with my partner. I knew how harrowing it was with her very early stage cancer that was surgically cured. So knowing that feeling and then thinking how amplified it must have been with what was going on with me and the thought of losing a partner and the father to her children and all of these sorts of things, I did think about just ending it. I did go to the really dark places, but I did it out of a sense of I thought it might be easier for them. I thought it might be better for everyone. I thought rather than financially ruining them, rather than putting them through seeing me suffer, rather than putting that onto their memories for life, what would happen if I did just drive the car down to a cliff and, you know, disappear off of it? Why would that not be the better route to go? Because it would be my choice, my option, and it would save them from that. So yeah, there were a lot of dark thoughts, a lot of dark places along that journey. But I also came to the realization that even if I was sick, even if I was ailing, time spent with my little boys mattered too much to them, and it mattered too much to me to ever do that to them at the same time. Depriving them of time with me. You know, had it been my mother, I would have been more than happy to have her sick and ailing over taking your own life in her terms.

Marla Miller 19:03

Yeah, I well, that definitely heightens all your thoughts, all your senses when you get a diagnosis like that. When you get essentially a death sentence from a doctor where they're telling you, you know, they have no other options for you. But it is interesting, especially when people have young kids, what a driving force that is. That is very powerful. You know, people will do anything when it involves their children, like to either be there for them or to make it easier for them or make sure they're cared for and loved the way you want them to be.

Dale Atkinson 19:40

Absolutely.

Marla Miller 19:42

So at that point, I definitely understand the struggles between this extreme love for your children and that darkness that comes over you where you're like, what is the best thing here? So what was it that pulled you out of that and even thinking possibly of other solutions?

Dale Atkinson 20:01

So to be honest with you, I think it was my mother's death that it I don't think anything pulled me out of it, but I think my mother's death gave me more permission to. It's a very weird thing to try and describe to anybody, but it was just a very strange set of circumstances. You know, very ironically, my mum had been a palliative care nurse her entire career. And I'd gone down on the Thursday to tell her about my cancer, and her pretty much automatic reaction was just do what the oncologist tells you. Because I've always been a bit rebellious and a bit, you know, I like to go and research and do these sorts of things. I've always been a bit alternative in my way of thinking. And her automatic reaction was, don't do that. Don't go off and do your own thing, don't go and research, don't go down rabbit holes on the internet. All you're gonna find is horse medications on Facebook and all this kind of stuff. Don't do it to yourself. Just do what the doctor tells you. Be a good boy, sort of thing. And I think her death actually gave me the permission. And, you know, I'm not gonna swear on here, but you can well imagine what the phrase is. But it gave me permission to do that. It gave me permission to go back to my doctor and say, look, I've looked at these things. I'm a researcher for a living. If I could investigate money launderers who hide money in a million different bank accounts all over the place, spread it so you can never find it, if I can do those sorts of things, I can find good information. And if I can find a good piece of information that helps me survive better, well, can I bring it to you? Unfortunately, my oncologist said no. And if you decide to go that route, I will have to seriously consider pulling your care. And when you said you you wanted to look at alternatives and adjunct therapies, I thought you meant yoga. I was all for you doing yoga, but you know, keto diets and off-label medications, that's just crazy. You're gonna hurt yourself and kill yourself even quicker and all these sorts of things. And then she badly cited there's a very famous research study that was done that basically says that if somebody doesn't do standard of care and they go for a completely holistic alternative approach, then they are unfortunately more likely to die. And specifically in the cases of, I think it's triple negative breast cancer and pancreatic cancer, they die much quicker, unfortunately. That is the reality of some of it, because those are very difficult cancers to control. There are not many other modalities out there that can really attack them, etc. What she didn't take account for is the fact that that does not look at adjunct. That does not look at combining the standard of care with alternatives in order to help your overall survival chances. What I very quickly came across and very quickly realized were there weren't just ways to cure cancer. I never started out looking at ways to cure cancer at all. It was all about increasing my quality of life so I could spend more time in my bodies. And I found lots and lots and lots of things that can help to increase the efficacy of standard of care treatments. You know, very simple things like metformin and keto diets, not in all instances by any means, things like prostate cancer do not benefit from keto diets because they are fed by amino acids, et cetera. So they can be harmful. But if you limit your sugar intake, if you lower your levels of inflammation, if you use drugs like metformin, which help with your insulin resistance and help to get yourself in a better metabolic position and therefore help with systemic inflammation overall, you can actually increase your efficacy of your standard of care treatment quite exponentially. And I think the figure that there is a paper back in the 1990s released, and it's the only phase three trial, I believe, on metformin as an adjunct therapy for cancer, it posited a 36% increase in survival rates. And I began looking at these sorts of things and going, well, that's a glycolytic cancer, a cancer that is mainly fed as its primary source by sugar. I did next generation sequencing to look at what pathways my cancer had, my specific genetic setup and my specific cancer had. You know, this isn't going to be the same for anybody else in any other situation, because every cancer is different, and I am a case of n equals one. But I looked at mine, I got the science, I checked what feeders mine had, and sugar was up there. It was sugar, it was adrenaline, it was cortisol, it was glutamate, it was all of these headline things. And I went and looked at the research, looked at the drugs, looked at the phase three trials, looked at the phase two trials, looked at the fringe science, looked at all of these bits and pieces to try and find the plausible mechanisms that scientifically made actual sense and had evidence to prove that they worked in these instances. I then took that to my oncologist and she didn't look at it. Didn't care. There was me thinking, you know, if I can provide evidence, if I can show things that really work, somebody of science, which a doctor is meant to be, they're meant to have an evidence-based focus in the world. They would look at the evidence and they would go, okay, well, this might work, but this will cause harm, or there's an interaction with this. We can't do this for this reason. She didn't do that. She looked at me blankly and said, I would really prefer it if you didn't Google things at three o'clock in the morning.

