The Checkup with Doctor Mike - Colby Brock Has Cancer & Doctors Let Him Down | Sam & Colby

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

Watch the full video interview with Sam and Colby here: https://go.doctormikemedia.com/youtube/SamandColbyInterview Colby Brock is battling testicular cancer. As one-half of the prolific horror YouTube duo, Sam and Colby, he's no stranger to terrifying paranormal and terrifying supernatural phenomena. He was a stranger to the testicular cancer diagnosis he received just a few months ago. So today I wanted to sit down and dig deep into the history of Colby's case, look as his medical records, and help him make some very difficult devisions about his own health. Executive Producer and Host: Dr. Mike Varshavski Produced by Dan Owens and Sam Bowers Art by Caroline Weigum CONTACT: [e-mail]

There's two things you have to do when you make that decision. One is you have to make it based on your gut and fully trust your gut and go headstrong that you made that decision. And two, make peace with the fact that it could be the wrong decision. Welcome to the Checkup podcast. Today, we have such a hard hitting and important conversation with guests Sam and Kobe. They're known for their incredibly popular videos on YouTube. exploring paranormal activity. And today we're going to touch on some of that.

But we're also going to touch on the earth-shattering testicular cancer diagnosis that Colby received only a few short months ago from how he received the news, the emotional impact of it, the medical journey. And in fact, we will brainstorm on this very podcast. What exactly should he do moving forward? Very educational conversation. Hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Let's get started with the Checkup podcast.

I have to ask first question. Is this place haunted? We walked in here and I just felt something was off. Really? There's an energy. I think we have to start an investigation now. Really? I think you know what?

Well, I think the investigation that has to happen as to why they lie about floors in this building. A hundred percent. Because if there's 10 floors missing in a building, maybe that's an area or a ghost hangout. You know what? You're on to something here. What's on those mystery floors?

We've got to go figure it out. little did we know there are no mystery floors they just lie about the floor they're just liars savages for those listening what we're actually talking about is that my building they have 10 floors missing in one section then another 10 floors missing and i always thought they were reserved for something but in reality if you go in between those 10 floors there's nothing there it just skips 10 floors so so new york is lying to you new york is all about the branding makes sense no ghosts just lies But speaking of ghosts, I'm an evidence-based physician, meaning that every time I make a recommendation, as you'll see when we start talking about all the medical stuff you guys have going on, I base it off of evidence that we studied. What is the evidence that paranormal activity exists?

Well, see, that's the thing is there's no concrete evidence. And that's why there's people that are like, ghost hunters like us trying to figure it out. stuff we have like our own equipment that will go off with electromagnetic energy and we use that and just honestly like based on what we hear and see while we're at these places it's there's no like concrete evidence that anybody has or else everybody would know about it fair what's the best evidence you've seen that paranormal activity exists oh my gosh we have literally experienced pretty much everything like we've even gotten push touched we've heard voices in our ears we've seen doors slam behind us yeah no we definitely have evidence and this isn't like someone playing a joke or a prank this is full on real i'm in a haunted mansion in texas and i asked the question

slam a door if you're if you're here if you're behind me and not literally only like 10 seconds it's not the camera promise it's only us we only um yeah it's only us too as like the crew yeah we try to go and every single play is completely alone so that there's no element of other people involved and no one else can say that hey, that it could be a producer, that could be another cameraman or something like. It was perfect timing too. It was like the door was wide open

the entire time I was asking questions. I asked that one specifically. Slam's right behind me. How do you recover from that though? Because like all I would be thinking about is what is that? Is it coming for me? How can I sleep at night? Yeah. Well, I mean it's something that we like to call the paranormal hangover

where it takes like two or three days after afterwards to kind of get back to normal. We have to watch like a bunch of happy YouTube videos to get back in a good mood. It gets bad, but what's the happy YouTube videos you guys watch? God, oh man, for me, you know, I always love watching PewDiePie. He's my happy guy. You don't watch little cat videos. Sometimes the cat videos pop up, but we don't need to talk about that. No, but truly, like, it's scary. Especially when we first started this, we've been doing this for four or five years now. And so it gets a little easier over time, just like a scary roller coaster. But the first couple times we did this, it was so shocking that we'd just have long

conversations for hours and we're like, what do we actually experience? This is like questioning our religion, questioning what we're going to be talking to, like our kids about one day. Like, this is scary stuff. And it genuinely affects us. Did you go into this believing in it? No. We're very skeptical. We did it because we didn't believe. We're like, all right. Like, we can go into these haunted places and not be scared because like, yeah, it's not real. And then stuff was happening and then more stuff was happening and then we're like we can't keep chalking us up to coincidence this is insane that's so how do you know when to film certain things or when to break out certain pieces of equipment or is that just fortunate timing that is a lot of fortunate timing and also a lot

of the the editing style we just film like as much as we possibly can we try to keep cameras on whenever we go into new rooms and we try to keep even like cameras in other rooms while we're not there just to try to capture as much as possible. But yeah, there are definitely times that you hear something in person that you don't get on camera and then you're kicking yourself. There's also like a million different things you can do to like ask out if there's ghosts and or like, for example, there's just like 20 different pieces of ghost equipment that you can get online and a lot of the stuff Sam and I haven't even tried out yet.

