Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Sandy Yozipovic on Surviving Paralysis, Beating Stage 4 Cancer, and Choosing Faith Over Fear | EP 671

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Life has a way of testing us in ways we never imagined. For some, those tests are inconveniences or temporary setbacks. For others, like Sandy Yozipovic, there are battles that most of us could not even fathom. Imagine one day waking up paralyzed from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the nervous system. And then, years later, you are told you have Stage 4 cancer, and the prognosis is grim.Most people would crumble under the weight of such a diagnosis. Sandy faced both. Yet, instead of surrendering, she chose to stack the odds in her favor and build a life of faith, resilience, and healing.Her story, which she shared with me on the Passion Struck podcast, isn’t just about survival. It’s about how to live intentionally when life delivers its harshest blows. It’s about finding strength in the unseen, turning fear into faith, and proving what it looks like to truly overcome impossible odds. Sandy is co-founder and President of Fullness of Life Foundation –a nonprofit that provides public information, education, and awareness regarding the use of advanced, integrative medicine in the prevention and treatment of cancer and other chronic diseases. Their “Give Them Wings” program helps with the financial barriers that families face by sponsoring the treatment for children with life-threatening cancer or other diseases. Click here for the full shownotes!Go Deeper: The Ignited Life SubstackIf this episode stirred something in you, The Ignited Life is where the transformation continues. Each week, I share behind-the-scenes insights, science-backed tools, and personal reflections to help you turn intention into action.Subscribe🔗  and get the companion resources delivered straight to your inbox.If you liked the show, please leave us a review—it only takes a moment and helps us reach more people! Don’t forget to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally.Get the full companion workbook at TheIgnitedLife.netFull episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JohnRMilesListen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcastsEveryone deserves to feel valued and important. Show it by wearing it: https://startmattering.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Your first great love story is free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.ca slash Wondery. That's audible.ca slash Wondery. Coming up next on Passionstruck. I learned early on that fear only exists in the absence of faith. I was faith-filled and I'm grateful for that. It really was when I made my alignment when that life support system came in. I realized that, okay, Lord, whatever you've got for me, I will, endure and persevere for however long it takes. And in that alignment happens, it doesn't even

have to be in the severest case is mine. It could be, you have those experiences with something through a divorce or a separation or losing a child at birth. I've seen so many friends and how they've overcome such complex emotions, such deep, heart-stricken emotions that their faith has carried them through. So welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with change makers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether

you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter. Hey, friends, episode 671 of Passionstruck is here, and I'm so glad you've joined us. Whether you've been listening for a while, or this is your very first episode, welcome. Over a third of you come back week after week, which tells me Passionstruck is a global movement. Together, we're passing the ripple of mattering farther than ever before.

If this show has ever helped you see yourself more clearly or take one step toward growth, here's how you can help it grow. Share this episode with someone who needs it. Leave a five-star rating or review on Apple or Spotify. It's the best way to help new listeners discover these life-changing conversations. Today, we're continuing the final week of our Decoding Humanity series, the stories that shape and save us. Earlier this week, you heard my conversation with Joel Beasley,

host of the modern CTO podcast about how to turn unconventional beginnings into extraordinary outcomes. Today, we take that theme even deeper into the kind of story that changes how you see life itself. My guest today is Sandy Yazapovic, entrepreneur, humanitarian, wife, mother, and three-time medical miracle. By her early 20s, Sandy was paralyzed by Gian Bari syndrome. Later, she battled Lyme disease and then came the fight of her life, a stage four colon cancer diagnosis with near zero odds of survival. Yet today she's not just surviving, she's thriving, a living testament to resilience, faith, and the unbreakable human spirit.

In this conversation, we explore what it takes to find faith when fear is overwhelming, how resilience is forged in the darkest nights of the soul, why health, healing, and business success share the same core principles, and how Sandy DeVille. the odds to build a thriving family and career while championed hope for others. You can download the companion workbook and journaling props for this episode at the ignitedlife.net or substack. And don't forget, you can watch the full video conversation in past episodes on the Passionstruck YouTube channel at John R. Miles. Now, let's step into this extraordinary story of survival and strength with Sandy Yazapovic. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide

on your journey to creating an intentional life now let that journey begin i am absolutely thrilled today to have sandy yazapovic on passion struck welcome sandy how are you i'm doing great thank you john it's an honor to be on your podcast with you today it's an honor to have you as well i lost my sister to pancreatic cancer last year and so i'm trying to highlight cancer survival stories as much as I can. And so we will get into that later as a tease. But Sandy, you have worn so many hats, entrepreneur, cancer survivor, as I just mentioned, humanitarian. If you had to introduce yourself in one sentence today, what would it be? Oh boy. I believe that God just has put me in certain situations that need to be addressed or exposed. I believe I'm just a champion.

