Prognosis Is Not Prophecy

Medicine had its mission. So did I.

I had spent much of my life learning what to do when things went wrong — in the ocean, in aircraft, on mountains, and in other places where fear demanded a response.

I’d learned that consequence comes with adventure — and that when things go wrong, how you respond matters.

Yet when cancer arrived, I did something strangely unwonted:

I handed the controls to someone else.

Cancer was foreign territory with a dangerous reputation. Medicine knew the maps, the language, the statistics and the protocols. I didn’t.

And at first, that was enormously comforting.

I was diagnosed while visiting family in Australia and quickly found myself under the care of highly experienced specialists. I felt fortunate. Safe, even.

The treatment statistics looked encouraging.

So I did what many disoriented people understandably do.

I deferred.

Surgery. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Procedures, appointments, scans and instructions.

I faced what was put in front of me, remained optimistic, and trusted that medicine would get me through.

For months, I was a very cooperative passenger.

Then came my birthday.

I walked into my oncologist’s office expecting good news. The primary tumour had responded to treatment, and I thought the worst was behind me.

Instead, my professor turned his monitor toward me.

There were tumours everywhere.

The cancer had metastasised.

Gutted, I asked what happened next.

He told me there was no known curative treatment.

Then came the sentence that changed my relationship with medicine forever:

“Nobody comes back from this.”

You have maybe a year, he said, apologetically.

He shook my hand.

And for the first time in that room, I sat down.

There were other people there, but I remember feeling completely alone.

I looked up at the ceiling.

And then, unexpectedly, I laughed.

Not because anything was funny.

Something about the absurdity of it broke through.

I thought about the life I had already lived — giant surf, shark encounters, getting caught in storms, aircraft malfunctions, driving crashes, and plenty of other situations where things could have ended very differently.

Many of those risks had been mine to own.

Yet somehow I was going to die from this thing I had been told was essentially random — and there was nothing left to do?

Something in me objected.

Not to death.

To helplessness.

I looked back at my professor and asked:

“What else is possible?”

“Nothing,” he told me. “We’re done.”

And something in me came back online.

“Maybe you’re done.”

He quickly reminded me that he had been doing this work for more than thirty years.

I reminded him that “maybe a year” sounded like a hell of a lot of time to investigate any puzzle.

I told him to go away, speak to his colleagues and research whatever options might exist.

I would go home and do the same.

We would meet again on Monday to discuss a plan.

I walked out of that room frightened, uncertain, angry and very much alive.

And somewhere inside me was one clear and audible thought:

You work for me now.

Not arrogantly.

Not dismissively.

Medicine still mattered.

But its role had changed.

I entered cancer care as a passenger.

I left that room as the captain.

My relationship with medicine changed that day.

I no longer expected doctors to carry responsibility for my future.

It was time to trust myself under pressure.

I wanted their expertise.

I wanted their care, their technology, their experience, and their thinking.

But I would no longer outsource my authority to them.

When medical dependability ran out, courage took over.

And courage changed everything.

Courage made room for curiosity.

My research became relentless.

Medical journals. Experimental treatments. Procedures. Second opinions. Questions for doctors, nurses and technicians.

I also looked to the wisdom of the crowd — social media, YouTube, authors, researchers, survivors, and any experience of cancer remission I could find.

Was all of it wise?

Of course not.

But the more information I gathered, the more I began to notice repeated overlap.

Ideas surfaced independently in different places. Similar experiences appeared across different stories. The same questions, practices and biological pathways kept showing up.

That didn’t make them automatically true.

But repetition revealed patterns worth investigating.

I learned to notice what kept surfacing, research it further, compare it with what I could verify, and then decide what felt worth exploring for me.

I challenged assumptions.

I asked what else might be possible.

Sometimes the medical team saw possibilities.

Sometimes I did.

Sometimes a nurse, friend, researcher or stranger contributed something neither of us had considered.

Where the evidence was thin, we sometimes tried treatments with uncertain odds.

We pursued compassionate access to experimental options.

When something failed, I asked another question.

When disease threatened a particular organ, I wanted to know what could be done specifically for that problem rather than simply accepting the whole-body prognosis.

