6 Jun, 2023

Pete Cohen  0:00

Happy beautiful day. It's Pete Cohen it is the Future Self podcast. today's podcast is called Living Your Next Chapter. I'll see you after the theme tune

Pete Cohen  0:45

Happy beautiful day and welcome to the podcast. This is Pete Cohen. It's a very interesting day. Why? Well every day is an interesting day. Every day is a opportunity. Every day is a day where you could do something, you could do something. How many things could you actually do? Right now if you wanted to? How many things could you watch? How many places could you go? I mean, it's unreal. Isn't everything should you eat? How many YouTube videos could you watch? How many podcasts could you listen to? How many different TV programs could you watch? I mean, our world is just full of choices. And I think this is one of the most fascinating things about human beings. The choices that we make and what those choices are actually doing. Now speak really openly and speak from the heart because over the next few weeks, I'm going on an adventure. By the time you listen to this, I'll already be in America but tomorrow I'm flying to Dallas, and I'm going to go spend there spend a week in Dallas then I'm going to Houston, Texas, then I'm going to Indianapolis then I'm flying back to Dallas, and then I'm flying back to the UK with Patti Dobrowolski. Two weeks ago, my wife passed away and she was 38 years old. And I'm sure anyone who's ever experienced some form of loss. It can be quite challenging. And grieving is not something that I've done too many times in my life. It's a process. Many people will tell you there are five stages to grieving which is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And I'm sure many people have gone through those different stages and I've already experienced probably all of those at some point. But I want to take you back before I take you forwards many of you who've listened to the podcast, you may know this story, but I know there's going to be at least one person here who doesn't know this story. And maybe it's a story that will inspire empower you in some way, shape or form because we all love stories. You think about the child, what were you interested in? I would imagine it was a story. Maybe it was a book that you read, or someone was telling you something or you were watching something or you watched a film or you listen to something and it captured your imagination. And we know that every story has four characters they have they have a hero, they have victim, they have a hero, they have a coach or a guide. And most films that the same thing, someone's called to an adventurer, they don't want to go and they get a coach. They get a mentor and then all of a sudden, everything changes as they fight something that almost destroys them, but it doesn't quite destroy them. And then they go into training and then they go and face the thing which they faced before. But this time as they face it, they beat it and as they beat it they take on the power of the thing that they actually defeated and we will love those stories and pretty much every one is the same. I'm sure you would agree. Now I remember in 1977