for what's right. That's what I've learned throughout my entire journey in my life. And be the one that's out front that's educating people on what options there are in life. Because most people don't know, especially when it comes to illness or disease or anything, even money. And so I've been able to learn a variety of things throughout my journey. But I guess that's not one sentence. But the best way to describe you is just I'm an overcomer. I think that's a good word. I would have used Survivor, but Overcomer is a good one, too. So I want to talk to you about your origins, et cetera. So you grew up in Canada. And I understand when you were in your early 20s, you ended up moving to the United States. What drew you here and what was life like in those

early years? I didn't move here until 1997. So I was 37 when I moved to the U.S. and my husband and I had already gotten, had been in our company, we'd been with Primarica Financial Services for, gosh, at that time, about 25 years. And we decided to move to Scottsdale, Arizona, for better weather. So it was, we needed to get out of the cold

because at age of 21, I had been diagnosed with Guillainbury syndrome, and I was left a quadriplegic for almost a year. It was nine months bedridden, four and a half months, completely motor skilled of a six-month-old baby, and the rest was like recovery. It was necessary for us to move to the U.S. just so we could be – that might have three neurologists, and they said you probably need to be in constant weather.

Well, that is what I wanted to dive deeper into. Before that diagnosis, and I want to get into it, what did you envision your perfect future looking like? Well, you know, it's funny because I was a dreamer. I always say that in school I didn't really pay attention unless it struck me. It just was one of those, I'm one of those daydreamers, and there had to be more to life. And I always say that I graduated with a PhD, a public high school diploma, but then I ended up gaining a master's and overcoming the odds. And so I was living my dream.

I was working with a live theater company. I was with Stage West. I'd gotten a job in Calgary, Alberta, where I was living at the time. And I moved to the big city after living on a farm, my whole house. I wanted to do something bigger and better. And I was working with live theater around all these Hollywood movie stars and stuff. And then something happened where I just had gotten up like a common cold. And that infection set it in my spine.

I was flown home within 10 days. And like 10 days later, I was already lost the ability to blink, the ability to speak to swallow. And then all of the extremities, my hands and my feet went first and then the rest of my body. So I was paralyzed from half my face and the rest of my body. And so that was where I was faced with what the heck. And I was diagnosed probably for the first nine months with acute multiple sclerosis. So not a good prognosis at the age of 21. There was not much hope back then.

And in fact, I was placed in a hospital in Regina, Saskatchewan, which is two and a half hours a drive away from our farm. And so I had no family with me. I was just left there because I didn't know what to do with me. So I discharged myself out of the hospital three times against my parents' wishes. But I found it was depressing for me. And I really believe the battle is won or lost in the mind. And I knew that wasn't a great environment for me.

And I had to just protect what I had aligned with my faith, with God. And I said, okay, I'll be your poster child of hope for the MS Society. whatever you want me to do Lord I am yours and the paralysis that stopped in the 24 hour period I was going fast and the with this paralysis that paralyzes all the muscles in the body so your heart and your lungs are muscles and I didn't realize at the time at 21 who's thinking about life and death situation at that age and it stopped right there so I had about a foot of where the paralysis did not hit That's where it stopped. And then it stayed like that for another four months.

And so in that, I call that purgatory. It's like you're in limbo. You can't do anything. You don't know where this is going to exist for the rest of my life. And then eventually it just started to get better. And I recovered fully, which is still, they didn't diagnose me. The new diagnosis of Dionne-Barre syndrome came nine and a half months later. And then they said, okay, because you're regaining your ability to

talk again, you swallow again, we don't think this is MS. I'm like, but there's really nothing to determine that. It really was just watching see this play out. But it was a mind bender for that year. And then we fully recover. I was engaged to someone else at the time. I was engaged to be married. And the gentleman that I was engaged to at the time said this was a little harder on him than it was on me. And I went, okay, Lord, that was my other sign. I don't need to be going down that path, this sucks, but, and I just came out and said, this is ridiculous. I didn't even know that I had been vaccine injured because before I went down to Palm Springs at Stage West Theater, you have to take these vaccines, right, in this, to be in the States. And so with my

job, and that's where I had the vaccine injury was probably just a normal flu shot, MMR's is usually the cause. And it doesn't necessarily trigger it right away. can sit dormant for years. I just want to go back because you just went through that pretty quickly. But you're 21 at the time, I understand you're driving a convertible. Life seems to be like it's amazing. You'd never really been sick before if I understand it correctly. And all of a sudden, you start getting a headache.

And you'd never really had a severe headache. I get migraine. So I know what they're like. But for someone who hasn't, you go to the doctor who just tells you, it's probably just a headache. Don't worry about it. Take Advil, whatever. When did you realize that this wasn't just a headache and this was something far worse than that? Did that occur to you before the paralysis started to happen? That's a great question because I had, we've been working overtime to set up this live theater. We had a deadline to do before the grand opening night.

So we're working 18, 20 hour days. We live on four hours sleep. And so we weren't getting the right nutrition, we weren't getting the right sleep. But I had gotten, I kept saying, I have these head pains. And my boss and his wife kept saying, well, I'll give you an aspirin or Tylenol, take one of these. And every time I took one, it got worse, which is actually what happens. It will, you can't introduce anything into the body and the chemistry when this viral takeover is happening. And so I taken a couple of Tylenol, and it just was more extreme. So they actually flew me back to Calgary because you're not going to get treated. I'm not covered of insurance in the state.