If I had a year, could we tackle them one tumour at a time?

There were twelve.

And when money became an obstacle to a potentially beneficial treatment, something extraordinary happened.

I reached out.

Friends rallied.

A band got back together.

Hundreds of people showed up.

A community helped carry part of the load.

Participation, I began discovering, did not always mean doing something alone.

Sometimes courage looked like having my own back.

Sometimes it looked like allowing myself to receive.

At the same time, another mission was taking shape.

Medicine was working on the disease from the outside.

Privately, I had begun an inner mission as well.

I studied trauma, stress, feelings, emotion, behaviour, meditation, biology, consciousness, and the relationship between what we experience and what the body experiences with us.

I changed the way I ate.

I changed the way I breathed.

I changed what I paid attention to.

I changed how I related to fear and safety.

I changed how I related to others.

I changed how I related to myself.

I stopped treating my body like something that had betrayed me and began asking what it might need from me.

And I began discovering another quality of attention.

Not the cold attention of monitoring for what was wrong.

Not judgemental attention.

Not anxious surveillance.

Warm attention.

Attention with compassion in it.

Attention that listened.

Attention that was loving, curious and tender rather than demanding.

I learned to generate internal states of connection, gratitude and safety rather than spending any more waking hours rehearsing the possibility of pain, suffering and death.

And somewhere in all of this I began to understand that intention, by itself, wasn’t participation.

I could intend to heal.

I could intend to change.

I could intend to listen differently.

But eventually, intention had to enter the way I lived.

Courageous participation is when intention and behaviour align under pressure.

Or more simply:

Courageous participation is the moment intention becomes behaviour.

I started looking upstream.

At first, partly because I suspected I might discover the cause.

Over time, that question became more interesting.

Perhaps there wasn’t just one cause at all, but a plethora of influences worth understanding.

I had stopped believing that a tumour represented the beginning of the story.

Medicine had its mission.

And so did I.

Over time, something else happened.

The need to force an outcome began to loosen.

At the beginning, I needed possibility.

I wanted to feel that the story might not be finished.

Possibility gave me somewhere to stand.

Then came participation.

Research. Awareness. Choices. Treatments. Meditation. Movement. Nutrition. Relationships. Questions. Receiving.

And eventually, something deeper became possible.

Surrender.

Not giving up.

Not becoming passive.

Letting go of any desire to control or resist where all of this had to lead.

I came to understand it this way:

Possibility opens the door.
Participation walks through it.
Surrender comes when we no longer distrust where it leads.

Then the scans changed.

Eventually, there was no evidence of disease anywhere in my body.

Complete remission of a rare cancer.

And strangely, that wasn't the end of the mystery.

It was the beginning of another one.

In the follow-up years, my treating professor repeatedly expressed his disbelief at what had happened.

As I remember those conversations, he was clear that the treatments I had received did not adequately explain what he was seeing.

He would remind me how long he had worked in oncology.

He told me he had never seen anything like it.

In other words:

He didn't understand it.

Neither did I.

And I still don't pretend to.

But holy cow, I’m curious.

I can’t assign neat percentages to medicine, immunity, meaning, meditation, self-healing, consciousness or things we may not yet know how to measure.

Nor can I responsibly discount any of them.

What I can say is that the human being at the centre of this healing story had participated profoundly.

And I cannot accept that as irrelevant simply because we cannot yet quantify its contribution.

An unexplained remission is not an embarrassment to science.

It is unfinished science.

Yet once I entered complete remission, something surprised me.

The medical interest largely disappeared.

When I was dying, I was clinically interesting — and the system had treatments to offer me.

When I became an anomaly that medicine couldn't readily explain, there was remarkably little appetite to investigate why.

I was left to make sense of my incredible experience alone.

I felt, in a strange way, abandoned by the mystery of my own remission.

That unanswered question has stayed with me for more than seven years:

What happened?

Not just:

What happened to the tumours?

But:

What happened to the human being?

What changed biologically?

Energetically?

Psychologically?

Behaviourally?

Relationally?

Spiritually?

What role did medicine play?

What role did meditation play?

What role did my participation play?

What remains outside our current understanding?

We don't have to believe in something for it to be true.