Pete Cohen  4:10

I remember in 1977 watching Star Wars and those films have been a massive part of my life. I don't know how many people have watched the last films where the hero in the first three films really is Luke Skywalker. And then the last films, Luke Skywalker was living in an island and he's kind of given up and I'm actually looking at a figurine of him. I don't know how many of you when you grew up, you had little toys but I'm looking at the figurine right now in front of me. I'm holding it of Luke Skywalker with a beard and he'd become quite a recluse and he was called back into the adventure. And as I hold Luke Skywalker in my hands, I'm thinking of exactly the same thing. I'm being called back into an adventure and I'm scared frightened and anxious. I really am. I really am nervous about the journey that I'm about to embark upon. And I wasn't because after my wife passed away, I thought you know what, the best thing I can do is just this go away, you know, just have some space especially because the last few months of her life was so challenging. I mean, the most challenging time of my life. I feel I've been in training for this because two years ago my mum passed away and I was there with her with my brother the last breath. I was there. It was a real honor to be there with that with the with the person who gave me life and then three years before that my father passed away and I was I was there. Well, and I feel like everything has been training towards this point. Because ultimately it's a choice. And I think if we choose the way we think about life, and what life is here for what what are we here to do? I mean, what's the meaning of life? Well, I suppose it's the meaning you give it what's the purpose of your life, it's the purpose you give it. If I take you back to 2010, I met my wife at an airport, Ted Baker at Heathrow Airport, and I was in a queue and I was the next person to be served and I might I caught some belts, I just stepped to decide to look at these belts, and then I kind of realized I was in and out of the queue. So I then kind of stepped back in and there was this young lady behind me and I said oh, excuse me. You better go in front of me because you know I kind of stepped out didn't know. And she looked at me like I was mad. And I said my father would be really disappointed with me if I didn't let you go through. So in her head, she thought What an idiot. She told me that later. And the next time she saw me was the next day and I was on stage doing a keynote address in Croatia. And she was a buyer. It was a conference that I was the keynote speaker for. And we laughed afterwards when we became friends. And we got stuck. We got stuck out there in 2010 because of the ash cloud. I don't know how many of you remember the ash cloud but the ash cloud was a volcano that erupted and it spread out ash really all over Europe. So all planes were grounded. And we were stuck. We were stuck there. And we started this brilliant friendship along with another guy and Israeli guy who kept telling me or fear he kept saying to me, Pete, you and hammer or he called a homily you too you should get together. As you listen I'm really not a free I'm not interested. You know, you know, I'm not I just I'm happy with where I am at the moment. I love my being by myself. And he kept going on and on and on about it. And something happened and we became boyfriend and girlfriend eventually came back to the UK when I was living in Ireland. And our friendship became we became really close. I still didn't think hey, this is the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. After a year, we stayed at my parents house and this night, I was working away and I came I came back and in the middle of the night my wife had a massive epileptic fit. She was rushed to hospital and it didn't look good. And I was really really scared. It wasn't long until she was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. They didn't know how aggressive but they could just see that it was there was something really sinister going on. Now I'm a big fan of coaching. I've had coaching and mentoring all my life. But I had an unbelievable coach named was Dr. Rafael Lu guy, originally from the Philippines but he lived in Dallas, Texas. He was a doctor. Chef. Amazing. I've worked with him for 16 years. 16 years working with someone I've traveled all over the states with him. I've been to China with them. I've been to Wales, Scotland, Ireland. I've been to Portugal, Spain. This is someone who I really dedicated myself to taught me so much. And I found myself in a situation where I did not want to accept what I was being told. And my dad always said to me, son, it's not what you know, it's who you know, and my mum always said there's an answer to everything. So I called Raphael up and I told him and I never forget what he said. He said, he said find people that are still alive with the same brain tumor and find out why. Just remember thinking, wow, that's, that's brilliant. I didn't think of that. But then it was the next thing he said. He said Ask her what she's going to do when she gets better. I said what do you mean, just told you been given 18 months to live? And he just went so what? People defy the odds, all the time. But I parked that. He asked me to ask her what she was going to do when she got better. Didn't ask her that question for three years of my life. All I was interested in was finding people that were still alive. So I found a lot of people that was still alive. Say a lot was a few with the same brain tumor. And this name kept coming up the name of a Polish doctor called Dr. stammers love Brzezinski. It was really interesting talking to people who had been to this clinic in Houston, Texas. Just to hear some of them were literally still alive after being given not very long to live at all. And there is this documentary that anyone can watch and I watched it and it literally blew my mind. But then I started talking to medical professionals about this and so many of them will kind of saying the same sort of thing.