So a lot of the episodes were just trying new things. And again, we're trying to figure it out ourselves. Yes, we have evidence. Yes, we believe. like we haven't seen somebody levitate in front of our eyes or something like that there's not like any concrete 100% evidence yeah so speaking to that if you're so evidence based i'm assuming you don't believe in uh ghosts i i would i would introduce myself as agnostic okay meaning like i don't think i'm smart enough to know if there are ghosts because i don't have the evidence

to prove that they exist or they don't exist so i'm skeptically agnostic and would that be the same in terms of religion too more agnostic yeah totally because I try and live in the practical world as much as possible because it allows me to be my best self for my patients and even when making YouTube content in order to figure out what's the best way to explain something to somebody or get them excited about their health yeah so if I start venturing into that space I can really cause a lot of problems for people of course yeah about and I'm sure you guys have seen this like on social media oh if you prick your finger here you're sore throat will go away. Or if you have this condition, if you just take my miracle potion for

$7.99. Yeah. Everyone's trying to sell something on you. It makes sense. Yeah. Have you guys seen that? Actually, I'm curious in your world online. Because everyone has different for you pages. Maybe not in the paranormal like world, but I've seen a bunch of people being like, oh, you know, you don't need to go to a doctor. You can just do this or, you know, drink from this beautiful lake or something. It's fine. It's incredible how dangerous. and problematic that is, and most people think it's dangerous because it's taking away people's money and it's being unfair and it's rude. All of that is true. But there's actual legitimate danger to having people not get themselves diagnosed and have things get worse. For sure, yeah.

Where they actually did a study in 2017 to see if individuals who were going down the alternative medicine pathway, as opposed to conventional cancer treatment for their cancers, which people died at a higher rate. Those people who went alternative medicine instead of conventional died at a higher rate, had a higher risk of dying. Interesting. I mean, it makes sense, of course.

Well, it does, but not if you're listening to their magical advice, because they're saying this will make you live forever. Well, it just comes down to why are people believing the alternative stuff? Why do you think people believe it? I mean, people are getting fantastic at marketing. That's true.

And it's like social media is so prevalent and sometimes people like in the medical field are not as prevalent as some of these other master markers. Or like other doctors don't really care about their credibility and if there's money involved in a brand deal to promote something that's not legitimate, they'll still do it and that will influence a lot of people. Those are absolutely two valid reasons.

I have a different theory than both of you. I think it's because our healthcare system sucks so much that it's turned people off of regular medicine and instead of going to see a doctor where they're staring at a computer screen, they're burnt out, you have only 10 minutes with them, they push you a pill, you'd rather go see the caring, compassionate, kind person who's alternative for an hour and buy into their natural approach. Right.

I agree. We've come to that conclusion. Yeah, we have a lot to say about that. Yeah. Oh, what do you have to say about that? Well, I mean, it's just been very, very hard to contact my doctor. I have multiple doctors I've been talking to, including an oncologist. And it takes two or three days minimum to contact them via the patient portal online.

I understand doctors are busy and everything. But even calling them, you have to wait for your doctor to call you. It's not like, well, for me, at least, I was having to wait with like a 45 minute, like, voice answering machine before I was even able to connect to the front office to maybe talk to my doctor. It was just a lot harder for patients to get the answers they're looking for, especially with like a serious condition. I would say like looking at the process that's been happening over the past couple months, like more than half the anxiety is caused by not being able to have any sort of communication with anybody in health care. It's like I'm so frustrated for you. So I can even imagine the thought process going through everything, just trying to get through health care. And again, I'm not like I know doctors are busy in general.

And so I'm sure they have like a million patients each and it's hard to like keep track of and stuff. It's just voicing our frustration of how long it takes to get information back when it's life or death like you're talking about. Absolutely. Scheduling too. Yeah, scheduling. Like months and months of like, wait, what? This is going to take how long? Yeah, and not like going too far ahead of the story here.

But like for example, we had to expedite my surgery. Like we were able to do that ourselves. I had somebody on our team just call around to like the Mayo Clinic and UCLA and they were able to schedule my orchiectomy way faster like I think three days faster

than the intended like surgery. Yeah. Like interesting. So it sounds like you agree with my theory that because it sucks so much it's easy to fall victim to someone who's praying on your insecurities and your fears and giving you false hope.