And absence of explanation is not evidence of absence.

What my experience taught me is much simpler:

Courageous participation matters.

Warm attention matters.

The questions we ask — and live in — matter.

And when the winds blow hard against us, where we focus remains ours to choose.

Early courage restores possibility.

Practised courage becomes participation.

Mature courage allows us to surrender control without surrendering agency.

That is the journey I recognise now.

I reclaimed the captain’s seat in my own life.

My mission now is not to captain someone else’s ship, but to understand their storm well enough to help them rediscover the helm of their own.

Playing the Energy Game — Practising a New Signal

There came a point where I stopped waiting to feel better — and started practicing it.

Through meditation, I had learned how to generate elevated emotional states with my eyes closed. But the real shift happened when I realised I could access that same energy with my eyes open — in real time, in the middle of life.

That changed everything.

My focus became simple: practice internal states that supported the terrain I wanted to cultivate. Not perfectly, but intentionally.

I began following the feeling.

Free-flow dancing. Bouncing on a rebounder. Looking for situations to laugh. Allowing myself to be silly. Listening to comedy. Watching performances and playing music that genuinely moved me. Doing breath work that lifted my state. Remembering moments where I felt proud, strong, or deeply alive. Engaging all of my senses fully. Being in nature. Cold ocean swims. Barefoot contact with the soil. Hot magnesium/sodium bicarbonate baths. Receiving full-body massages and intimate hugs. Practicing gratitude, not just as a thought, but as a felt experience in the body.

What I noticed was this: the more I practiced generating these states, the more accessible they became.

It wasn’t about forcing positivity. It was about participating in states that felt expansive, energising, and alive — and allowing my body to become more familiar with those states.

You don’t need to wait for the right mood.

You can practice creating it.

Even briefly. Even imperfectly.

Because the body listens to what you repeatedly think and feel — and over time, it responds.

Learning to Sit With Myself — Meditation

When I broadcast my terminal prognosis to the world, a friend of mine messaged to say she was sitting beside someone who said they had healed their cancer through meditation — and asked if I wanted to know more.

That moment stayed with me.

Very quickly, meditation became something more intentional.

In this work, I began to realise that nervous-system state wasn’t something I could merely observe. I could participate in the conditions influencing it. I couldn't play every instrument — but I could learn to conduct differently.

The best way I can describe it is like blowing on dormant embers within the body… only to feel them come alive, build, and eventually unify into a steady internal fire.

My daily meditations would be around an hour, slow to start, with the first 20 minutes spent settling in — arriving, focusing, and allowing the state to build.

Once that state was lit, it required very little effort to maintain. Just attention… and a sense of gratitude for the healing that had already begun. A refreshing dialogue between mind and body was being consciously created, reconnecting my strayed persona with my core awareness. Through whispers of “thank you for healing,” my body responded in kind.

In that space, something shifts.

A felt sense of wholeness. Of love. Of a deep and welcoming sense of safety.

Fear faded. Courage rose. Stress dissolved. The identity tied to illness began to loosen its grip.

And then, at a certain point… even the clear intention to heal fell away.

I remember it clearly.

Sitting there, fully present — and for the first time, there was nothing to ask for. No outcome to reach. No problem to solve.

Just being.

I even caught myself in wonder … not in disbelief, but the quiet recognition that what had once felt so heavy and significant had simply… disappeared from my awareness.

In that moment, there was no disease to identify with.
There was nothing to fix.

Only a clear and undeniable shift in the body — a biochemical feedback that felt as real as anything I had ever known.

And with that… something deeper settled.

The need to control whether I survived or died lost its importance.

What mattered was how I was experiencing life — right then.

Meditation became something I was drawn to. No longer out of expectation, but because of what it allowed me to access.

A direct experience of my inner self — not just a body of symptoms, but something far more alive, responsive, and connected.

The contrast was impossible to ignore.

On one side, the heaviness of prognosis… the sting of separation.

On the other, this.

Bliss. Space. Coherence.

Meditation became a comforting light in a dark place.

And over time, as I continued to return to that space each day…

I wasn’t surprised that my body healed.

Because it didn’t just feel real.

It was real.

