Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 143: Sending positive vibes to a Pumphead

Episode Date: September 4, 2015

Life is certainly not without it's challenges and there are times when events are outside of anyone's control. Today's episode brings out a side of Sal, Adam & Justin Pumpheads normally don't see as they tackle this topic.

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So remember the guy last week that sent us the message about his mom. Zach. Yes. So I want to talk about this a little bit because, well, first of all, he's a member of our forum. He's a very nice guy. Looks up to us.

He follows our advice and stuff. Then he came in some really bad news. Zach recently found out that this is horrible. Found out that his mom has stage four pancreatic cancer. She's been given about five months to live. First off, I just like to put this out there to the pump heads out there. If you could just send, if you're religious,

send out some prayers or put out some good energy towards him and his family, hope that something happens, a miracle happens, she gets better. But his question was, because then he asked this question about that and he says, how do you handle all those aspects of life? How do you handle those kinds of challenges? Because that's a major.

That's heavy. That's not like an old tree. That's a life, it's his mom. He's a young kid too. I don't know how old he is exactly, but if you look at his pictures, he looks like he's probably early 20s at the oldest. So that's kind of a tough situation to be in.

But for me, this personally kind of in a sensitive spot because I recently lost somebody very, very, very close to me. It was a family member. Just at a privacy, I'm not going to say how I knew who she was, but she just about two years ago passed away from a battle with a very, very, very bad cancer as well. So, Pinkriotic Cancer at this stage is one of the absolute worst. You know, the survival rate is like zero. I mean, you're basically, there's nothing they can do. This person that was very, this family member of mine who I'm very close with, she had a

type of stomach cancer called lydinitisplastica, which has also a pretty much a zero percent survival rate. And it's weird, man, when you're hit with that situation, you know, I remember I came home one night from work, and there were like four cars on my driveway. And it was like 9.30 at night, and I knew, like fuck, something is going on. First thing I thought was something happened to one of my kids or something,

but somebody would have called me, unless it's really bad, and they wouldn't want, you know, tell me I'm person, so I'm freaking out, going the house, everybody's sitting down at the table. My kids are there, everybody's there, so I'm like, okay, nobody's, you know, hurt, you know, what's going on.

And she told us, her diagnosis, and you know, I know a lot of random things. And for whatever reason, I tend to, cancer was a subject that I got into a year ago. And so I, and I also train a lot of surgeons that work on cancer patients. So I know the bad, all cancers are bad. Nobody wants to get diagnosed with any cancer. But some are very treatable, and then there's some that are not treatable at all. And when she told us the type that she had, nobody else in the family knew what I knew. I knew right away when she told me, like, this is horrible. There's not going to be much anybody could do. But the rest of the family, not knowing, if I told you, Lidonitis Plastic, a stomach cancer, you wouldn't really know

if that was good or bad, most people wouldn't. And so everybody's kinda like, okay, well, what are the treatments, how are we gonna work? But I knew in my mind, like, fuck, this is not. It's a horrible situation, it's very interesting. When you're faced with that type of a situation, and Zach, I'll speak to you if you're listening. You wanna reach out and grasp anything that could possibly help

solve this situation. For our situation, knowing the statistics, knowing that the survival rate was almost zero, knowing that chemo and radiation wouldn't do anything at all. You know, we still chose to do some of those treatments because you just wanna throw everything at it. You just wanna do anything you can. In hindsight, looking back, it was probably not a good idea. I think it made her quality of life worse as she got towards the end of her life.

And everybody handles those situations and stresses differently. For me personally, I tend to be a, I try to do as much as I possibly can to help. So I went into research mode. I was sleeping like three, four hours a night, reading everything I possibly could on natural cancer. Because I knew that there was nothing we could do.

So what could I possibly find to help her treat her cancer? And I'm going to tell you something right now, if you're facing this situation and you go on the internet and you look at things that could help fight cancer, there's a lot of bullshit out there. People who are going to take advantage of you, there's a lot of stories and anecdotes out there. And it's very difficult to sift through, you know, what might help, but what might not help.

So you got to kind of set yourself up with a litmus test. And mine was, I wanted to see some studies, I wanted to see some science. And one thing that we decided to do is we decided to have her use very, very highly concentrated marijuana oil. And her diagnosis initially was about eight months. And she actually made it about a year and a half. And I think that had something to do with it, but I will say this, while she was on chemo,

except for the towards the very end, she had very little symptoms from the chemo. And I created a lot of that to the marijuana. And this was a lady, by the way, who was super old school, never did anything, except maybe drink some wine. And so, and she trusted me and she tried some of this, but it's a tough situation.