And then the second layer of it is if you go see your doctor and your doctor is like, look, you've got to put in real work. You've got to improve discipline with lifestyle habits, drop the smoking, drop the drinking, sleep better, increase the amount of fruits and vegetables you're eating. These are things that take work, right? And then this other person's like, but I got a potion. Drink this, though. Right?

Magic pill. Yeah, who would choose putting in all that work when there is a magic solution? Exactly. It's just easier. easy route. Yeah, for sure. And what actually paralyzes me as a physician in order to debunk some of this stuff is that we brought up the conversation of evidence-based medicine, which is if I'm making a decision on when to give someone a blood transfusion, right, because they're anemic, let's say, I know when to give that blood transfusion because we've done the

research to say at this level, it doesn't really benefit their survival. At this level, it really does. So we know that's the cutoff we can give it. Then we can have different situations, the person's actively bleeding, all these other factors. But we have evidence guiding us, right? Makes sense. I can say, I have the evidence for this. But what I cannot say is, so let's say a miracle claim is made. This will cure whatever problem you're having, right? I can then say there is no evidence to say that that's going on. But I cannot say this definitely does not work. Oh, I see.

Because I would need to research and prove that this doesn't work. Yes. Jeez, yeah. Makes sense. So it's so hard because what the conversation ends up becoming is the magical snake oil salesman ends up saying, this magic potion works. And I say, there's no evidence it works. And they say back, there's no evidence it doesn't work.

And I'm like, but it's on you to prove it works. You have to prove something works before you make an outrageous claim. So that's the constant battle I'm always facing of when can I cross that line of saying, nah, I don't even care that I don't have evidence that this doesn't work. I'm still going to say it doesn't work. Is there illegal implications for that? Like, why couldn't you just say that doesn't work? And I know it's like an ethical thing more than anything.

And you just want to not be hypocritical because if you're saying you need evidence to say something, you need to keep it across the board. Yeah, that makes sense. The place where I like to go with it is there's no even reasonable explanation why this could work. And that's what makes me shit on it. Yeah. So I'm like, dude, pricking your finger here has no reasonable way to affect your throat. This is not connected to this in any reasonable way. Why this point over this point?

And if you have no explanation for it to me, it's bullshit. That's how I approach it. I approach like systematically. Like, how can this possibly work? And that's why I look at ghost hunting stuff. And I'm like, I can't even figure out how this works. Yeah, exactly. But you can't explain why it doesn't work.

That's also like why we go into it so often like bringing people that, you know, don't believe because it's so interesting because like for us, we're like, oh, we don't really know how to prove it unless you experience it yourself. And so that's pretty much the only. So are you saying you could take me to an abandoned hospital and prove to me. me that this exists? Not any abandoned hospital, but some, some of them for sure. Really? Yeah, yeah, for sure. We've taken many, many people who are like complete skeptics and they go in and like, well, dang, I didn't think of it like this. Yeah. When we first started this in like 2019,

it was mostly about like Sam and I and a couple of other friends just experiencing everything together. But now we're really trying to take new guests every single time that a lot of them, like Sam was saying, completely are skeptical, do not believe at all. And they experience more than us. Wow. Is that because it's in their heads more? You can say that? Some people think. Like you were just saying, it's like they can't prove that it's not real type of thing. Because there's just no explanation for how that door slammed or how someone talked in their ear, but there's no one else in the room with them. It's like they know probably they're like in their mind they want to find a solution or some logical answer, but they can't. And so it's not technically proven,

but it's also like they couldn't prove it if they tried. Wow. That's so scary. I wouldn't even know what to do in a situation like that. I think I would fully break down. I actually did the first time when I experienced a paranormal thing. We both cried on camera like, do the paranormal. Yeah, it's bad. Fear or unknown what was driving that. Your entire worldview breaks down. And then looking forward, you don't know what to expect anymore because whatever you had thought previously is now altered. And so the way I just looked at life, post-paranormal experience was like, wait, this could be completely different than whatever I thought before. Especially somebody who's like agnostic believing or seeing something that like changes

your belief system even, like your religion. Yeah, like at the point of this, like we said, we weren't really believers, I was pretty much not religious at all. I was like at this point where I was like, okay, I just, you know, I can't find a realistic explanation why this is real. And so after this first paranormal experience, I was like, wait, maybe it could. And like, should I become religious again? Like, oh my God. Like everything changed, you know. So how does it change your day to day life now that you are aware that this could be a possibility and a reality? I don't know if it changes it too much, but I mean, it depends on from person to person. Like we were saying, there's like a paranormal hangover that usually lasts for like two or three days. Like,