Pete Cohen  11:35

My wife would be dead if it wasn't for Dr. Burzynski and so many people in the medical world too, said it mustn't go anywhere near him. In fact, one of my mother's friends specialized in the specific brain tumor that Hannah had and he she just said to me, You must not go there. This guy's a charlatan, He is a fraud. And he was being taken to court by the Texas Medical Board plus the treatment cost 200,000 And I was trying to convince my wife that this is what she should do. But this was after she had surgery. He had eight and a half hour operation on her brain. She had what's called an awake surgery, which is where they wake you up during the surgery because of where the tumor was. It's where the language sensors were. So they wanted to be very careful with what they were doing and when Hannah's speech started to change, they stopped, stopped and then they put her skull back on and the registrar who became a friend of mine, sent me images of Hammonds and his brain and he told me that the initial pathology was a grade two which was which was great and I was quite oh that looks better because grade two for this type of tumor was probably about five years. But then we sat down with the surgeon a couple of weeks later, and he said look, I'm really sorry, the initial pathology was too but we did a we did a more detailed analysis and we could see that the cells was much more aggressive and it's a three, possibly four. And we were devastated but hadn't really didn't know what that meant. So I then spoke to the powers that be without her and I said well, what does this mean? Is it well probably, if you're lucky around 18 months would you do if you're in that position and I was already thinking ahead. So she had radiotherapy and all her hair fell out and I watched all of that I remember shaving my wife's head when it really started. And it was it was difficult, but she wasn't ready to watch this film. Burzynski the movie had already spoken to the man who made the film, Eric Merola and was trying to say to her, watch this, watch this and she just wouldn't watch it. And hours away, working away. And she called me and she said let's go we're going to America. Watch the film twice. About two and a half, two over two hours she watched it twice back to back. She said we're going so we sat down a group of us ran my mom and dad's kitchen table. And we thought about how we're going to do this called we call ourselves team hammer to raise over 200,000 pounds. That is treatment, which is a lot of money. I wasn't I'd stopped working for a few months. Literally I was just being there for HANA. Being there for HANA was one of the greatest things because I learned to love learn to laugh in a way that hadn't done before. People came together and we did some extraordinary things that people putting on events people people got this bloke got his whole back tattooed with different words. People were cycling from John o'Groats to Land's End, people were just doing amazing things. Someone gave 60,000 pounds. Someone who was a friend of a friend. We started this epic adventure, but I had to jump through so many hoops to go down this road. You couldn't make it up. Honestly, you couldn't make it up every turn. There was an obstacle. But when you want something enough, you know what's gonna get in the way. I had to find a doctor here in the UK that would oversee the treatment. I must have spoken to 50 doctors. No, no, no the treatment isn't approved. And then I found one Dr. Lawrence Buckman. Lawrence was the chair of the GP Association. And he said I'll do it. Don't mind standing out from the rest to get the FDA to approve this and it took months. It was Hannah was getting worse. And then on top of that Dr. Burzynski was being taken to court. The FDA has been taken to court numerous times by the FDA numerous times by the Texas Medical Board Now why is that? So much controversy about this man. It would be so easy to believe what what you see but when you get to spend time with someone, especially me you get to see someone who someone who really is. This is someone who is an outlier. This is someone who lives with massive intention. He's now 84 years old. We went to America and because he was being taken to court, I thought you know what, I have got to film this. We did a weekly blog, my wife and I this was 1312 13 years ago or 2011 we started doing the blog. And because he was being taken to court I thought you know what, I'm gonna have to film this because he is convicted and my wife is on this treatment, then and she had to be on this trip for a long time yet to go to America. We were there for seven weeks and yet to come back and she was on this treatment for 18 months. She had a Hickman line which is a line that goes into your arteries just above your breast, and this fluid was going in 24 hours a day through a machine jet to carry the machine around with her. I mean, Hannah was just unbelievable. She leaned in she was so intentional. And we made this film it's called Hannah's anecdote.