Marla Miller 25:14

Oh my gosh.

Dale Atkinson 25:15

To somebody who whose whole life had been research, she went and tried to destroy me in a second.

Marla Miller 25:21

That is so crazy. Yeah, I don't know where that comes from because you do have some doctors who actually do take an interest and they'll be curious about it too. But there are quite a number of them that just stick to the protocol that they're used to. I don't know if they don't want to be bothered with having to research it all. You know, I don't know what that is.

Dale Atkinson 25:41

There's a few different mechanisms there. I think I think unfortunately, things like the Cancer Act in the UK. So there's a thing called the Cancer Act of 1939, when you're not allowed to look at things outside the system. There's lots of little mechanisms as to why. But the phrase I keep coming back to is that the system has a protocol and the protocol doesn't flex. The system is not set up for doctors to look at other things. It's not set up for them to try and actually help patients. It is set up for them to fit you into a box because that is the easiest way to do it. And it's the way that mass market systems kind of work because it's the only way that works at that level of scale at this moment in history. So I fully understand why. And I don't blame her in any way, shape, or form. And I should point out here that I love the NHS, the National Health Service here. They are incredible people and they do some amazing things. They're just not set up in a way that looks at personalized integrative medicine because they're taught it's wrong.

Marla Miller 26:38

Well, it goes to show you really do have to be a self-advocate, no matter what doctor you're seeing, no matter what you're doing, whether it's even if it's alternative, I mean, you have to really investigate what is right for you. And you were able to go even deeper and really look at the genetics and all of that, which is amazing. How did you do that? Is that something anyone could just go do? What would they even ask for?

Dale Atkinson 27:03

There's a test called next generation sequencing. So there are multiple companies who offer it now. It is part of, so in the UK, we have what's called the NHS 10-year plan or the cancer plan in the UK, and they are looking at the next 10 years of what cancer care should be and what they're trying to bring in. And even the NHS now have next generation sequencing as a future release for the NHS. So it's becoming a mainstream thing. It's not been around very long, and it's essentially a subset of what's called whole genome sequencing. So whole genome sequencing has been around since the 80s, and essentially what they do is take a snippet of your DNA, they run the thing through a specialist machine that cuts your DNA up from whichever sample they get, and it looks at each individual strand, and it looks at each individual genetic marker within those strands, and it breaks that really far down until it completely understands what your genetics are. And it works very similar to the SNP stuff, it works very similar to genetic modification and how they created clones of sheep and all sorts. It's a very similar sort of thing. But they've distilled that technology down so that instead of looking at all of the genome, the whole genome sequencing, they can now do what's called next generation sequencing, where they've identified a specific set of genes that are cancer related. They know where in the DNA those sit, and they can actually pull out just those pieces and atop which they can use a biopsy if they can get hold of it. If not, they use a liquid biopsy, so blood. If they use your biopsy, they can look specifically at what DNA repair issues, what genetic markers or modifications or differentiators your specific cancer has. And they can then map that down into what that means in terms of pathways, then stacking it against the known science itself to show, you know, whether it's glycolytic, whether it's run on glutamate, as you know, the likes of Thomas Seafried, who's been on diary CEO and all these sorts of things, as he posits it's glutamate and uh glycolysis are the two biggest runners for most of the cancers he looks at, which is generally GBMs, glearoblastomas. There are lots and lots and lots of other markers, everything from amino acids to cortisol, stress hormone, to adrenaline to all sorts. There are more things than you could possibly list in a lifetime sort of thing. And next generation sequencing pulls out the biggest of those factors, the most well-known of them, runs them through these sorts of systems. And then off the back end, the majority of the big next generation sequencing companies built systems that actually statistically then look at the current papers and the current science to match up those pathways against individual treatments, drugs, trials, and all these other sorts of things. So they can do everything from tell you chemosensitivity. So exactly which chemotherapies will work in your specific instance, not just the ones that whichever health service puts you in a box of because you had this specific cancer phenotype. It will tell you which works for your genetics, which works for your specific cancer and your specific body makeup and all these sorts of things. It looks at all the standard of care treatments and then it can break it further down into everything from supplements to off-layle medications. It can tell you exactly which ones work, be that the mebendazoles, fembendazoles, you know, all these ones that are being talked about, either mectin, that are being talked about heavily in the media at the moment, or whether it's other ones, because there are a huge barrage of different medications out there that can work, from beta blockers such as propanolol through to cemetidine, uh pantoprozole. There's loads of them that work for different things and different reasons. And the company I worked with, who were called Astron Health, they also then provided an integrative oncologist who was a guy called Dr. Harry Kuhan, who has been truly brilliant at helping me. And his job was to take essentially the output of this, to distill it down into a format of things he could prescribe and look at, to look at the interactions between the drugs, and to help me create the best possible set of medications to basically cover as many of the pathways as possible in my specific cancer. So that that's roughly what it is and what it does. And that's where I base the majority of my protocol from.