especially if we go to a super intense location, like the conjuring house, for example, that will be like a weak paranormal hangover where we just have to, you know, get back to acting normal and stuff, live a normal life. But what about spirituality wise or religious wise? I think it gives us hope, you know? Okay. Like that's the main reason why we do this and we always like tell like all of like our supporters this like the reason why we're trying to prove it is because it gave us hope and it gave me hope in what way of like something more it's like if you think that you know at the end of your life you're just getting buried and thrown on the ground that it's over with that's like kind of a sad thought but if there's that mind that maybe there possibly is

something else out there or there's different types of energies or you know humans are not the only thing in this entire universe it's kind of like inspiring yeah and no matter what you believe in too like you can put that concept to any sort of religion and sure it just helps it just helps to know there's something more i think that there is power and understanding that we're smaller than everything else around us it kind of takes some of the weight off your shoulders um when we look at the universe and we see how our understanding of the universe has changed over the last 100 200 years every time we make a scientific discovery it sounds fake when we initially make the scientific discovery. Like if someone holds up and they're like, I have the cure for the bacteria that

is within us. Someone's like, what are you talking about? This is bullshit. And then it turns out to be revolutionary. Exactly. Or the vaccine comes out and it's revolutionary. And on the other hand, we could see how badly it could be weaponized with the people giving false hope. Exactly. So the only way I can figure out what's the fair way of doing it is what's the intention and what's the evidence behind it. That's how I think about it as a doctor. But I would love if you guys take me to, actually I wouldn't love, but I think people would love it.

People would love, I'd hate it. Well, come with us if you want. Well, because it's scary. I get legitimately scared of the dark. I'm one of those fear of the unknown type people. Heights scare me. I'm very sensitive. I fight people for a living.

I was going to say, come on, man. But you can't punch a ghost. You could try. You can try. That would be a really funny video. because it's like when you're in a ring against somebody you see the threat right you can assess the threat you can make peace with the threat but when the threat is all around you it's whispering in your ear it's closing doors it's like what else is it doing to me exactly yeah you don't know

how powerful or or what it could do to you or where it's at or even how how it could affect you exactly what's the wildest story you've heard from someone else that you've met along this journey that they've experienced some kind of paranormal stuff with us specifically no with like on their own that they've shared a story with you oh my gosh there's so many i'm sure but like which one is oh this is really powerful that first came to mind is our friend selina selina spookoooooo she she has like some crazy psychic ability where she can dream and even if she like spends time just collecting her thoughts and kind of goes into a trance she can like almost envision things happening around her that are somehow constantly true like she it's like like we

didn't believe it at first we were like whoa this is crazy but she was able to predict everything that happened in one of our videos yeah she called us she was just like Timkova you got to like be careful this is going to happen this is going to happen you're going to be running through a forest like going in between these specific trees that how would you know in a forest what they look like everything she said was very true she's on the opposite side of a country yeah like And she had never been to this place before. So it's insane. And she knew.

She knew. She knew. Now, that's maybe not like paranormal sense. Well, I mean, that's not medically explainable. Yeah, exactly. There's been people like, who has told us maybe in this asylum we went to. One guy, we do a couple of videos with, he said he like completely, like, passed out. Like, that's what he thought and he woke up.

But in reality, he had been awake for, like, four or five hours like having these like weird out of body like like a dissociation yeah kind of but yeah he didn't remember any of it but all of his friends are saying you were acting like a different person that you had never like acted like forever and like asking for things that you would never ask for and be like a different blackout he was blackout drunk yeah but sober yeah completely sober and he has never had that sense and it was just like one time occurrence in his entire life and he can't recall anything that happened it's like all of his friends saying this happened. So he thinks like, you know, as much as we wouldn't believe in like

possession, he believes like that. Like he was just a different person for a couple hours. All right. I'm reconsidering wanting to go. Can you imagine if you guys take me so well, I get possessed and then I become a worst doctor for my position? That's a legitimate fear I would have. I don't know. It's become a different person. Oh, but maybe I go and I become a better fighter. There you go. So there could be an upside. Channel that boxing. you know what's crazy is after my whole situation happened there were people saying and i'm not saying we believe this at all but just kind of interesting people were blaming our videos on my cancer what in what set like i can't even like for example okay so there's this haunted doll in key west

florida his name is robert the doll and he specifically if you disrespect him or stare him in the eyes or take pictures which we did all of those uh he gives you cancer that's like the the story of it and I was diagnosed with testicular cancer not only like two months later because of Robert. That's what people say. I'm not going to say that. I don't want to put that narrative out there. Who owns Robert? At the museum now.