So fly back. Well, I flew back on that plane. I have never been. When we started descending is when I thought my head was going to explode. I couldn't take the pain. And I was by myself on the plane, you know, just in my own going, oh, Lord, when is this going to stop? It was way worse than a headache. It was something.

I thought my brain was going to burst. And when I landed, went right to emergency. And the doctors there were doing tests that I was becoming weaker, but the signs hadn't shown yet in the extremities. It didn't happen until another day or two. But they gave me muscle relaxants. They said, well, you look good. Everything seems good.

You're cognitive. We're going to give you some muscle relaxes. You have muscle strain. I'm like, that was probably the worst thing that they could have given me. because the next day, I couldn't even move my legs to get out of bed. I couldn't stand up. I went to help my sister wash the dishes, and the plate went right through my, it just broke, fell through my hands.

I'm like, I couldn't feel it. I started to not be able to feel things, and then all the tingling. And so by the time I ended up, my sister threw me in a car, and we went back home to Swift Current, Saskatchewan, so that's about a five-and-half-hour drive. Halfway through, I stopped at a restaurant to get some teeth. I realized I couldn't taste anything and I couldn't swallow. If I tried to eat more than like a pea size, I would start to choke.

And it just tastes like cardboard. I'm like, what is going on? And then I lost the ability to see. It was double vision and my eye wouldn't blink. So it was constantly open. So I was freaking everybody out. And they're like, what is wrong? I have no idea.

And that's when they sent me to Regina for the specialist another day later and said, the doctor there said, okay, we haven't seen anything. like this but i believe you have ms on and one neurologist did say but we it could be a long shot might be giam beret syndrome well there's nothing you could find in 1983 1984 on gianberra syndrome nothing on that disease and for someone who's not familiar with the syndrome can you give a little bit more information yeah i wasn't really that familiar with it until i started preparing for this gianberra syndrome is basically it works like ms with multiple sclerosis the mailing around the nerve endings is it strips over time. It slowly goes away. So think of it like

the lightning strikes the electricity pole, which is your spine. And with MS, you gradually lose that ability of all your neurological abilities. With Guillain-Barre syndrome, it's stripped immediately and then whatever grows back is what you're left with. So you'll see a lot of Dionne Barre patients that they still can't move their left arm. They have walked with the limbs. They can't feel like my after, now I wasn't cured in a year. It took a couple of years of rehabilitation and I had many Charlie horses. I'd be driving in a car with a friend and now a sudden my legs would give out and they were in extreme pain so somebody would have to massage my leg to keep the blood flow moving because my muscles were spassing so bad. It detects all the muscles

and your nerve and needs control all those muscles. So, you know, when the lightning hits it and it's down, you don't realize how many muscles it takes just to stand up. Sit down and stand up, but sit down is hard to get the balance. So I am a freak about exercise because I think, boy, that goes a long way, especially when you're finding any type of illness to get back in the game, get back up. And I was one of those, but the doctor would say, okay, we're going to do this physio today.

and then I try to do more. Even though I'm in my hospital bed, I'd be doing whatever I could to just keep going. I didn't like sitting still. Well, when I think about this, at 21, 22, most people think they're invincible. You're at the start of this life. You think the whole world's your oyster

and you've got this incredible life to live. And then all of a sudden, you face what I think 99% of the list, listeners would say is one of their greatest fears is all of a sudden you're paraplegic. You can't use your five senses. You can't move. I even heard you say on another interview that at one point, your parents were there. They brought a priest in.

You must have been thinking they think I'm going to die. Like, this is it. My life is over. and nobody said those words but you knew when they brought the whole family and the priest from the hospital and then and everybody's looking at you and when you have both sets of grandparents come and your parents you're like what is going on here nobody said the words but there's brought in then they brought in the life support system and they said this is just for precaution because we don't know how quickly this paralysis is going to continue to move but we're concerned about your heart and your lungs.

And that's when I realized, oh, this is really not good. This sucks. I hope you're finding inspiration in my conversation with Sandy Yazapovic. We'll return shortly after a quick break from our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Welcome back to my conversation with Sandy Yazapovic. so you mentioned that you give god a ton of credit for getting you through this but i have to

imagine in moments like that you must have had to wrestle with your faith and it must have been many times because you can't talk verbally but in your mind you're probably thinking god why are you doing this to me why is the test happening what was going on it is a battlefield of the mind because when you're paralyzed and you lose your all your senses with gian bray or ms you slowly i The cognitive ability, your brain goes into overdrive. It's almost like a self-defense mechanism. The rest of the extremities are gone. The other abilities you don't have, but your brain, you have to understand.

I went for four and a half months with zero sleep. So your mind is the only thing you can control. And it can get very dark, very fast. There was times I'd be laying like, okay, this sucks. I have no family anywhere near me, two and a half. hour drive. I'm by myself. I have no friends. I've nobody coming to visit me. It was dire some days. It got very dark. And so I'm thinking ways that I could, this is terrible, but it was thinking of ways that I could commit suicide because maybe if I roll myself off the

bed and I land on the pillow face down, because you think about it, I can't roll over, but I'm going to, then I could suffocate. That would be a way. And I'm thinking like, how am I going to get, how am I going to get pushed off the edge? Like it was, It was, the nurses would come in and they, do, if you need anything, here's a call button, press that button. And it would make me so angry that the nurse would say, just press that button if you need anything. I'm free, I need help. I can't do anything. And I'm like, I can't believe you just did that.