Pete Cohen  17:23

I mean you can watch the film, I'll put a link to it so you can go and see for yourself and this is how 1000s and 1000s of people and Dr. Hillary Jones, who's a very famous doctor here in the UK publicly spoke on on GMTV which was a program I used to present on and listen to what he says here.

Pete Cohen  18:32

That's me

Pete Cohen  18:42

so he's talking about me there. And he got hounded that doctor for about two years by a whole load of people telling him that Burzynski was a fraud and I mean I couldn't believe what the the abuse I was getting and what people were saying about Hannah. And I got really angry about all of that. But I realized that wasn't the battle that I should be fighting the battle was to save Hannah's life. And if you haven't seen that film, you'll see how sick Anna was. I admire her so much because she stepped into a world that she didn't know. And we were on this epic adventure. It is unbelievable 18 months that cancer was coming back after her radiotherapy. I learned how to look at these images but I had loads of loads of radiographers looking at it for me. A miracle happened. Literally was a miracle. Hannah massively changed her diet. When we were in Houston, Texas, where we were there for seven weeks. I wanted someone to look at her die. Hannah used to smoke how I used to drink. That epileptic fit that she had. She never smoked she drank maybe one glass of wine a year. We went to see we were in the clinic in Houston with Dr. Burzynski. And this way came in and his parents said we've just been to see Dr. Rakowski. When Rakowski I know that name kowski Dr. Wood kowski. I thought I wonder if it's that Rakowski that is always spoken about by two of the gods in health and fitness in the UK with a global guy called Paul check and Charles Poliquin. I used to be a personal trainer you know, I've written 20 books. I've spoken all over the world on health and well being from a psychological perspective, but also from a physiological perspective. And Rakowski was someone who always was mentioned by these two people as the go to guy for nutrition is one of the top functional medicine doctors in the world. And it was him that was the person they just come to see. Be careful what you wish for. I got his number. I called him up. There was no answer. He called me back. He moved everything to get us in the next day. I filmed all of this, but it's not in Hannah's anecdote I wanted to keep him out of because I knew this film would be quite controversial. I wanted to keep him out of it. And you'll see more of this because I'm going to share the footage that I took 1212 13 years ago. When we went to see him Hannah was not in a good way. She had been on this treatment for maybe a week or so she didn't want to be there. And I go into Dr. Bob's office and I see a picture of it with him with Yao. Ming, the seven foot tall basketball player van der Holyfield, you know, he's this guy's worked with the best of the best. And he did some tests on hammer. And then he sat us down and he gave us the results. And he said to Hannah, how does a World Wind star How does a tornado star and Anna didn't really want to? I didn't know the answer. She didn't know and he said the conditions have to be right. That's how cancer start. cancer starts because the conditions are right. How do you change the conditions? Well, of course, you know, there's surgery there's radiotherapy, there's chemotherapy, but can you change the the environment in your body with nutrition? Yes or no? Can you change the environment, with your attitude with your focus? Well, that's up to you to decide. But there's some fascinating research around all of this. And he put her on what's called a ketogenic diet, which is basically no sugar. Answer loves sugar. And went on this, this incredible journey. He also said to us, to Hannah, Hannah, do you drink coffee? And Hannah went, Yeah, he goes, Well, if you're gonna drink coffee, drink this coffee. I can't remember what he said. But basically was saying drink this coffee because that coffee had a mushroom in it. It's called Reishi or Ganoderma, of which there's over 3000 medical studies on this. I think there's over 600 on cancer. So she had that she changed her diet. Slowly Hannah started to get better. We came back to the UK. And, you know, it was scary because we had to have scans every month to get a blood to blood tests every single week. This was being monitored like you wouldn't believe. But her determination, her desire to get better. She was so intentional about her diet. She was so intentional about what she was doing. She is the most intentional human being I have ever met with the intention to live, or really, the intention was not to die. After three years. I asked her that question. You remember the question that my coach said, Ask her what you're going to do when you got better? asked her the question, and she started to cry. Through my ignorance, I thought she was crying because she didn't see a future which is ridiculous. Everybody sees a future. This is the Future Self Podcast with the new strapline of just get on with it. Which is Hannah's? catchphrase. It's Hannah's way of doing everything. Just get on with it. Be intentional about what you're doing. retrospect when I asked her the question, pretty sure she just saw a future that wasn't very far in front of her. If you listened to any of these podcasts, you'll listen to the research and the science behind how we see the future. Everything we do as human beings is governed by our relationship to the future. Most people are living a future they don't want. Most people around the world today are living in fear. Most people they know who they are today tomorrow, but they don't know who they are in six months or a year's time. And I knew that I wasn't the best person to help Hannah see a future that she wanted to go out and create really wasn't why because that was a bit of a fraud. I didn't really know the person I wanted to be in the future, future self. So I googled, draw your future which if you want to Google draw your future, you're more than welcome to and if you Google it, you probably will see what you won't probably see, you'll see Patti Dobrowolski.