Can we sue? Yeah. We should. It's their fault. Get that money. It's interesting. No, no. I mean, okay, so medically I don't know what to say.

No, there's probably no explanation at all for that. I'm just saying. What I am curious about is how to hearing that make you feel? Um, I mean, I obviously didn't believe it, of course. I, I don't know. I, like, just kind of shrugged it off and was just like, there's no way. And just moved on with my day, really. Well, I don't know, like, I would kind of feel probably mad if I'm putting myself in your shoes because I'm like, dude, this is an unfortunate thing that's happened to me.

And you're blaming my work on it. Right, right. I don't know. Maybe I'm putting. And I mean, there was a lot of people in the comments that were defending me for that. I just was saying, like, hey, you can create whatever narrative in your head that you want to think makes sense. Like, okay, I'm going to say it's just because I got unlucky. And testicular cancer is very common for young men.

Anyways, like, between, I think, like, 20 to 35. Yeah. So I was just like, it was just, you know, an unlucky thing that happened. Is most cancer just completely, like, random or are there a series of events that you can do? This is so bad because I thought you were about to ask me, are most cancers caused by Robert the dollar? I mean, yeah. Like, could you tell us that? No, are they completely random?

There's a mix between spontaneous mutations that can cause random mutations in DNA that give rise to cancer. And then there are some that are passed along genetically that you can develop, have a higher risk of developing cancer. So there's both. It's not one or the other. It's almost like the nature versus nurture argument. Yeah.

Okay. But in this case, we have definite proof of both. Because there's certain cancers, like, for example, colon cancer, we now recommend starting screening with a colonoscopy at age 45. but if you have a first degree relative who has colon cancer you start your screening 10 years prior to their age at diagnosis I see so like let's say your dad had colon cancer at age 30 at age 20 we start screening you I see because that raises your risk substantially but that's not for every cancer because some cancers are sporadic and have no family connection at all testicular cancer

Is that going to be something my kids should worry about? To be honest, I don't know. We could probably look that up. I think it's good for the audience right now to sort of lay out exactly why we're talking about cancer so much. Right. Okay. To start, tell your story. How did that whole process start up for you?

Yeah. Well, it's actually been kind of a shorter journey than expected. I started noticing some pain in November. It was actually the first memory I have of. noticing some pain was when we were shooting a video, we were shooting this lighthouse paranormal video where we had to walk a bunch of stairs like four or five times 300 feet in the sky. And I remember looking at Sam on like the third or fourth round of going up the stairs and being like, dude, it feels like my ball is in pain. Like it feels like a slight

bruise. Were you thinking ghost? At that point? No, but oh my God. I think like, yeah, like I actually slammed it with a camera. I thought it like smacked it or something. But it was just, yeah, my left testicle and it was like very slight. It wasn't even that bad. It was just going upstairs, moving like my legs a certain way. Yeah, like a very dull ache. But then I would relax and would completely go away. Like a week later, I was completely fine.

But I noticed with like a bunch of strenuous activity, like I've been trying to go on hikes a lot recently and Sam and I have picked up pickleball in Vegas. And I noticed being on my feet all day, it would flare up a little bit, get worse, which I thought was just inflammation at first. And then, so I'd relax for a few days and it would go down. Or if I had sex or if I masturbated, the next day it would flare up really bad.

And then I would relax and it would go down. And so that would just repeat. And that cycle went over until about like January 15th where it flared up really bad one day. And it finally made me pick up the phone and call the doctor because, yeah, symptoms were it was at this point when it would flare up. up. It was swollen. There was a pain that was now starting in my lower left pelvis. It was like by my waistband. And it was like this throbbing pain, almost like a cramping pain when I would sit down. And like after it would flare up for the first day to like three days, it would be even hard to stand up. It was that bad. But again, then I would relax for a few days and it would go down

completely. The only thing that I noticed that every single time it would go down after the few days of rest is each time, because again, this cycle kind of happened like two or three times before I called a doctor, was it would, the swelling would shrink down, but my testicle itself would be larger and more firm. And like it looked asymmetrical in my sack. It was like weighing down. More so than usual. Yeah. And each time would get a little bit worse. And I would notice that. But like, again, the pain would go away. It just at that point, I was like feeling down there and trying to figure out what was going on. It was definitely firm. In November, it was very slight. And so that was like the early, in my opinion, stage of it or whatever. But December and January, there was everything

like affecting it. Like you could tell. And there was some swelling. And I knew, I thought I had something called acute epididymitis. Yes. But so it was January 25th, I believe, I went to the doctor just for a general checkup. I hadn't been to a doctor in like eight years, my band. Um, but, but, But, oops, oops. But I went. And that also doesn't mean you would have caught it earlier. Right. Because like, for example, if you're not having an issue with that area, I might not do a