But I started making it a game that little things that they, like my grandmother would send over some cookies through a friend. And I get the cookies. And the nurse was coming, oh, this is from your grandma. I want to give you some cookies. She made them. I'm like, well, how am I going to eat those? So these little things that people just couldn't draft that I couldn't do or didn't have the ability anymore, it became a motivator. It became a challenge.

And I started looking at everything is, I'm going to push that button. I'm going to roll myself off that bed. And I did. I put, when I was gaining strong. longer. It's like, I never realized how competitive I was until I had Guillain Bore syndrome because you really are competing with yourself. You're competing with being able to overcome the bad stuff and say, well, I have to look at what's good. I still have half my face. I still have, they say it, it's not getting any worse. That means it must be

getting better. So it really became, and I'm like that to this day, I do not see anything. as bad. I see it's something that there's always a way through it over and around it that you can overcome any obstacle. It's just you've got to set yourself up in the mind. And to keep myself in check at that year in 1983, it was the first time that TV was 24 hours. Okay. So we, so I became, I started using my mind for watching everything it could to soak up all the information. So even soap operas were my daily life because that's all I could do with my time. I started counting all the gold specs in all the ceilings. Now, of course, you can't count. It's impossible. But my challenge was to count as many as I could for as long as I could because then

I could get by two hours of pass, three hours in pass. So it became a challenge to get through the next 24 hours. And then I became a human TV guide. I knew exactly. I realized that my was starting to memorize channels, dates, TVs, like shows. It was amazing how the mind, when you train it to overcome, you really can't accomplish anything if you put your mind to it. Honestly, that is through the grace of God, all the glory goes to God because he allowed me to persevere and endure that. That was probably the worst time, especially at that age, to overcome.

and I know I never take it for granted, never take it for granted. Sandy, those are some of the darkest days anyone could possibly imagine. But if there's a listener out here who's going through their own dark period right now, what would be your advice for them? Like, how do you pull yourself through it when it just seems like you were that all you wanted to do was end at all, which is a decision that is so hard for any of us to make? but when you're faced with the pain that you were in, the life that you were living,

which at that point you thought you might not have any life at all, that's where your head goes. So how do you pull yourself out of that? I learned early on that fear only exists in the absence of faith. I was faith-filled, and I'm grateful for that. It really was when I made my alignment, when that life support system came in. And I realized that, okay, Lord,

whatever you've got for me, I will endure and persevere for however long it takes. And in that alignment happens, it doesn't even have to be in the severest case is mine. It could be you have those experiences with something through a divorce or a separation or losing a child at birth. I've seen so many friends and how they've overcome such complex emotions, such deep, heart-stricken emotions that their faith has carried them through. I don't look at fear is always false evidence appearing real. And I always knew that God had better plans and bigger plans for me.

I didn't know what they were. I was hoping. It's really, okay, there's got to be something better. And I really did. I told my parents that I will be the poster child for the MS Society, like in a wheelchair. What do we got to do? That's not really what I wanted to do, but I was willing. And I think if you're willing, you talk yourself in to be.

in the dark place, but you can definitely pull yourself out. And everything has to do with faith. I think without it, without hope, you are lost. It's not going to be good. But you've just got to, it's in there. Sometimes it takes the ultimate battle for you to realize, I can't do this alone. I need to draw from somewhere. And that's where it's sticking, you know, in the scripture finally.

And you're starting to, the words just dumb, or the scriptures just jump out at you. and it becomes a part of you. The Holy Spirit works in different ways to everybody. But I think for me, it was for anyone who's going through it, just never give up. You can't give up. There's something better out there. I don't know what that is.

I don't know what God has and plant in store for you. But as long as you overcome and you set your mindset into overdrive to overcome, you will accomplish your goal. Cindy, as I have talked to people who've gone through, whether it's something like this, cancer, which we're going to talk about, or another illness, or it could be just another dark phase in your life. I found it when I went through my divorce. Relationships seem to change. And to me, it's always surprising who ends up showing up, who you think is going to show up and doesn't, and who quietly disappeared. Did you find the same

thing happened? Oh, very much. After I recovered from Guillain-Barre syndrome, I would different than my friends. I wasn't going out. Remember, we were 21. I'm 22 now when I moved back to the big city, almost 23. And I'm like, they're still in their partying days. They're still like, I've got to be very careful. Don't drink. I don't do it. I was a good girl. And I just, we just grew apart. We're still friends today, but it's very different friendships than when we were growing up. I don't like to say I outgrew them. I want to say I was on a different path completely. And so that's when I met my husband. And our first said, I didn't want to tell anybody that what I, what I had gone through because of my paralysis and my fiance, he said

it was harder on him. And that was over. So I was very guarded. I became very guarded in my health, in how I thought, who the people I hung around. I started to become a reader, a ferocious reader on the power of positive thinking, right? Think and grow rich, these kinds of things. And just to say, on this wavelength and I met my husband and one of the first dates we were at what he took me to a movie and he's standing on my feet. He's standing on my foot and I didn't feel it. I couldn't feel my feet and all of a sudden he looks down and goes, oh my gosh, why don't you say anything? I'm like, oh, here it goes. I said, well, I can't feel my feet. So he's like, what? It became a joke to see how much I could get away with without anybody really that I had

considered damaged goods. He asked me to marry him after three months. So I'm like, okay, whoa, slow down turbo because I'd already been told by the neurologist, three neurologists, that I would never be able to have kids. I'd have to have a desk job the rest of my life. And when you hear these from the specialists, what I've learned is that has to go in one ear and out the other year because they don't know what God's plans are for you. And so I came back. I had no money after being not working for a year and a half.