Marla Miller 31:18

That's amazing. Yeah, to make it so individualized, which is so important, apparently, and to have someone that can help you go through the results and pull out what will work best. And like you said, trying to address as many pathways that you have as possible that could be problematic. Yeah. So he told you the medications, but also supplements that would work for you in particular. And if sugar was a problem.

Dale Atkinson 31:48

So he didn't do the supplements. So he didn't specifically do the supplements. So I also bought on, I bought on a couple of people. So I looked at my journey a little bit different to some. So a lot of people go and find a doctor and they go, I will listen to that doctor no matter what. I will do what they say. I turned that a bit around. And because I like to be in a bit of control, you know, given what I did for a living, given the amount of research I'd done and the amount of science I was looking into, I felt I was in a position by that point. And not everyone will be, and I fully understand that it's it's horses for courses. I it's each to their own. Everybody needs to do it their way that works for them. But I found the best route for me was to assemble a team. And I looked at it the same way people look at a business. I was the CEO. It was my decision on everything. But I had a board. I had, you know, Harry, my doctor, was my oncologist. Well, my he's not an oncologist, he's a doctor, but he's an integrative oncologist. He was my chief operating officer. I then had a lady called Amanda King, who is a really gifted naturopath. And Harry and Amanda have now written a book together on intricative medicine and off-label medications and all these sorts of things. Um, they got on that well. Uh, I put the two of them together. She was my natural medicine doctor. We did my bloods every single month. We looked at all the supplements. She made sure that the whole rest of me was in the best possible place to first of all deal with the toxicity of treatment. And second of all, to be the most efficacy to heal, essentially, to give me the best possible gains in all of the things I was doing. Now, a lot of that could just be, you know, half a percent, not point not one percent of a gain here and here and here and here, but she helped me piece together, you know, 50, 60, 100 different things that overall gave me a 10, 15% extra chance of survival. And made the drugs that Harry then gave me as off-lay on medications, another 10 or 15 or 20% more efficus and helped to reduce the toxicity of the standard of care, so the chemotherapy and immunotherapy I had. And it just, it was all those little pieces together on all those little gains that kind of added up. Now, I'm very aware that I am a case of n equals one for any doctors or statisticians listening or researchers, etc. I am a case of n equals one. I can't tell anyone exactly what made the difference. I can't say it was definitely these drugs, or definitely this treatment, or definitely the hyperbaric oxygen, because I threw the kitchen sink at this. I was in a dire situation. I'd been given 11 and a half months to live with systemic treatment. I was not in a position to be picky and wait for things and try one thing at a time and document meticulously. I was in a position to throw as many things at this as possible, to try and get as much gains as possible. And there isn't never going to be a way to unpick exactly what I did. Well, not in our probably lifetimes. Well, although AI may change that, but not in our reasonable lifetimes or understanding to work out exactly what made that different. And I'm not here to tell people that they can cure their cancer using this route. I'm not here to tell them that it's a protocol. I'm not here to tell them that they can definitely do this. What I am here to say is there are options. There are modalities that work for other people. If you self-advocate and if you look outside of that box, as long as you're not going down rabbit holes on Facebook and you look at real science, there are things that can help to make a difference. And if you are lucky, you can end up in a position like mine. Now, not everyone's going to be able to do that, first of all, because it cost me a lot of money, unfortunately. Second of all, because I was lucky to have the genetics that I did, and for my next generation sequencing to be able to come back with a long list of things instead of a short one for some people. And everything just aligned for me very, very luckily in terms of my journey. But there is a chance of doing that if you don't give up looking for options. There is no singular way to beat cancer. Anybody who tells you if you do this exact protocol, you are going to be well again, that you are going to cure yourself, they're selling snake oil. It doesn't exist. What there is are a lot of different pathways. There is a little bit of luck thrown into that. And if you look past the rabbit holes on Facebook with horse medications, etc., there is some really amazing things going on in this world. And if you're lucky, if your genetics match up, if you happen to have the right type of cancer with the right type of medications, that the right research happens to exist and the right pathways pop up on next ration sequencing or whatever, you can get lucky. There is hope. But if you just follow one route and wait for it to finish and you go, I'm just going to do chemotherapy and then I'll reassess at the end of it, you've cut off so much of your chance. You've cut off your ability to increase the efficacy. You've cut off your ability to reduce the toxicity, and therefore you've lowered your overall chances, especially at a stage four terminal diagnosis, of being able to get through this. I am a firm believer that people need to completely overhaul their lifestyle. They need to overhaul their diet. They need to look for the underlying causes and really go for root cause medicine to try and work out what has happened, where it has happened, to try and put themselves in the best possible position to heal. And then they need to bring in specialists like my Dr. Harry Kuen, like Amanda King. There was also a researcher I used based at the University of Westminster called Dr. Isabella Cooper, who she's recently written papers with Dr. Thomas Seafried over in Boston University. He's a famous metabolic practitioner, focuses a lot on glioblastomas and those sorts of things. He's become quite famous in this world as well. If we can increase the amount of people who can survive this, if we can give people a better outlook, then surely that's a good place to head.