testicular exam. It depends on what you're coming in for. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. And there was like a stigma where like at first I was like embarrassed because it was like down there. And I was like, maybe I should like wait for a little bit. And that's probably why I waited for like a good month and a half before actually going

in before it got super bad. But did you feel comfortable, sharing all that with Sam? I actually don't think I told Sam until after my doctor's oh wow right yeah I think he told me the pain maybe yeah the pain end of like December when it was like your second time of like actually having a bad you were like there's something weird like I don't know maybe you should chill out or something I was just playing it down I was just like oh I think I just like hit it like it just feels weird but that's it but low key I knew like after all day it'd be like very swollen but I didn't go into detail with Sam about that

So anyways, again, like, I told the doctor there was something wrong going on down there, and he did an exam and told me like something was wrong, obviously, and said, like, I think you have acute epididymitis. You should go see a radiologist in the next month. And so I decided to be proactive about it and go see one the next morning. And I'm so lucky I did. Wait, he wanted you to see a radiologist? Yes.

Why a radiologist? So they do ultrasounds. They do all the CT scans, MRIs. I see what you mean. Okay. So he wanted to order images. magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he gave me shots for like STDs to be safe. Like I got like that gonorrhea shot and like my ass. It's interesting. It's it's random and a little bit. Sorry,

tell your story. Then I'll tell you my medical feedback on it. Okay, okay. They were doing I guess just for caution. But anyway, sure. So I went to the radiologist. They did an ultrasound on my sack, which was great. Which is like the primary thing we do in a lot of these scenarios. Yeah. Because we don't have, not x-ray vision, but like see-through vision with our hands. We can see something's abnormal. We could see that there's a spot area of pain. But in order to visualize exactly what we're looking at, the ultrasound helps guide that. Right. And I'm lucky that he told me to go to a radiologist, but I'm even luckier that I decided to go the next morning because- Why do he schedule it a month? I'm just curious. He'd never even scheduled it. He was just like,

you should just go within this next month. You can go to this radiology place down the street. And it was my decision to, I didn't even drive home. I'd even drive home. I'd drove straight to the radiologist to the front desk so I could talk to a human and not go on phone calls and stuff. And I just got so lucky. They were just like, we actually just had a free spot the next morning at 8 a.m. So it was right in the morning the next day and did the whole ultrasound and everything. And Sam and I were in a meeting. And I got a call from an unknown number. And so I just like hung up. I didn't think anything about it. But I was like, yeah, I was probably just a ghost calling me. But I was. I was probably just a ghost calling me. But I was. I was. I was. I was. I was probably just a ghost calling me. But I was. But I was. I was. I was. I was. like looking at my voicemail and I noticed like you can see like the transcript pop pop up and I saw like hello it's like your doctor like I need you to call me back ASAP it's very serious and I was like yeah that doesn't give me any anxiety of course the worst message you could possibly get from a doctor and so I was trying to keep my cool during this meeting just like only thinking about that and then as soon as the meeting was over I went downstairs and I called my doctor and he said that

the radiologist said that I had a mass in my ball that was 95% likely to be cancer and that was like when my first like like obviously my heart dropped at that moment and he told me immediately on the phone call he was just like don't worry like it's very curable usually you just have to get to surgery and that's that but I need you to come to the office right away and so I remember just going straight to my bathroom looking at myself in the mirror and being like all right like it is what it is don't freak out like you got this and just kind of talking to myself get myself a pep talk and I didn't even tell Sam I just started driving and then I called Sam I remember and let you know what was going on as I was driving to the doctor's

office but yeah at the doctors they obviously reassured me again they were just like it does look like it's cancer but it seems like we caught it early so we just need you to get the surgery as soon possible and then you should be fine. So they said the next steps are go right now to get some blood work done where they test something called your tumor markers, your AFPHCG. And if those are high, elevated, then it means there's a tumor present. And so when got the blood work done and met up with Sam actually, he drove out to, we went to like a Walgreens or something to get the blood work. So he drove out all the way to Walgreens, like gave each other hugs and talked about it. That was the first time I saw him or saw anybody besides my doctor since hearing about it, which was really,

really scary because I don't, obviously, I don't know what all they do at their blood work center, but they were telling you some scary things. Like, oh, wait, you have cancer? Are you prepared to not have kids? Like, this could be like life or death. And it was just scaring Colby for no reason at all. Well, you know what's interesting. And I was wanting to ask you about this as well is they asked me they were just like no offense no offense like we're not saying you look like this at all or whatever like or trying to make any assumptions they were just like were you a female at one point of your life and I was like no what's like almost taking a bag like what the hell are they talking about and they said we needed to test for your HCG which is found

in pregnant women and so they didn't even understand they didn't get that like it was also like a tumor cancer thing. Yeah. So let me just jump in there because we need to give a little feedback from what happens in those situations that I think potentially destroys everyone's experience with the healthcare system. And it's when people that are within the healthcare system that are not experts in the field start giving you opinions and thoughts as to what's going on.