And I started waitressing and singing in a rock band on the weekends for extra money because I had to pay my parents back from my misdrent, my car payment. And I was doing double shifts. Probably the worst thing you could be doing after Gionberet, didn't you? But I found out I was very good with people at waitressing. My passion was music. My passion was going to sing. And I had a member of a rock band in Canada.

My friends had taken me out. They asked my mom permission to take me out to the bar to see the top band into the Saskatchewan. They were called the Northern Pikes. And my girlfriend's asked my mom, can we take Sandy out for the weekend? She goes, well, she's locked her two canes. I went from a wheelchair to a walker to two canes. So I'm feeling great because I'm not very good on my canes. I don't have the balance yet. So I really don't move. But I remember going to see this top band, this rock band. And all the girls leave me at the table when the band starts playing. And they're all on the dance floor. Of course, I can't do that.

I'm with my canes. I'm sitting in my chair and I'm just bopping my head and doing this the whole time. So it was so funny because the band members noticed that everybody else is up, but I'm just sitting there. Now I hide my canes under the table.

Well, the lead singer, his name was Merlebrook, came over, he leaned down to say, why are you getting up and dancing with your friends? And then he hit one of my canes and he tripped on it when he was bending over. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. He goes, oh, I am so sorry.

I said, don't worry about it. It's okay. I don't want anybody to know. So then after that, my friends then stood me up against the railing with my two canes and stood on either side of me, so you know, about beginning. But I will tell you, Merle Brick said something to me, and he came to visit me one of my next, I was in the hospital three different times. And he drove from Saskatoon before he had a show, drove to Rich Anna. And he told me he was rehearsing, writing a song. And he told me, standing. He goes, if you want to sing, if that's your passion, that's your love, go sing. Nobody says you can't do that. God has more in life for you. God has more in store for you. And then he

drive back and do it. And I'd be sitting there going, I can't believe the lead singer of the top band in Canada just told me to go. So that's why I went for an audition when I moved back. And then my husband and I had a rock band for the last 22 years. I did that. I was singing in a rock band until I was seven and a half months pregnant, singing like a virgin. And I went, okay, I have a shelf, I put this. I'm not going to do this anymore. So your husband traded a hockey stick for a guitar?

When I quit the band after I started having babies, when I realized we could have babies, I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to be a mom. I was doing that for extra money. And then when I quit the band, all my friends and people, family were saying, can you sing at this wedding? Can you this?

I didn't play an instrument. So I'm like, okay, honey, you play guitar. we're going to learn to harmonize and so we did and it just grew and then we were in some talent show in Vegas through Primera and they asked us if we would do a song a couple of songs and from there we ended up having a band for we played with the house band in Vegas and we were together for 20 some years 20 since 1999 yeah looking back just to be told by a doctor you're never going to have a normal life, you're never going to have children. My sister-in-law has a rare muscular issue. And she was also told that she would never have kids, never have a normal life. And she and my brother ended up

adopting two kids. And then she gets pregnant. And not only does she get pregnant, but for some reason, perhaps the hormones or something that naturally occurred, it gave her more strength than she ever had. she felt the best she had ever had in her life. Isn't that something? She went on to have two more kids and defied the odds. But I think your wisdom that you said earlier on is when someone tells you this, don't accept it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, you have the ability, your mind can do amazing things.

Your faith can do amazing things. God can do amazing things if you put your trust at their possibilities beyond it. I think that's the message you're trying to bring. Yes, exactly it. And I hear stories all the time, just like your sister-in-law, because they told me I would never be able to have children. And then I ended up having two healthy normal children. So I'm like, okay, this is incredible.

It's like when I got diagnosed with cancer. Do you want me to move on to that? Well, I was going to go into this. So it's been like 18 months now. I went and got a colonoscopy and I'm a veteran. So I do it at the VA. It's probably different than people who go to a normal clinic. But in the VA, they kind of walk you into this room that's got 10 people in it.

You're all sitting five feet away from each other. They take you into the procedure individually, but then you come out and you're in this big room. And I'm sitting there. And the doctor hasn't come back yet to tell me, you know, how my test was. But the gentleman next to me, and I can hear this as if it's like him standing right in front of me. He says, I have some unfortunate news for you. We found a mask during the test, and we suspect that you have stage three colon cancer. And I'm just sitting there next to this going, oh, my God, I can't believe they didn't take them out of the room to share this information.