Marla Miller 37:53

Definitely. A very good place to head. I remember someone else that healed himself from cancer and you know, using is a totally different route than what you're describing. But like you said, he he followed what he knew to be true and what was working for him. But I remember him saying that if you listen to the doctor and they say we give you, you know, whatever it is, a year to live, three years to live. He's like, you will die right on time. Like, you know, if you if you just do that.

Dale Atkinson 38:29

There was a study out in the 1990s that showed exactly that. I think it was actually 2001 it came out, but it was a study from the 90s. And they showed something like I might be wrong, but I think it's 72 to 76% of patients. If they were given a prognosis, they would die according to that prognosis. No matter whether it was right, whether it was wrong, whether there'd been a mistake in their file, their body would essentially give up for them on hearing that news. So yeah, it's it's a horrendous thing to have a prognosis. However, in instances like mine, I actively asked for mine. I wanted to use it as a competition to myself. They gave me 11 and a half months with systemic treatment. And I wanted to understand that. I wanted the information to be able to then turn around and go, I'm gonna beat that. That is the starting point for me. That is not the end. I will be here for 10 times that.

Marla Miller 39:21

Well, yeah, I wasn't even thinking of it that way, but you're right that when you hear something, if you believe it and you tell your cells and your body it's true, then yeah, they'll listen and die right on time. Or like he was saying, if you stick to their protocol and chemotherapy alone isn't necessarily your cure, it's just giving you enough time to fulfill their diagnosis of a year or three years. I think it's really great when people are curious, like you said, and not stuck to thinking they have to believe one very specific thing or one very specific doctor and not exploring outside of that. Like it doesn't hurt to explore. You don't have to do the thing, but you should explore it and like you did, really look at the research and dive into that.

Dale Atkinson 40:19

Well, I went into this thinking, you know, the fenbendazoles, the ivermectins of this world were all snake oil. I went into this thinking I'm never gonna take any of these things. They're just crazy people on the internet taking horse meds because it's a you know last-itched attempt. I've ended up using all of those. I've used them with a doctor, properly prescribed, not the panicure stuff you buy for dogs, proper human-grade actual medicine from a proper pharmacy that prescribes this sort of stuff for a living. I've ended up using those things. I never thought I would, but the science led me that route. And the science showed that it could work against certain pathways. It blocks certain pathways, certain uptakes in the cancer itself. Yes, they are parasite medications, but they have a secondary function that helps to block these specific pathways that then put pressure onto the cancer, which means if you combine them with other things that put other pressure in other places, you're essentially backing that cancer into a corner. And the more of these you can combine together without causing too much toxicity, the better the chances of backing it into that corner and getting rid of it. And just to your point in terms of the chemotherapy, unfortunately, yeah, chemotherapy quite often is a means to an end. In a lot of cases, it causes a lot more damage than it actually helps to fix. So yeah, I think it all comes down to the individual in terms of what their preference is as to whether they should really take it. It needs to become less of a blanket, everybody should do this, and we should have more of a say in our own journeys. You know, I very nearly said no to chemo when they told me that it would have me bedbound, that it would have me unable to play with my kids, that it would have me for the 11 and a half months they thought I had left. They thought of at least six to nine months of that, the chemotherapy would wreak havoc on me to the point I would struggle with even day-to-day life. So I very nearly said no. I very nearly went for quality of life instead of quantity. Because the system only looks at quantity. It didn't look at, you know, will the chemo stop me from playing with my kids? It just looked at, well, it'll buy you six months extra on what we think you'll get, but it didn't think, well, I could have six months playing with my kids, or I could have three months playing with my kids and nine months in bed where I can't, and they get to see daddy unwell. You need to make that decision for yourself, you need to self-advocate, you need to look at what matters for your life, and you need to not be pushed into a corner or put under fear in order to make a decision. It should ultimately be yours to make, and you should never let a doctor make that for you.

unknown 42:56

Sorry.