And it's sometimes being helpful because they're thinking outside the box. And sometimes it's fully inaccurate. fully fear mongering based and I have no idea how to approach it as a doctor because I don't want someone telling you things about beta HCG that they don't even know why I'm ordering the test and they're like dissuading you almost from doing it or scaring you and telling you that this is going to affect your life in a certain way when they have no idea what the statistics are or what kind of cancer you have all these things so I actually struggle with this a lot and I see that happen where I make a diagnosis to a patient I ask them if they have any questions they say

know, let's say this isn't in an ER setting, I walk out, then someone walks in who's helping transport them, et cetera. Then they ask that person because they came up with a question. And then that person starts answering based on no expertise in the subject and it becomes a disaster. So I have no idea how to fix that. And it was interesting because then afterwards they were like, they were being very sweet. And I don't mean to like knock these nurses at all. But like they were just kind of like, oh, well, be thankful for every day. Like be thankful that you're here, man. Just wake up and pray every day. And I was like, what? You tell him

he was going to die in two days. Like, are you kidding? My anxiety just like times 10 pretty much because my doctor just told me, oh, you'll be fine with just a surgery. Then this lady's like, yeah, wake up and pray. Like, you should be thankful. You're here. I mean, that's not bad advice, but I understand why it's anxiety provoking.

Yeah, exactly. She was like, don't tell your family or anybody yet. Just like, you know, make sure you figure it out before. I was like, what? Like, in this, in this crazy time, I feel like you should try to get as much support as you can exactly your family and friends for sure yeah i told or yeah she told me specifically she was like because i made a joke i was like well guess i go call gotta call my mom now as i was walking out and uh she was just like don't do that that's just gonna like freak her out like you should wait until

you're 100% sure wait till these blood um results come back and everything and i called that's so isolated i called my mom when i got in the car yeah so she was the first person i called like five minutes later and then yeah the next steps were getting a urology appointment um and then honestly i kind of felt like that was pointless if i'm being completely real sure um because all they did was i had to fill out a bunch of paperwork i went into the office they checked in they were just like yep you need to get it taken out but apparently the urologist was the one that could help me schedule the orchiectomy yeah and so not like the actual doctor and so i needed to have that step um But what was interesting is the urologist that I saw in Vegas had scheduled me out for an orchiectomy like, I think I was saying, like, two weeks later.

Maybe like three weeks. It was like end of February and you found out in like the beginning of February. Yeah, that was crazy. Two to three weeks later. And my, like I was saying, one of my team members, I was telling them about the situation, of course. He just called around to like the Mayo Clinic and UCLA and got me like one of the best referrals ever with like. like one of the most reputable testicular, specifically cancer, doctor or like urologists out there. And once I got a virtual appointment with him, he was able to get me in like four days later.

It was super quick. And so basically I'm saying that because like my team and if we didn't try hard, we wouldn't have like expeditious. And have resources to travel and do all these things. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You need that as well. So, you know, sometimes being a single parent and having two jobs in the middle of all this. So it's like a lot of things aligned very well.

So I'm happy. I got so lucky. But just to give you a timeline, I on January 25th went to the doctor's appointment. And February 6th, I got a surgery. Yeah, literally, literally. But think about that. If you went to that doctor's appointment, he said get the radiologist within a month. within a month. Then after that, your urologist would have been, you know, two, three weeks

later. Then if you would have listened to that guy and got a surgery in Vegas, which would be ideal for most people being in the same area, that could have also been a month. You probably would not even have your surgery yet to this day if you stayed in the same system that you were going to go. And like with the type of cancer that I had too, which we can get into in a second, but like it was rapid, there was a part of it that was like rapidly growing and who knows if it could have developed into a stage two sort of a cancer if I did wait until now to just get my surgery. It's just scary stuff. But I can go into the surgery if you want or I could keep going with this path. Let's take a pause so then I can sort of translate of how ideally

this should go and why certain paths were chosen versus others. Because I think it's an important learning situation. Yeah. So ideally, this is in a world where we know that someone already has testicular cancer, so we're kind of being Monday morning quarterback, but I'm explaining how it should go. A patient would come in with testicular pain. Let's say they come into my office, young person. Obviously, testicular cancer would be part of my differential diagnosis, which is one of the options that I could diagnose the patient with, simply because of their age and because that there is some kind of growth in the area. We also know, as you said, testicular cancer happens most commonly in those age 20 to their 30s. And then what's interesting,