And somewhere, quietly, I knew it.

Thank you for healing!

Gratitude as a Daily Reset

Gratitude wasn’t new to me — but my relationship with it had been complicated for a long time.

For years, I felt incredibly blessed. Life had given me more than I could reasonably explain. But alongside that came a quiet discomfort… a sense that I might be receiving more than I deserved, or more than others around me.

At times, I even questioned whether my ability to receive was somehow limited by how well I expressed gratitude — I noticed a confusing undercurrent of guilt.

The only place feeling thankful ever felt effortless was in the ocean. Surfing. Out there, gratitude wasn’t something I thought about — it was something I became.

That became the benchmark.

So when I got treated and couldn't surf, I didn’t want to return to gratitude as a mental exercise. I wanted to embody it again — fully, honestly, and without force.

This became a deeper practice.

Not in the head — in the heart.

I began to understand that gratitude isn’t something you list. It’s something you feel. And the body responds to that feeling.

The more real it felt, the more my internal state began to shift.

There was also something else underneath it — something more personal.

A growing sense that I wasn’t separate from whatever had given me this life in the first place. That maybe receiving wasn’t something to feel guilty about… it was something to feel worthy of.

And in that acceptance, gratitude became less about saying “thank you”…

…and more about being in relationship with what already was.

When I was unwell, practicing gratitude became an opportunity.

I’d start simple — write five things down daily. Trying not to repeat them in my journal. Training my mind to look for what was already present, already supportive, already beautiful, already healing.

Over time, it became easier.

Not because life changed — but because my attention did.

I also noticed something practical.

If I went to bed in a genuine state of gratitude, I was far more likely to wake up in that same state.

And that mattered.

Prior to this practice, there were mornings when I’d wake naturally — hearing the birds, the ocean — and for a moment, everything felt normal. Then I’d remember.

And with that thought, my body would shift. The chemistry would change. It would take time to find my way back.

Gratitude helped shorten that distance.

It became a way to return — more quickly, more reliably — to a state that felt connected, rather than separated.

And over time, it became clear:

Gratitude didn’t require fear to disappear. It changed my relationship with it.

One can quieten the other.

So rather than trying to eliminate fear… I focused on strengthening gratitude.

Not perfectly. But consistently.

Because every time I returned to it, I was reinforcing something my body could recognise:

Safety. Coherence. Enoughness.

And that’s a very different signal to live in.

✍️ How I Journaled My Way to Clarity

I hadn’t really journaled before.

But I was curious about writing.

In conversation, I often struggled to say exactly what I meant in the moment. Writing gave me something different — space. Time to think. To feel into what I was trying to say. To move words around until something clicked. And it offered me a surprising listener — me.

At first, it was practical.

Dates. Doctors. Pharmacies. Notes on treatments, research, and protocols.

But as things progressed — especially after my Stage IV diagnosis — the pages began to change.

Facts turned into questions.
Questions turned into perspectives.
And perspectives began to carry emotion.

What started as notes became reflections.
Reflections became rants.
And at times, those rants became something heartfelt, even poetic.

I had already shared my prognosis publicly. The response was immediate — and deeply human. Family, friends, distant connections, and even curious strangers became part of the experience.

So instead of keeping my journal private… I made a decision.

To share it.

Come hell or high water — we would walk into the unknown together.

Something interesting happened when I did that.

My writing became less guarded. More open. More honest. More contributive.

And in a strange way, more balanced.

Not because everything was easy — but because I’d stepped into a type of responsibility, a different kind of leadership. People were looking in, trying to understand what this experience actually felt like, and in return, I received words of support and the wisdom of the crowd.

I wasn’t just processing anymore.

I was expressing.

And that expression brought clarity.

Over time, journaling evolved. It became a weekly rhythm — a short video, paired with written words. What I couldn’t say in five minutes on camera, I could explore more deeply on the page.

Together, they allowed me to fully articulate what I was going through.

Not perfectly. But truthfully.

Some parts I kept close — shared only with those nearest to me. But what I did express openly had an effect.

On me… and on others.

There’s something about putting words to experience.

Some say words are spells.
Some say they’re prayers.
Some say they release what’s been held inside.