Marla Miller 42:57

Yeah, that's true. Well, no, I agree with you, especially about the fear. That's instilled quite strongly when you go to the doctor. I have found. You know, it's like this is what's going to happen to you. And they name all the worst case scenario things if you do not take this medication or or in the case of cancer chemotherapy. But you have so many good points that made you successful. Your curiosity, as well as your background as an investigator, really came in handy. And then your ability to look and really decide for yourself what was important to you, like being able to play with your children and to really prioritize your life and work with good people. So, in addition to the medications, and you said you did some chemotherapy, right? What other things were you doing? I heard you mention the hyperbaric oxygen chamber. What other things did you kind of throw at it?

Dale Atkinson 43:58

Oh, how long have you got Mala? I did everything from high dose vitamin C. I did off-label medications. I was at one point taking somewhere around 180 pills every single day. Um, I changed my diet, I changed my lifestyle, I introduced different forms of lymphatic drainage exercises. I'm sat here with a punching bag and I've got a treadmill, and I've got red light panels, I've got, you know, pulsed EMF neckbands, I've got an infrared sauna, an ice bath, got pulsed EMF mats. I've got so many different bits and pieces. And again, these aren't curative devices. The majority of it was just to try and increase my general health and really put me in a state that I could be in the best place to heal. I think alongside those, I also did bits of meditation. I did Wim Hof breathing. I still do Wim Hof breathing every morning. I added in yoga. I take nature walks to make sure I'm in green spaces for at least a few hours every single week. I no longer just sit at the computer. I get up, I have a timer that goes off every single hour. So I get up and do movement every hour. It's a very, very long list. I spent four to six hours every single day in treatment.

Marla Miller 45:16

Well, I had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease some years back. And so I went through the same process you did as far as I just tried every single thing, and it didn't exhaust me. I kept feeling better with the things I was doing. So that encouraged me to keep exploring. And I did that, the infrared sauna and the meditation. I learned Reiki and did that on myself. I got rid of all the toxins in the house and water purifier, air purifier, and all of that. So I totally understand throwing everything at it. You may not be able to pinpoint. I mean, I can look back and pinpoint, I would say definitely certain things were a must. I felt like the diet change was important and the meditation, I think really I benefited from that as well. But dry brushing, and there's so many things you can do. And I almost feel like a lot of those things should just be incorporated in every household at this point, you know, because we're always we're so bombarded with toxins and the food we have now that doesn't have the minerals we need or it has all these chemicals added to it and everything. Because you had said earlier the body is so miraculous, it really knows how to heal itself if you put it in the right environment. If you're not completely loading it down with not only the chemical toxins, things like that, but even the thoughts, like negative, dark, heavy thoughts, or what you watch, or take in.

Dale Atkinson 46:56

The news is now planned in our household. We don't watch the news in our household.

Marla Miller 47:00

Yeah, that's smart. And also even the breath is so powerful. There's someone that was on my podcast, but they were talking about breath work as a vet. He was a military vet and how that really changed things, especially for vets when they come back with PTSD or they can't sleep and all of that. And so he found very powerful healing in breath work. So that's something our body is already equipped with. You know, and it when you think about it, it doesn't even cost money. Like people can do that if they know the proper way to breathe and do that. But yeah, our body is amazing.