It will challenge your family. But if you stick together, you'll end up stronger, I think, at the end. So, I don't know. It's Godmats. It's heavy, it's hard. And I think everybody kind of handles it differently. And shit, I think that I'm terrible at this stuff. My, those that don't know, my father took his life when I was seven. And then,

I don't know if anybody knows this. I don't know if we talked about this on the show or not. I think we talked about my tattoos before. My shoulder is actually my grandmother. And my grandmother was the by far the closest person I was to in my family. So I lived with her in my late teens, the early 20s, when I first moved to Bay Area. And so I tattooed her on my shoulder and kind of memorialized her. And one of the things that, you know, when my dad died when I was seven, when he took his life when I was seven, that was really tough. It was so numb.

It was so numb. You were young. Yeah, I was so young, I didn't know how to feel, I didn't know how to act, I didn't know what to think of. I think as an older man, and actually, I'm actually at the age

that he was when he took his life, which is always very surreal right now. So I'm in that time right now in his life. So it's probably more on my mind now than it was even as a young boy. And the things that I just try and think of is, you know, in a situation like that for him to take his own life and leave, you know, what decisions do I make in my life that could ever ever even make me think that way, you know, and always keep in a positive attitude about things. So it's kind of how I handle that. Now my grandmother is a much more similar situation

as what he's going through right now, although it's not, it wasn't my mother. My grandmother took care of me growing up. So because I didn't have a father, you know, we were, and I've talked a little bit about not having any money growing up. We were very poor. And my, and my grandmother used to send boxes of clothes and take care of us. And, you know, one of the things that I think I kind of took on when she passed, and she passed from the same thing that Zach's mom has. So I watched her deteriorate, and it was one of the hardest things I ever went through was watching her deteriorate, literally felt like day by day.

And when she passed, you know, some things that I try to encompass in my life daily is what my grandmother representative, my grandmother was probably one of the hardest working women I've ever met in my life. You know, she lived for us grandkids. And a lot of people used to think she was rich because she always bought all of us stuff. She helped me buy my first car. I had always got clothes from her. She always took me, you know, Christmas is always great. Like she literally, you know, made me have as close to a normal childhood as possible for somebody who grew up poor. But yet, I didn't find out until later in life, till I live with her in my 20s when I started to help when she started to get older and I started to take care of her bills and

kind of, and I realized like, holy shit, like my grandma makes like 20-something dollars an hour and then when she works overtime, you know, and she's in her 60s, mid-60s, arthritis, two knee surgery on both sides working, you know, 12, 14 hour days, you know, to pay for her, you know, little two-bedroom condo that she had bought 15, 20 years before that. And all of her money literally went to all of us kids, you know, and her whole life was like that. And so I think a lot of my selflessness comes from that. So those that really are close to me know that I'm a very giving person. And I think a lot of that comes from her. It's how she showed her love to me. I'm not very good at expressing it. So, you know, I wasn't the guy who said, I love you a lot

and the hugs and the kisses and I'm still not that guy. It's something that I always have to work on. But something that I most certainly am is that's how I show my love in generalist through generosity and giving to others. And I think one of the best things that we can do in a situation like that is to encompass,

obviously you love your mother. Obviously I love my grandmother. What is it about those people in our lives? What do they represent? What do they represent to us and their strengths and attributes and what does it mean to us? And they're trying to encompass that. And I think that's the best way I feel

like I could live on for my grandmother is to carry on what her work ethic, her selflessness. I always keep that in mind. That was part of me tattooing on my shoulder and I always will remember that. And so when thinking about your mother, you think of the things that what she's provided for you

and what she's given to you in this life. And I'm sure if you were to ask her, what would you want me to do in the situation, mom? I think more certainly she would say to live on these values that I've tried to teach you my entire life. Yeah, one thing I did during that whole period was, because you know, you watch someone with this type of disease,

you know, towards the end, it can. And I don't wanna say it does because there are times when you have spontaneous remissions, there are times when people get better, but if they don't, you do see this kind of decline on a daily basis, just like Adam was saying, and one thing I kept telling, you know, myself and my other family members was, she's here now. Yeah, enjoy your time. Right, right now. Yeah, she's here now.

Like stop thinking about what is going to happen or what can potentially happen. She's here now, we're all here together. what is gonna happen or what can potentially happen. She's here now, we're all here together. Let's make the most of this now. She's here now, I'm gonna enjoy this now. And so, I think I don't remember how many months before it got really bad. We went to Disneyland together, we took her to Disneyland.

And, just being present. Be present, man. Yeah, and I wish I had a real relatable story to throw out there, you know, like what you're going through. And I obviously, I really have no idea like how hard this must be for you. So, you know, this kind of stuff is really hard for me to talk about anyway because it's like I overly empathize with people and it's just one of those things that I get like, I don't know, I get really

like depressed and I take that on, you know, from other people if I see them, you know, going through stuff like this. So really, I don't, I don't have any advice other than to just, you know, just be there with your mom and experience things right now. Like do things with her that you guys enjoy together and make new memories and just kind of carry on her legacy how everything she means to just make new things together. Well, I was just gonna say, be totally open. Say everything you wanna say.