All I know is this:

When I wrote and spoke honestly, something shifted.

Clarity came. Emotion moved. And I felt more grounded in myself.

And unexpectedly, it reached beyond me.

People resonated. Some quietly. Some openly. Some generously. While others, on their own healing path, felt inspired by what was being shared.

In choosing to express my experience…

I wasn’t just participating in my own healing.

I was contributing to something larger.

And I came to see this clearly:

Courage doesn’t just live within us.

It moves between us.

And when expressed honestly… it spreads.

🥦 Nutrition

Years before I was ever diagnosed, I had an experience that quietly changed how I thought about food.

I attended a one-day nutrition course at the end of a longer program. Most people didn’t show up. I nearly didn’t either.

But I stayed — and something landed.

The challenge was simple:
Ten days. No alcohol. Nothing with eyes.

If I notice a lift in energy, continue for thirty.

I did — and the impact was immediate.

My thinking sharpened. My memory improved. My physical stamina went through the roof. I surprised myself. At the time, I was training as a fighter, and I could feel the difference clearly. I was outperforming people I hadn’t before — and finishing with energy still in the tank.

I’d never felt like that.

The only downside was that I lost muscle. I became what I’d call a “skinny superman.” At that stage of life, vanity won out. Within months, I’d reintroduced more protein and the occasional beer.

But I was never unaware again.

Fast forward twenty years — and I’m facing cancer.

It didn’t make sense to me that food had caused it. I ate better than most people I know. But I knew — both intellectually and from experience — that what I consumed, and what I didn’t, would influence my internal terrain.

So I treated nutrition as part of the work.

Not desperately. But intentionally.

With the help of my wife, who is a certified nutritionist, we created a protocol that made sense both scientifically and practically.

This was my experiment, not a cancer diet or a prescription for anyone else.

I removed alcohol completely and prioritized organic produce.

I revisited the idea of “nothing with eyes,” but adapted it to sustain my lean muscle. This time, I included small portions of high-quality, grass-fed meats — often in the form of homemade bone broths. They were easy to digest and supported my energy rather than draining it. Believing the adage ‘be alive — eat live foods,’ I ate plenty of fresh produce — much of it raw, or only lightly steamed or stir-fried.

I included:

• locally sourced seafood

• fermented foods

• cruciferous vegetables

• living salads

• nutrient-packed nuts

• pasture-raised eggs

And I kept things simple.

I avoided ultra-processed foods, dairy, refined sugars, and simple carbohydrates — so no bread, pasta, pizza, pies, or anything along those lines.

Fruit became dessert, but I avoided fruit juices.

Overall, I ate in a way that leaned toward a ketogenic style — consistently enough to think and feel the difference.

Timing mattered too.

I wouldn’t break-fast until around 11am, then ate all meals within an 8-hour window. I avoided eating late at night, giving my body time to rest and process.

Supplementation became a big part of the routine — often taken with a protein-based smoothie, along with essential fats and minerals.

Hydration was simple but steady.

I also kept a couple of rituals I genuinely enjoyed: Earl Grey tea and organic dark chocolate.

I lost weight when life was in the balance. Exercise was short walks. Treatments often ruined my appetite and stripped me of energy. Skinny, not-so-Superman — but participating.

The way I saw it was this:

Healing is an energy game.
And digestion requires its share.

So the question became —
“Am I supporting my system… or adding to its workload?”

I wasn’t trying to follow someone’s perfect diet.

I was paying attention.

To how I felt.
To how my body responded.
To what supported clarity, stability, and energy.

And over time, those choices added up.

The body responds to the environment it’s given.

Not just through food — but through stress, emotion, rest, toxin exposure, and attention.

I didn’t believe my diet caused my cancer. But I also couldn’t ignore the role that lifestyle and internal environment play in how the body heals.

So rather than trying to attack the disease directly, my focus became:

How do I improve the terrain my body is operating in?

That meant reducing what I understood contributed to stress and inflammation… and increasing what supported stability, energy, and repair.

I leaned toward approaches that supported metabolic health — not as a rigid doctrine, but as a practical way to give my body the best possible conditions.

Not to control the outcome.

But to participate in it.