Help Me Heal From Cancer through Loving Care

Just like Martin Luther King, I have a dream. My dream is to celebrate my grandson, Logan’s, twenty-first birthday with all our family, but to do so I need your help. You see, Logan just turned 3-months old and when he turns twenty-one, I’ll be ninety-three.

Hello. For those who don’t know me, my name is Brad Swift. I’m a former small animal veterinarian turned science fiction and fantasy author and personal development coach. (I know, my mom thought I was crazy to make such a transition as well.) But I’ve been very happy with this combo career for over thirty years until recently.

I live in a quaint village in the North Carolina mountains where my wife, Ann, and I have raised our only child, Amber. 2021 has been a most interesting year filled with highs and lows. For starters, Amber gave birth to our first grandchild, Logan. A few weeks later on May 3rd, I went to my doctor to request a PSA blood test because I’d been having difficulties urinating. The test came back 114 ng/ml while the normal should be less than 4 ng/ml., 28 times higher than high normal.

Suddenly, my world twisted on its axis as my priorities shifted dramatically with the time normally devoted each day to writing replaced by researching my health challenge. In the process, I discovered that prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in the U.S. (excluding skin cancer), and the second leading cause of cancer in men worldwide. It is the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the U.S., with 94 men dying from it every day.

So, on the recommendation of a urologist, I underwent a biopsy of my prostate gland which came back positive for cancer, no surprise given the PSA level. Next, I traveled down to Alpharetta, Georgia for a whole-body T-3 MRI scan along with a second MRI of the pelvic region. The good news is that the scans did not reveal any signs of metastasis beyond the pelvic area. Unfortunately, this cutting-edge technology isn’t currently covered by Medicare so we had to pay the $3500 ourselves. We soon learned it was the first of many expenses not covered by Medicare.

Now that I had confirmed the diagnosis, I began to research treatment options that were fit with my own training and experience. You see, one of the first things I learned in vet school was a key part of the Hippocratic Oath: “First do no harm.” But it appears to me that most of the “standard of care” cancer treatments ignore this wisdom. Whether it’s radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, or some combination, the intention is the same, kill the cancer no matter what.

But my continued research revealed another approach that feels intuitively to make more sense to me. Our bodies have an amazing ability to heal themselves if we treat them well. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, knew that when he wrote, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” I’m choosing a gentler approach more aligned with “first do no harm.” I’m not out to kill the cancer. I prefer to love it away through a significant lifestyle change. These changes include the ten steps outlined in the books, Radical Remission and Radical Hope, by Kelly A. Turner, PhD. and include a much healthier diet, coupled with supplemental support of intravenous vitamin C therapy (IVC) two to three times per week.

While there’s plenty of evidence that this more natural, metabolic approach to cancer treatment works well, most of the care I need isn’t currently covered by health insurance. Already, in the first couple of months since being diagnosed, we’ve incurred over ten thousand dollars in out-of-pocket expenses, and our journey has just begun. The IVC therapy alone averages over two thousand dollars per month, and it’s likely I will need to continue them for a year or longer. The good news is that I’m already seeing early positive results with my latest PSA dropping from a high on June 11 of 122 to 77 a month later, a 37% decline.

For over three decades since leaving the veterinary profession, I’ve endeavored to live my life as an experiment. Can I live true to my Divinely Inspired Life Purpose—to live a courageously creative life of purposeful, passionate, and playful service, simplicity, and spiritual serenity? I view healing my cancer through loving care as simply the next leg of my journey, and I want to share the journey with as many people as possible. Will you join me? Here are some ways how:

Send me your loving thoughts and prayers,

Contribute whatever amount works for you to this GoFundMe campaign, and

Share this GoFundMe page with as many people as possible.

Together we can show the world that it really is possible to love cancer away.