What am I going to hear? But you are told, Sandy, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have colon cancer. And not only do you have colon cancer, you have stage four colon cancer, which is a diagnosis. that would take the wind out of anyone's sale. How in the world did you react? This is like 15 years, 16 years. You've overcome this one battle. You're now married.

You now have kids. You must have been thinking, what in the world, God? Why are you putting me through this again? That's exactly what I said. Well, in between the Guillainbrae syndrome and having the kids and running a business, I'm an entrepreneur. My husband and I have 45 agencies across Canada in the U.S., so we're working our business.

But I also loved to work out exercise. So I was competing. I think it was the Body for Life, I think was back in the 90s that I was a part of. I boxed for many years just with a trainer and then started Taekwondo with the kids and realized that I really had a gift with boxing and Taekwondo and started competing in tournaments. but I knew one tournament that I won in L.A. was 39. I was the oldest competitor in that tournament. And my families there, my kids were there, and I just felt off.

I felt I was tired. Normally after a chance or win, you're like, woo. And I'm like, I'm physically exhausted. I'm like, okay, I'm really excited, but I'm so tired. And then I started noticing that I had a hard time going to the bathroom. And then there was blood. So I went to, my doctor was with the males. So I went to the mail and my doctor there at that time said, well, Sandy, you're 39.

You're in the best shape of your life. You look great. You look healthy. It must be just hemorrhoids. And I'm like, I've had two kids. I know what that is. And every woman knows what that is and what that feels like is that I don't think so. But because of my age and because I was looked healthy, she didn't do any further tests.

So when I finally kept going, so that was now May, I go now to our. August, September. And now my husband, I had a lot of blood that day. And I was literally down to juicing everything, because I couldn't eat anything. I'd have extreme abdominal pains. So my husband says, we're going right now, and we're going to see the doctor.

Well, we called the mail, and they said, don't bring her here, bring her straight to emergency. And so we're like, emergency, why am I going to emergency? Well, that ended up being that day, they did my tests. It was early in the morning. I did my tests, and they said, get this, I was stage three, but they couldn't put the scope any further when they did the colonoscopy. They couldn't get the scope in and they said, we found a mass, but we think it's

contained and but we need to, like, have you over the weekend just claim you have to do that. I call it go quickly, not go lightly, but whatever that serum is that you have to drink. And by the time I went in on Tuesday, it was September 11, 2001, which was 9-11. I'm at the mail at 5 a.m. I'm getting prepped. They're ready to do the surgery at 6 and the first plane flew into the trade center in not for 9-11. And they put a blood alert on all the hospitals. So now all the surgeries are stopped. My son and my husband are in the waiting room going, where are all the doctors going? They said, well, they canceled all the surgeries. And Mark goes, oh, that's not good. That's not good because you don't know when you're going to be rescheduled and I'm in dire straits. My surgeon, God bless them. and Dr. Jacques Powell, he's retired since, and he said, something nudged him. He grabbed his team and he said, I think we need to do this surgery today. Something's telling me I need to do this today. We can't put her off.

I'm already under. And I'm telling him that was the best decision he could have made for my life because I woke up and my parents weren't there. They were supposed to come to watch the kids. My parents were driving down. My brother-in-law was in the air to come. His plane got, had to land in Minneapolis, though he couldn't go. He's stranded there.

So my father-in-law had to go pick him up from Canada. My parents can't get car crossed the border until they opened the border. So we had nobody to watch our kids. And that's when the doctor, when I woke up, the doctor Mark said to me, he goes, okay, honey, he goes, I'm just going to tell you the surgery was done. They got everything they could. But your tumor was doubling in size every 24, 48 hours. stage four. So I was three on Friday, but that's how fast it had gone from May until September.

But I'm a believer now. You have to be your own advocate. You know your body. And I knew I was exhausted. I knew I had issues. Even though I looked healthy from the outside, it was not my body. I was dying on the inside. And that's exactly the best way to describe it as I was. So in that surgery, they had to remove the damage had been done. They had to remove 14 inches so much my intestine. They had to rebuild my rectum, remove two-thirds of that. It had gone through the intestinal into the ovaries. I had a spot on my liver, but that ended up just being calcium. And then through the lymphatics, it was in 65% of my lymph nodes in that whole area. So battle was on. Because if you got aggressive cancer like that, it's like, what do we do next?

So the standard is when you're diagnosed with that. The surgical, you two need some time to process this. you a minute. And I said, no, what's the next step? And he's like, I go, what's the next step? Let's go. What do we do? Time is of the essence. I don't have time to wait through. What are we doing here? Well, we need to wait six weeks before we can do any human radiation after the surgery. But it's going to be six months. And I'm just telling you, the odds are 30% chance of survival, 99% chance it'll be back its first year. Like we don't believe we can, this might not be long term. you probably need to get your affairs in order. Do you need a moment?