Dale Atkinson 47:42

I'd add on to that, the other one that's incredibly powerful on top of breath work is also fasting. I think we mentioned earlier in terms of the accidental prolonged fast when I was in the hospital. I did a number of purposeful fasts as well. I've done, I think, 13, 10 plus day fasts now. Um, and I think there is a lot to be said for a lot of the ancient knowledge that we are no longer using. No matter what your religious background, there is a form of fasting in there. Not eating certain foods around certain times. There is lots and lots of hidden knowledge and a lot of these old texts that we no longer use. And sadly, we've gone past seeing the point of them. We think they're just, you know, fictional things that were written in the past, or, you know, depending on what your belief system is, they're mainly symbolic these days. But in actuality, a lot of these things are signposts in how to be happier and healthier. Go out, put your feet on the grass and ground for however long a day. Get out in the sunshine and breathe in the deep air and do breathing exercises. You know, that's in pretty much every major text there is. Put your feet on the soil and breathe. Fasting, not eating carbohydrates late in the day. All of these sorts of things exist in this older knowledge that our modern world has just sort of forgotten or passed by. So it's now about reacquiring that knowledge and putting it back to use. Stopping eating the highly processed foods that just damage us. You know, get proper purified water, as you pointed out a minute ago. The quality of water worldwide over the last 30 years has dropped exponentially. And there are so many additions to it, from chlorine to fluoride to all these things, that our neurotoxins, they're not actually good for us. And we get them from so many sources all over the place now that the more we can limit that, the better we can have a chance at healing. Adding to that the air, adding to that, clothing is one of the worst ones. There was a really interesting uh Netflix documentary recently about fertility and polyester clothes. Microplastics enter our bodies so easily and disrupt our hormones and all sorts. And our hormones are the signals for everything from healing through to cancer, through to mental state, through to gut hormones, through to gut biome, and all of it is all led by our hormones. That is part of our body's sort of nervous system, part of our hormonal system that that leads everything. We need to detox a lot of this. You know, our household, we now have pure wool carpets everywhere. We have low VOC, volatile organic compounds, so toxins. We have low VOC paint on all of our walls. We have re-engineered our entire way of living to try and take out these toxins to give us the best chance of being healthy. And that is part of the gains. When I said you can't really pinpoint things, I can tell you lots of individual things that will and can have made a difference, and that the evidence supports have definitely made a difference. But the melting pot of all of them is what kind of got me my specific gains. There are so many of those bits and pieces that make a big difference in general life outside of cancer, outside of critical illness, outside of immune disorders, etc., that we need to start looking at. And I do think at this moment in time there is a big change happening in the world in terms of mentality around these sorts of things. And I think in 20, 30, 40 years' time, we're gonna look back at this the same way we looked at things like Teflon and dark water, the same way we looked at asbestos, the same way we look at talcum powder causing cancers and all these sorts of things. We're gonna have the same look back at ultra-processed foods, at polyester and plastic clothing and foodstuffs and plastic plates and cutlery and all these sorts of things. And we're gonna go, what the hell were they doing?

Marla Miller 51:33

Yeah. An experiment gone bad.

Dale Atkinson 51:37

Oh, it is.

Marla Miller 51:38

Well, yeah. Well, I think you're doing great with your household. Now your children will be raised this way and see the benefits of it.

Dale Atkinson 51:47

That'll rebel and go the opposite direction. One of the things.

Marla Miller 51:50

Yeah. Or they'll go on and they'll teach their friends. That's what I think.

Dale Atkinson 51:55

They already are, thankfully. My little boy went to a picnic the other day, and all the other kids who are eating their Harry Bows or whatever, and my little boy said no to them all. He said, I'm gonna bring you some of my chocolate instead. He came home and we get uh what's called Montezuma Absolute Black Chocolate. So it's a hundred percent cacao dark chocolate. 100%. Honestly, it tastes like dirt, it tastes like eating soil. But my four-year-old loves it. We bought a bag of Montezuma absolute black buttons, and he took them along to his next picnic, and he tried to get his friends to eat them. They all said no, but but he was very happy that they said no because it meant he had more for him. So he is changing some minds.

Marla Miller 52:40

I could imagine that would taste very different compared to the regular milk chocolate or whatever. But when your taste buds get accustomed to it, when I eliminated sugar at one time, like all sugar, then broccoli tasted sweeter. And I'm sure I would have loved the 100% dark chocolate. So I think it is the healthier you get, the more appealing the healthy stuff becomes.

Dale Atkinson 53:05

And it's just about consistency with some of these things. If you cut down sugar, it starts to taste sweeter, and therefore you start to get that snowball effect. You cut a few things. It's never worth going whole hog into a lot of these things for most house journeys. Yeah, if you end up with a situation like mine, absolutely you have to go whole hog because there's nothing else to do. But for most people, just making one or two small changes, swapping for the organic versions of things, for especially the dirty dozen, as they're called, getting rid of strawberries with glycophosphate in them, cutting down to, you know, lower sugar versions that don't have artificial sweeteners in or have no added sugar at all, doing some of these little changes start to snowball. And after a couple of weeks, your taste buds do change. You start to then make better choices for it because you start to feel better. And that then spurs you to make more and more of these changes and also to stick at them. So, yeah.

Marla Miller 54:01

Well, I'd like to ask three questions of people that have made it through something as scary as you did with the health. What was the biggest obstacle for you when you were trying to heal?

