Hi there, friends!
While I’m celebrating finally being on Medicare and anxiously awaiting my consultations with Stanford and The City of Hope, I’m also working on healing from the inside out—doing some of the deeper emotional work that Dr. Matt Lederman suggested to help me heal. He has pointed out several times on my show that chronic stress can actually suppress the immune system and even increase the metastatic potential of cancer cells.
So, I’ve been working on my lifelong struggle with anxiety with Mark, the Magical Unicorn, who practices Internal Family Systems. You can learn more about it and even watch a demo of the work here.
My primary care doctor, the awesome plant-based MD, Dr. Neil Nedley, recommended trauma therapy when I was first diagnosed with cancer. After two years on the waiting list, I finally started with the wonderful doctor he recommended. We are doing something called Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), which I think will prove to be very beneficial.
Here, Dr. Nedley talks about how anxiety actually suppresses the immune system: 🔗 Watch here.
I feel that anything I do to learn to manage my anxiety will be useful in helping me live my best life with whatever time I have left. I’m also spending as much time as possible doing my first love—performing improvisational comedy. I just returned from an intensive workshop in LA, where all I did was laugh—which, by the way, is also great for the immune system!
I’ve also been doing a lot of math 🤣—counting my blessings and focusing on having an attitude of gratitude, even when it comes to having lung cancer.
I have received such an outpouring of love, jokes, cards, and gifts that soon, I may need a bigger home to house them all!
Please remember, if you send me anything, always include your name and address, as we’ve received so many things that we haven’t been able to acknowledge yet.
Love & Kale,
Chef AJ