And here's the other thing that, because in the fitness industry, because I understood keeping the body healthy and the mind healthy, I did not stop exercising and I did not stop eating healthy. And, you know, I'm sure this people out there going, I could never work out or do that kind of stuff when I have someone so close to me who's sick, but I'll tell you something. They definitely were shitty workouts, and the goal was different. I wasn't in the gym getting stronger,

I wasn't in the gym trying to get, you know, look at certain way. I knew I had to take care of myself because of the stress that we were going through and the situation we were going through. And I also encouraged everybody around us who was going through this with this person to do the same thing. Because you got to take care of yourself when you're in the situation because they're going to need you. And if you look, I can't remember where I read this,

but I've read it several times. One of the most stressful situations or jobs or positions you can ever have in your entire life is to be someone else's caretaker. It takes an incredible toll on your health to care for someone who's ill. Because you embody what they have, you know, in a sense, because you take on their stuff, you know. You take it on, you lose who you are, and you just put everything in the back burner, because you're being a martier sacrificing yourself. Which you have to know that mom doesn't want that, right? Your mom does not want you to go down with her

or feel that way. She wants you to have a good life, right? If it's at your mom, I know that. I knew that about my grandmother too. So I think the best advice is like you guys saying is be in the moment. Be in the moment and I'll be happy you do have some time. I mean

You you told the story about coming home and see the table I came home to the same thing when my father to his life No, I got picked up by my uncle I never see it but all kinds of family house. I'm like what's going on? I like have no idea what's going on to get that news and it's like something so abrupt That sucks. There was so many things I would love to say to my father again or some things I would love to a dime. That's a great point. That's a great point because I remember thinking that.

I remember thinking, you know, people would, you know, people would say, God, it would have been so much easier if it would have had been just instant car accident or something. And I thought to myself, no, because yes, there was suffering involved, but we had the opportunity to know what was coming and we had the opportunity to say what we wanted to say.

You know, with that person. So Zach, you have your mom here now. You can say all these things that you want to say. You know, and look, at the end of the day, I hate to sound as oteric and make this a frickin' thing about life in general. But I hate to break it to you, man. All of us. We're all going the same place. We're all ending up in the same place. And so a situation like this really puts things in perspective and you really realize, you know, life is, I gotta stop sweating the bullshit. Yeah, like I'm not gonna sweat stupid things. Like, it's much shorter than we think.

Come on, dude. There was a video I saw years ago, super powerful. It was this professor who he was speaking to a whole room of, I think it was a TED talk. I can't remember. Speaking to a whole huge room of students, and he tells it, it does this exercise with them. He says, okay, everybody close your eyes.

He goes, okay, now I want you to imagine that you're going to die. And he says, now, what are you going to do with your life? What are the things you're going to cut out of your life? What are the things you're going to focus on? Who are the people you're going to tell you love? And then he says, now open your eyes, he goes, I got it, I got it.

You got it, I have to break something to you, it goes, it's true, you are all gonna die. We just don't know when. And you get that paradigm shift when you go through this with someone that you care about because whether they make it or not, you know, a lot of times you go through this paradigm if someone's sick and then gets healthy

because you're so scared, you're in that situation, like, oh my God, you realize life is not about the small bullshit. It just fucking isn't, man. Someone cuts you off. It's like, I'm so much more calm now after that whole situation. Like someone fucks with me. And I get angry for a split second and I go, whatever.

Like why? Who cares? It's not worth it. It's such a stupid, small, trivial thing. There's big things in life that we should focus on, not these stupid little things. And I think that, you know, situations like this tend to put those types of things in perspective. But I will say this, you know, to Zach, I mean, you know, you message us if you need to talk to anybody. Lean on the people around you, people who care about you, want to help.

And don't feel like you're being a burden, you know, by calling your buddy and say, hey, I just need to talk or, you know, can you make dinner for us tomorrow? People in this situation, and they want to help so bad, they just don't know what to do. I don't know how a lot of times. Exactly.

If you can somehow figure that out, like you said, like meals or just ways of making things more convenient. Lean on people, call people, tell them, hey, would you mind picking this person up and bringing some food or, hey, listen, the house is a little dirty. If you really want to help, would you mind coming over and just kind of cleaning it?

People would be so happy to know that they can help in some way, because a lot of times when you do that situation, you're like, what do I do? I don't know what to do. Yeah. Um, don't be afraid to lean on people that are around you and that care about you. Um, and you like it, you know, don't, don't be afraid to, to message us and let us know.

I know we don't know you, you personally or your family personally, but, uh, I'm, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, let us know. But, you know, Godspeed my friend. Good luck with everything. Hope everything turns out okay.