Dale Atkinson 54:13

I hate to say it, but it was my oncologist. My standard of care oncologist. And having had a mum who worked in the healthcare service for her entire life, she was a very, very smart woman. She had multiple degrees and all sorts to her name, but she would always default to the doctor. The doctor was, in her head, tantamount to God. Despite the fact that she in most instances knew better and probably was better at what she did than they were, she defaulted to the doctor. And I grew up with that mentality. I grew up with, you know, Bristol stool charts on the wall and being told to go to the doctor if we saw this, this, and this in our poo. And that's the household I grew up in. And for me, the hardest thing was that change in mentality to get past that, to question my doctor, to say no to my doctor, to reject what she said, and to understand as well that a lot of the fear tactics she was using, I had already seen in my life investigating fraudsters. You know, my doctor put pressure on me, used fear, used urgency to try and get me to sign up to things that I didn't agree with, that I didn't want to, that I didn't think were right for me. Yeah, the hardest thing was dealing with my doctor and realizing that she wasn't God.

Marla Miller 55:25

Yes, that's a great realization. So what was the biggest lesson you learned?

Dale Atkinson 55:32

So I think I've got two. One is that being the difficult patient is not a bad thing. Going armed with questions, they can be as silly as you you think. If you can't think of what you need to ask, if you can't do the research yourself, go ask GPT. Honestly, it doesn't matter. As long as you start asking questions, that is the first step to getting yourself a better outcome. The difficult patient is the patient who lives in most instances. So be that difficult person. The second one is to find the right people, to find your tribe. There is no one right set of doctors. I had to really find the people who spoke my language. And that was Amanda, that was Harry, and that was Dr. Isabella Cooper. And they were willing to be participants in my journey, not to tell me what to do. They were there to help me, to encourage me, to do these sorts of things. And they formed my team. They've become so close with me that, you know, Amanda came and stayed at my house over Christmas. I go and meet Harry for beers every so often. You know, I've become actually friends with these people because I found the right people who spoke my language, who were there and willing to be what I needed them to be. And they weren't trying to force me into a direction that I didn't want to go. So find the right people who are going the right direction, who understand what you want and you need, no matter what that is. That could be to die with dignity, that could be to have a better quality of life, that could be to live as long as you possibly can, or that could be to try and cure yourself. There is no dictating what that means to you as an individual, but you need to find the right people who believe in that journey and will help you fulfill that no matter what.

Marla Miller 57:14

Yeah. Well, what was the kindest thing someone did for you during that time?

Dale Atkinson 57:22

Oh, that's a difficult one. It's got to be my partner. My partner, Anna, you know, going through her own diagnosis, going through her own journey, then had to very promptly sort of interrupt her own recovery in order to help me. We had a great Dane puppy who we had to give up very early on because I was hospitalized and Anna was still recovering and couldn't walk him. And, you know, we couldn't even cut his food up. He was raw-fed and she didn't have the strength, she didn't have the ability because of her lung to move her arms in that way and make those sorts of movements. So we had to give our dog up. And I think that was the kindest thing we did for somebody else, which then meant that Anna, because he was very much my dog, then compensated by looking after me more. And I think that was the kindest thing she did was not over-mollycoddling me and realizing that I needed that extra care and attention despite her own journey. She sort of self-sacrificed her recovery in order to look after me. I don't know how else to put that one. It's a very difficult one to explain, I think.

Marla Miller 58:29

I would say that's extremely loving and kind when you're recovering yourself and also looking after someone. Yeah, that's amazing.

Dale Atkinson 58:39

I wouldn't be here without her. She's been my rock through all of this. I couldn't have possibly done this without her. The kids wouldn't be as truly amazing and resilient as they are. And I mean, we get school reports now through going, honestly, they're just the most amazing children. You wouldn't believe how well they're doing despite everything they've been through. They are resilient, they are amazing. And they are that because of Anna. Anna completely changed her life. She gave up everything from her past in order to adapt everything around our new reality. And I couldn't be more thankful or more proud. She's just incredible, honestly. I can't describe her any other way. She's just amazing.

Marla Miller 59:18

Well, that's a nice tribute to her. Very nice. So maybe tell people what you are doing now and what you hope to share with people.

Dale Atkinson 59:29

So, well, first of all, sat in a chemo chair last year. I thought it was a really bright idea to go and buy a health and fitness business. I realized I can't get back to my career because cortisol was a big feeder, and my career came with lots of long hours, lots of stress, lots of these things, which made my cancer worse. So I agreed with Anna that I cannot go back to doing finance again. I cannot go back into that world. It's just too much. So we bought a health and fitness business and we are using it to try and get all the modalities I used. So the hyperic oxygen, which we're about to launch, we've got grounding sheets, which we're about to launch, we've got the pulse DMF bands, we've got ice baths, infrared saunas, red light panels, all these things that I used along my journey, that we are trying to get into the hands of the right people. We are finding the best suppliers possible with the right customer service who are going to help us look after our clients, make sure that they are properly supported, make sure they have the right information, not just what's going to sell to them, but actually what really matters to them and that they can make a properly informed choice for them. I've ended up giving multiple products away for way below what it costs us in order just to get them to people who need them because they couldn't otherwise afford them. And we are going to continue doing that to the best of my ability for as long as we can afford to do so. Now, of course, we need to make some profit because we need to live and survive, but we will do whatever we can to help people. So if there's anybody listening in the UK who needs something, please reach out. I will do what I can to help you in any way I possibly can. Atop that.