Pete Cohen  25:07

So I watched this TED talk and I showed it to Hannah. And I just didn't say anything more about it. And next thing I know she actually drew her future she drew the life she wanted which was a house with a little house attached to it with her father in it and our cat and the child. That's what she wanted and she drew it and she stuck it up on a wall. And she showed it to me. I'm telling you what she drew. Most of that came true. But Patti and I became amazing friends, and Patti became an amazing friend to my wife. I reached out to Patti through her agent and I got Patti to come on my podcast. You can listen to it. I remember recording it. It was videoed and she said at the end, we need to do that again because it doesn't look very good behind you. But we did it again. And we've we've become friends. We've worked with organizations all over the world. She's come to the UK a few times and I've got her to come to events and she is an amazing person and really helps people draw the future that they want and she became a massive influence in my life. I truly believe that Hannah saw a future she wanted to go out and create. That's the thing. That's the greatest thing any of us will do in this world. I think it's who we become based on the future that we see by being intentional every single day. Leaning in. So we went on to live an incredible life. Hannah came off the treatment, and she got incredibly well. Very occasionally she had a seizure. She has been on anti seizure medication for a long time. Even got married. So how important that was to her and she organized pretty much every single aspect of our life of our funeral. Sorry, not our funeral. Let me say that again. I did that. a Freudian slip there. For her wedding, she she organized it all. Both my parents were there. Now obviously both my parents are not here anymore, and Hannah's not here anymore. I've always lived in some form of fear that this could come back and I know that she did as well. And in 2021 in November, I was away working just for one night, and she had another seizure and she was there with her father and she was still able to text her father who's in the other room and she just ran and it was a pretty serious seizure. It lasted about 15 minutes and I'm so glad that my father in law was there. And that started this journey of tumors come back, and in April, it was official, she was re diagnosed. And this time she was given six months to live. And it was really obviously extremely moving. She was getting worse. She her right side was failing. She was going off into stairs. She was having seizures and I we could not go back to America for the treatment. I was not vaccinated there was no way we could go back to America. And I almost gave up. I literally almost just gave up. There's one person really who was so influential in me not giving up. And that was Dr. Bob Dr. Bob Rakowski in Houston. I called him and I said Dr. Bob, I don't think there's anything we can do and he was like Pete, you can't give up you can't you got to keep going. You have to keep going. No, they can't accept this there. You can do things. Find a way to get to America. It wasn't possible. A few years before that I'd met someone on a train. Many people have heard me talk about my wife. If you listen to any of the podcasts, I don't know how many episodes you'd have to lift and listen to before you hear me talk about my wife because my wife has been totally instrumental in my relationship to how I see the future and the Future Self Podcast and the amount of people that we've impacted over the years as well as a year after we came back from Houston all those years ago Dr. Rakowski called me again and said hey, you know that coffee? Would you like to sell it? Didn't even drink coffee. Coffee was not for me. This was the coffee with the mushroom in it, but I don't know why I just said yes. Because if you get a chance to work with someone like Dr. Rakowski, I'm the sort of person I'm just going to take the opportunity even if I don't even know what it is. And this coffee arrived and I drank it. And I went to the gym I one of the best workouts I ever had. And I remember thinking, is this a placebo? I just kept drinking and I've been drinking it every single day for 12 years. I've had two colds. You know, I'm unstoppable. I've got more energy than most people could ever even imagine. And it was the most consistent thing that my wife has done in taking this mushroom every single day because you can take it in a capsule form. You don't have to drink it and tea and coffee because nature is extremely powerful. And there are answers and there are solutions out there for people, but it involves us looking outside the box. And in all the work I do I just want people to stop and pause and look at the world with a fresh pair of eyes. Realize that maybe there's more what you're currently experiencing. Maybe you could have better health better well being. Maybe you could live more intentionally. So so many people have heard this story. And I was traveling on a train coming home. This was I don't know seven years ago. And I was telling someone about my wife and I got off the train and someone had been listening and he came up to me and he said Do you know much about cancer? And I said, well, a little bit, you know, from my experience. And this was a man called Dr. Ziggy who doesn't live too far away from me. He's a private doctor. He's a fantastic man. Be careful, you know, because in life, it's not what you know. It's who you know. And he was someone I talked to about Hannah, especially with Dr. Bob literally saying you can't accept this. And he said, Well, you know what, I'm working with these doctors. There's a couple in Germany. There's one in India, there's there's someone in Israel and they're just doing some really pioneering work. They meet every week and have a tumor board and they're doing some work with virus virus treatment. And this virus treatment is is in treating cancer with viruses. It's not a new thing. But putting viruses directly into the brain is very pioneering I don't think there's anyone doing I know what happens when you get a virus. I have heard of COVID I don't know how many people have had it but when if you got it what do you think your body did you think that your body religiously raised an alarm and your immune system is activated? Because your body sees something there that shouldn't be there. It's virus treatment to cut a long story short, we ended up going to Germany that was not straightforward either, which is another story in itself. But the fact is, with the help of people got their wife had this treatment, this surgery where they put this line directly into the brain. And they put these two viruses in her brain chickenpox virus and another virus I think it's called the Newcastle virus. And it triggered an immune response and bearing in mind at this time, Hannah was not in a good way she couldn't walk properly. She was struggling with so many things and thinking and it was she had the treatment we came home and literally just started to get better. Amazing what I was seeing in I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I couldn't I couldn't make out what I was seeing. It was like this is a miracle. I was thinking she was gonna die and she was coming back to life. It was the most amazing thing me and my father in law, which is Wow. Was able to move again walk again. was rowing she was and we were going back and she had four tumors in her brain for these scans because we had to go to Munich for these scans. This would offer the treatment. And the scan showed that like three of these tumors just disappeared. I was like, yes, we've got another chance. Another chance at life. was saying to people, this is the closest thing I've ever seen to a miracle. Then I was eventually started saying this isn't a closest thing. This is a miracle. And there was one tumor left. You can see it in the scans. And this her case was presented at a cancer conference in Germany, in Baden Baden, and then the doctor Benny, because untight he also presented it to a brain tumor. Charity here in the UK. This was all online. I can people can watch this if they want I have it. It's online anyway. And you can see all the scans the imaging, specific imaging, and you could see that there was this one tumor liquid was getting smaller. And Hannah and I were like this is it. We've we've done this is it this is only gonna get better. Right. This two minutes this little bit left and we went to back to Germany and bearing in mind she just had COVID December. We we went there she had a scan in Munich. We literally That's all she was going for just the scan. And then we flew back got an Uber we were driving home and I got a WhatsApp message from the doctor saying look, it's not good. They really really looked hard at the imaging and that one bit had started to become more aggressive than we zoomed him that night at nine o'clock. And the doctors had already met and they come up with a plan which was to go back for more virus treatment. And it was this time it was a triple dose of virus. They put it in her brain or artery in my brain or artery and vein.