I go, why would I waste time? I don't need a moment. What are we doing? What can I do in the meantime? So in the meantime, we'd already gotten to our company, our founder of the company, Art Williams, had arranged for me to get an appointment at Sloan Kettering. Mark and I were on the first flight,

back to when the flights finally started flying after 9-11, we were heading to New York to Sloan Kettering for a second opinion. Well, that was when I broke down, I will tell you that was when I broke down and cried because I'm you pretty tough because I can handle a lot and that one got me been because the surgeon said there I got to share this with you in between going to Sloan Kettering I had two weeks and I'm in the hospital my husband is going there's got to be another way I don't believe that if we're in the 21st way there's got to be another way so he talked to a trainer at our gym my boxing trainer and said you go see this

natural path this doctor over here go see him so mark while I'm in the hospital he went to see this naturopath this doctor teaches him how you get cancer the foods we eat can be toxic to our body well I was on the body for life so all the diapope all the protein fillers and protein bars were I had way too much protein for my blood type in my system it actually sped up my cancer by 15 years so I was poisoning myself with my nutrition that I thought I was in the healthy zone I was not It was all processed junk. And so that was my first lesson on nutrition. So Mark kicks me out of the hospital.

We'd go see, he goes, that doctor can't help, but this new doctor who's outside the box thinker, he just graduated, he's got opening up his practice. And that night, on Friday night, I get out of the hospital, the mail, on Friday night, we'd go see Dr. Dino Prattle. And we walked into the boardroom. He's at the air park. And he's in an office care and complex. His father had an office there.

He's a doctor of psychology, had an office there. And so Dr. Dino was using the boardroom to see patients. And the waiting room was filled with people sitting there getting IVs with IV poles in just regular chairs. I'm like, first of all, what doctor only sees you after 6 o'clock at night? Because he wasn't, his practice wasn't open until Monday. I'm going Friday when I got in the hospital. So Mark drags me over there. I'm cut all the way up my body.

And I end up walking in the boardroom, and there's Dr. Dino Prado, 26 years old. And I said to my husband, okay, Doogie House is going to save me now. This can't be true. And then I recognized Dino, he was working out at the gym the entire four years that he was going to college. We were working out and we'd see each other and say hi to each other. So we knew who we were each other. We didn't know anything about each other. And all I know is he said, come see me on Monday.

I'm going to be, what you have is really bad. said he goes i'm going to be honest he goes i don't know if i can help but he said if you're a hundred percent coachable to what i ask you to do you've got a shot and i went i've got a shot well i've been told i haven't had many shots before my life and then you're telling me i got a shot i'm going with that shot so i believe what helped me is i'm a believer and you've got to do whatever it takes to stack the odds in your favor and what made sense sense to me is when you oxygenate the blood and you clean out the blood and you high-dose vitamin C-I-Bs is a great combination for rebuilding that immune system while you're detoxing

the blood. I believe that I was stacking the odds of my favors. I stopped going to the mail after four months. I changed my diet. I was literally there every five hours to seven hours a day at Dino's clinic. But I want to tell you when I went to Ston Kettering. So now I'm getting my third opinion because I've already been to Dino doing my eye I'm already up to 130,000 milligrams of liquid vitamin C in my IVs a day. I go to Sloan Kettering, and the guy there, Sloan Kettering has a floor for every body part. So my husband says I was on the butthole rectal floor.

We get there and the doctor, God bless him, but he just sat there and Mark said, well, we've got five questions to ask you. We've asked about nutrition, number one. And what do you do to rebuild the immune system? And by number three, we didn't even get number three out. And the doctor says, who have you been talking to? And we both stopped, and we looked at each other. Like, he was bothered by it, that we were asked,

this is the head of Sloan Kettering for the colon department. And he's the specialist. The founder put me in front of it. And I'm like, okay. So he got a little hostile. And Mark, he goes, a naturopath, you're talking, they're quackery. Oh, they're just going to take your money. Nutrition has nothing to do with it.

and I'm like nutrition is why I'm in this place right now talking to you and he says well let me see your star well I had already been putting a woolshammy with castor oil and a keytie pad twice a day so Dr. Dino told me to do to heal that scar and that castor oil will seek into the innards so that it'll start the healing process I lay down on the table my scar is already flesh colored you could not tell I had a zipper but you could barely see it it was flesh colored already And he says, he's looking and he goes, oh, he goes, wow, so when was your surgery four or five months ago? I go two and a half weeks. And he went, what?

And that's when I knew. I was sticking with Dr. Prado because they'd never seen that turnaround for that type of surgery. And I've been with Dr. Prado ever since. I'm an advocate for health. I'm an advocate for medical freedom. I'm an advocate for doctors in the medical field. God bless them and God love them, but they only know what they've been taught

and what they've been told to know. And you've got to find someone who thinks outside the box. You have to believe medical freedom is here. It's now after COVID, the COVID situation, or sham, whatever you want to call it. I saw it for what it was. I warned everybody to not take those COVID shots because I've already been vaccinated.

When you see the Gionberra's interim is in the top 10 side effects, Why would you want to put that in your body? That's a lot. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. It's just eye-opening. If there was one thing you wanted to leave the listeners with, like, one takeaway that you want to make sure they hear, what would it be? There's a cure for cancer, and there is definitely life after cancer, even autoimmune disease. The Invita Medical Center is where I was treated.

And I have been with Dr. Prada. He was 26 years old. I was already an entrepreneur and in business. And I realized that doctors are great at doctoring and Dr. Dino's creator. He's a scientist. It's been decades since this treatment. So you had basically close to zero odds that you were going to survive. 20 plus years later, you're here talking to the audience.