Marla Miller 1:01:03

So you have those products that are you've already vetted them. I mean, because there's a lot of red light therapy out there, but you've already vetted these specific ones.

Dale Atkinson 1:01:12

95% of them are exactly the ones I used on my journey. I've got outside of the companies that I bought from and I used, and the other ones I've gotten hold of products of theirs. I have personally tested them, like the Post EMF bands. That isn't a product that exists in the UK at the moment. We are going to be the first person selling them in the UK. And I reached out to this company specifically because they have more science, more evidence. They've done more testing than anybody else I know of. They are at the forefront of this technology. And I truly believe that they are, first of all, the right supplier who really care. Second of all, they are the right quality for the patients I'm talking to. And third of all, their product is actually tested to the level it needs to be to show that it works for these patients. So that is what matters me most. I haven't focused on cost. I'm not getting the cheapest products. I can't compete on price with the big, big suppliers like health and all these other places online. I just can't because we're a little small business. But if you reach out to us and you have a genuine need, if you can't afford it, we will try to do whatever we can to make it as cheap as possible for you, even if we have to make a loss to get it to the right people who really need things.

Marla Miller 1:02:23

So where can people find these products? What is the name of the website?

Dale Atkinson 1:02:27

Peakhealthandfitness.co.uk. And then atop that, we also have another business, which I've recently started. So using my entire finance background, I used to hunt money launderers and fraudsters, and I had lots of tools available to do that. And I've essentially realized that there is nobody looking at how good a service is for the customer. Clinicians within the healthcare services look at how clinically good they are, you know, how many patients they've cured. They don't look at actually how did that patient walk away from my service? Did they walk away feeling actually cured? Did they walk away feeling supported? Did they walk away feeling that I actually cared for them or that they got the right treatment or that I listened to them or any one of these number of things? So using the tools that I used to use to look at fraud, uh, it's the same very rough psychological triggers that a patient has looking at a business. So we have actually created a tool set. We're just about to launch at the moment, my business partner and I, she's a lady called Louise Williamson, who she has MS herself. She's from the software world. And the two of us together have experienced so many drops in trust, so many things wrong in this scope, that we have created this tool set to basically help healthcare companies to understand the patient journey clinically, but psychologically and as an allistic sort of approach, which, as a knock-on effect, also helps them to increase revenue, helps them to become a better business that actually has better turnover, helps them to grow, helps them to be more sustainable and all these other things as a byproduct of helping patients, of helping to increase the level of trust within industry. So we're about to launch that over hopefully the next couple of weeks. And then there's multiple charities, and I have my fingers in far too many other pies.

Marla Miller 1:04:20

Well, I definitely want to put links to these things in the show notes. So be sure and send me those and I'll add them. So I think that's awesome what you're doing. Well, you have such a passion for very clear reasons, having been through this full health crisis yourself. And I think it's so interesting that you even saw down to the palliative care to be exposed to that and see people next to you dying and really experiencing that level of how close to death someone comes. And so you just have a very interesting perspective. Your past really gives you so much insight and empathy as well. You can tell you really care about the patient and you want to make things as easy and accessible for them as possible so they can turn their health around. And I think that's an incredibly noble mission you're on. I'm so glad that you yourself recovered and your partner as well. And your children have two healthy parents now, and they're growing up in a healthy home mentally ampere.

Dale Atkinson 1:05:30

Well, I've been waiting for my NED, so I'm not fully NED, no evidence of disease. I'm yet to be fully in remission. I'm still no visible disease, awaiting a PET scan to confirm whether I am no evidence of disease, which will be that's as close to remission as they'll give me. So I can't claim I'm fully healthy yet, but I'm certainly on the road.

Marla Miller 1:05:49

That's awesome. When do you have that done?

Dale Atkinson 1:05:52

Hopefully later this summer. I'm just waiting for confirmation at the moment.

Marla Miller 1:05:56

I know it's gonna be good. Fingers crossed and everything else.

Dale Atkinson 1:06:00

Touch wood.

Marla Miller 1:06:01

Yes. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing such an incredible story. And I'm so glad that you have had this positive outcome and are also sharing how people can advocate for themselves and to not just take the standard protocol and think that's all you have at your disposal. You know, that there's so much more out there. And I think more and more is going to be coming to light even in the next five years. I think we're gonna see massive changes in healthcare and a lot of new solutions. So there's always hope.

Dale Atkinson 1:06:37

I hope you're right. I really, truly hope so.