My wife and I have five kids, and at this time our eldest was just 6 years old so this came as a massive shock.
I can’t have cancer, I can’t die. I have a family to love and provide for.
Of course, our first step was talking to the doctors.
I had a colonoscopy that revealed the tumour. They told me “we can't diagnose it straight away, we have to wait for the pathology results”.
So, I had about four to five days in between that time, and I just started praying.
When the results came back the doctor told my wife and I that I would need FIVE rounds of chemotherapy.
The drug was called Five-FU (Fluorouracil), so the name itself was a huge red flag for me…
The oncologist even nicknamed it ‘five-feet under’, because that's what happens essentially. You have to almost kill yourself to kill the cancer!
Even after such an invasive treatment protocol they said I would have a 73% chance to survive past five years.
I obviously wasn’t happy with that.
I want to see my kids grow up, I want to go to their sports games, watch them graduate, I want to walk my daughters down the aisle on their wedding days.
I've always been a curious person, and I like to ask questions, so that’s what I did.
I wanted to find out what my ‘other’ options were.
I needed to know if there was something else out there.
I hadn’t told Savannah this until after my oncologist appointment, but I knew going into that appointment that I wasn't going to do chemo.
After we left the doctor’s office I said…
“I'm not doing that. I'm not doing what the doctors are telling me to do.”
And she said, “what the heck are we going to do then?”
At this stage I didn’t have the answer, so I kept praying.
Asking for guidance.
I started picking up breadcrumbs of information.
I am not a very spontaneous person. It takes time for me to gather details and get all of the facts.
Savannah started looking into integrative oncologists and the closest one to us was in Chicago, which was three hours away.
I had two friends from church, both older gentlemen, and they had both had stage 3 cancer, and they both healed naturally.
So I just started listening to them.
Asking them questions.
One of them gave me Dr. Tony's book from Hope4Cancer.
After we read it, Savannah looked at me and said “what do you think about Mexico?”
And I said, “I'm not going to say yes, and I'm not going to say no, but I'm going to continue to pray about it.”
I thought, what did I just say?
Normal Zach wouldn't say that. Normal Zach would have said, “no, we're not doing that!”
That’s when I knew I would be doing it.
One phone call later and we were booked in.
I knew some of the things that they did to help with cancer, like juicing and IV’s.
What I didn’t know is that they did coffee enemas.
Savannah did, but didn’t tell me until we arrived at the clinic.
It’s probably good though because that may have stopped me from going.
That was a clever move on her end.
I said, “what the heck is that?”
She said, “you put coffee in your butt.”
Luckily it was too late to turn around.
Now, I think that everyone should do coffee enemas. Imagine our health care system if people just did this one thing to detox their body!
Sometimes I joke that if I ever become President of the United States, I would mandate coffee enemas!
I am such a believer now.
If anyone is scared of trying them, I tell them “hey you don’t have a five inch tumor blocking two thirds of your rectum.” “If I can do them, anyone can!”
While at Hope for Cancer I did a daily coffee enema, so that was 21 days. Then when we got back from the clinic, I did a 90-day juice fast, changed my diet, and continued the daily coffee enemas.
That’s how we found out about Happy Bum Co. They have everything you need to do coffee enemas at home.
I lost 20 pounds in those 90 days, and I always tell people I was ‘full of crap’.
Because literally just by changing my diet and flushing out my bowels with daily coffee enemas it cleaned me out. And I started feeling amazing.
I remember the doctors telling me ‘It doesn’t matter if you feel great, you have stage 3 colon cancer and it’s going to kill you if you don’t listen to us!”
I'd leave those appointments saying to myself, ‘I think it does matter how I feel’.
Your mental state is so important. That's half the battle when you are going on this life changing journey.
My treatment to that point didn’t shrink the tumour but it pretty much stopped it in its tracks.
The Doctors at Hope For Cancer said I was lucky it hadn’t gotten worse because the next stage your chance of survival rate drops to something like 13%.
Fast forward to November 2023 and I was in such a healthy state both physically and mentally I was able to have the surgery to remove the tumour.
I would then be able to holistically treat the circulating tumour cells (CTCs) which are the cells that have detached from my tumour and are now in my bloodstream.
One doctor of course said that I would still have the cancer circulating in my blood because “I wasn’t doing anything to treat this”
It has almost been a year post surgery and every three months I get a Signatera Circulating Tumour Blood Test. The last three tests have all come up zero!
Regardless of these results, most doctors are still turning a complete blind eye to my holistic treatment. Like I have been doing nothing!
I find this sad because these doctors are highly educated people, and they just choose to turn a blind eye. It is so ingrained.
I believe our bodies have the power to heal, if we help them.
If you have the right toolkit. For me, that is coffee enemas, juice fasts and a good diet.
I’ve always said I don't blame the doctors; they just have a different toolbox.
We were so lucky to be able to find doctors that listened and supported my health decisions. I had an integrative oncologist, a surgeon and a traditional oncologist who we are very thankful for.
Their guidance through this cancer journey has been extremely helpful! It’s so important that you find doctors who are willing to be on your team.
Fast forward to today and I am on a journey of sharing my experience on our social media. We even wrote a book about coffee enemas and I have created my own protocol for anyone who is interested.
Thank you Happy Bum Co for allowing me to share my story with more people.
Zach & Savannah