I still meet with patients. Every week, I'm not an employee of Invita Medical Center. I believe I'm there to help assist the thick to help stack the odds in their favor for their complete healing. And I've seen miracles from autoimmune disease with Lyme disease. The Lyme infections because the Lyme disease is what sped up my cancer as well. So you Giamberet, Lyme, Cancer, and Vita Medical Center is saved five of my own close family members, my father, my sister, my niece, my sister-in-law, and myself. just because it's not mainstream,

just because it's not popular, does not mean it doesn't work. The medical system is built to make money. There's no money in a cure. And I learned that in 2001. This was a big business. And now I'm up against big pharma. And so when I realized, I said,

well, so these treatments, these high-dose vitamin C, when you combine it with oxibosh, you're stacked in the odds. They've known about this since the 1930s. the scientist was given a Nobel Peace Prize. Why don't these hospitals do it? If it's curing people, if it's giving them that shot and that hope.

But here's how insurance controlled everything. Insurance won't cover it. So what we did is that in Vita during COVID, because they hired a physicist. I spent millions of dollars. The guy spent two and a half years building 6,000 CPT billable codes. So we launched the first ever innovative, integrative health care plan last year. with that covers every doctor, you have to get out of the network.

Think of not the Matrix. This is every doctor you can go see. You want to go to Mayo Sloan, it's covered, but also indeed a medical center, which is deemed at Centers of Excellence because they have a 35 times greater outcomes with stage four patients than every other cancer center in North America. This is huge. So the world is changing. Now that RFK Jr. is in there, the world is going to become very.

are in the health care space. I've been working with legislation in the state of Arizona. I'm working now with D.C. for all states to now have, we're going after Medicare. Because when Medicare changes their verbiage and their laws, the rest of the insurance companies follow. And so we're working on changing the verbiage that these billable codes that Invita has proprietary over, they will be able to cover these. So people will not have to pay for their care that works. that's natural advanced technology that can heal them.

They're curing stage four pancreatic cancer, stage four lung cancer, brain in eight weeks, 12 weeks. This is unheard of in the 2.0. Think of it as a 2.0 medical model. That's our conventional traditional. We need that. We need our surgeons. We need our emergency. We need our paramedics.

We need all that. But you need a 3.0 for the internal, for the nutrition guide, for the advanced technology. you're not administering pimo as a poison. You're not just taking radiation. You can do a targeted. You can do more of a rebuild your natural killer cells naturally. And that's like an army going after this little baby. So you can really stack the odds in your favor if you're in that 3.0 model.

So that's my mission now. As God has moved me, I really believe I'm just a professional patient that has a story to tell that I can relate to most people. when they're in that tunnel, when they're in the grind of dealing with that disease in the body. But you can reset the immune system 100% of the time. You can reset. We just got to get our minds out of the 2.0 system to be open to 3.0. And that's what I'm working to change in the U.S. for sure.

And eventually globally. God has it in my heart. This is global. So I'm going with that. Well, Sandy, it was such an honor to have you on the show today. Thank you so much for being vulnerable with your. story and sharing this with our audience. Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

I know I talk a lot. I hope they can follow what I share, but this really is good to help get the word out. There is hope out there. Never give up. Never give up looking for it. That's a wrap on today's conversation with Santa Yazapovic. And what an extraordinary way to close out our Decoding Humanity series. Here are three takeaways that I hope you carry forward this week. Resilience isn't built in the absence of hardship. It's forged in the fire of it. Faith and courage are not feelings, their daily choices, even when fear is loud. And your story, no matter how painful, can become a source of healing for others. Over the past four weeks, we've explored what it really means to be human.

Our brains and emotions, our hidden wounds, our moral choices, our need for belonging. Sandy's story reminds us that even in our most vulnerable moments, we have the power to rise. Next week, we begin a brand new series, The Forces We Cannot See. Every day, invisible forces shape what we notice, the choices we make. make and the lives we build. In this four-week series, we'll explore those polls, from doubt to luck, from ethics to culture, and uncover how to work with them, not against them, to live more intentionally. We'll kick off with Dr. Brennan Spiegel about his new book, Pull, how gravity shapes your body, steadies the mind, and guides our health. We'll explore how gravity influences

everything from posture to mood, and how building gravity resilience may be the key to better health. I think about our psychology and what do we do as humans. We are trying to find patterns in chaos. We are surrounded by entropy, by a world that's trying to pull us apart, both physically, emotionally, and in many other domains. And what we do as humans is we make sense of the world, the physical input into our bodies, which is part of what this new book is about, the emotional inputs, and how do we create a coherent narrative in our mind's eye that allows us to find patterns that allow us to survive and thrive? And behavioral economics is a set of tools to do that efficiently. But psychologically, that's what we're doing. And that's what AI is starting to teach us

in terms of how we go about doing that. If today's conversation moved you, pay the fee. Share this episode with a friend who needs to hear it. And if you haven't yet, leave a five-star rating or review on Apple or Spotify. It's the best way to help more people find the show. Until next time, notice the forces that are pulling you, lead with intention, and as always, live life, passion struck.