about it is it also happens in those age 60 plus. So it kind of has two spikes in life. The highest spike is early in life and the second spike is later in life. Usually doesn't happen midlife for people. We don't even really know why. And the types of testicular cancers change with the age. Like usually the ones later in life tend to be less invasive, less problematic. The ones that happen earlier in life are the ones that have some potential for growth. So a patient comes in with testicular pain, right away I have to rule out. Is this a traumatic situation? Is this an infectious situation? Or is this a cancer situation? Your doctor seemed to diagnose you with all of the above at the same time. There's ways where we can start making diagnoses or narrowing down

our list of diagnoses so that we don't have to give you all the treatments like antibiotics for potential STIs, when I could test them in the office and get you a result in 24 hours, where I don't have to then expose you to antibiotics unnecessarily. So that's like one step that could have been skipped. If you're having pain that is acute right now, for example, like, let's say you came into my office right now. It hurts really bad. And I press on the area and it hurts.

I'm sending you for an ultrasound in that moment. Not for the fear of cancer, but for the fear of a condition known as testicular torsion, where the testicle can actually mal-rotate. Yeah. And cut off circulation to it, which is a surgical emergency because a testicle is actively dying. And that kind of can happen on its own for like without a real true explanation. So I'm sending, like if you came in, you're like, my testicle hurts and it hurts right now,

you're getting an old time that day. Not in a month. That's insane. Just for that reason. And we would have then seen a mass and then gotten the information earlier. So that's something that would have changed in the process. and then once we would have gotten the report of this ultrasound, we would have seen that there's some kind of unknown mass. You would then come back to my office. I would explain to you the thing

that we just said, that testicular cancer happens at your age group. 95% survival rate five years, so it's a very treatable cancer with surgery. There are some instances where we do chemotherapy or radiation therapy depending on the type of cancer it is. And testicular cancer really falls into two categories, and then they can be subdivided even further, but one is a germ cell tumor, which is the type of cells that make your sperm, and then the stromal type tumor, which is the hormonal supportive tissue of the testicle, that can have a tumor. Then the germ cell tumor can be further divided into seminoma and non-seminoma. And then to make it even more confusing, there's mixed types and all these other things. And those are all minutiae that we can talk about

once we get your diagnosis, because you actually sent me your records to talk about more accurately here on the show. So each one has different survival rates, different treatments, and that's all a conversation that needs to happen with your oncologist. So so far, the biggest thing that happened was very messy in the beginning stages of the diagnosis. Very, yes. A lot of anxiety, a lot of worry. and I'm curious, obviously, how you took it, but you're in the situation, you're making the decisions, your best friend. Sam, how are you handling that call

as a caregiver for your friend, as a supporter of your friend emotionally? What's your thoughts on this process? Are you Googling right away? What's the first thing you do? Yeah, I mean, I saw him say, you know, back at this meeting when he first got his call. He's like, I've got to go take this.

And I knew it was from his doctor. was like my heart dropped with him as he was going but I was like okay I'm not on this call and then like as soon as he's like I'm gonna run out in the car like call me ASAP called him and then obviously as soon as he say hey I have this thing it's like 95% cancerous obviously both of our hearts are dropping at that moment and like obviously every single thought imaginable was happening at that moment it's just kind of like what's gonna happen but at that moment I was like okay like two things I can either freak out or I can be as like straight up as possible and try to make this as calm as possible because I know in his mind he's probably freaking out and so I was like okay we got this no matter what happens we'll just take it one step at a time we've done everything in our career up until this moment one step at a time together and we'll just make it happen and you know if there's anybody in this world that can travel around and make a million calls and drop everything and push everything for work. It's us. So let's make it happen and we'll figure it out.

And so that's kind of how it happened, which he kind of touched on a little bit. But I want to just give props 100% to Colby for taking this as the most strong I've ever seen anybody do this. It wasn't like even bad of an eye. He was on the same phone call. He was telling me he had cancer. He was like, I got this. Let's just make it happen. We'll take one step at a time and we'll get through this. I'm not going to die. Let's make it happen. So I was like, whoa. All right. I got to be exactly like that 10-10-fold. So like nothing wrong happens. And so that full day was like definitely the scariest because at that point, like obviously I had no idea anything about this and even lesser known than what he had known because he'd gotten a call from the doctor. So I was thinking,

oh, God, like this could, you know, this changes everything. Like maybe like this is cancer we're talking about when anybody throws out that word, it's like you immediately think of the worst case scenario. And so it's like, one, just how fragile is life? And then two, like, like, oh my God, I can't believe, like everything ever gets put aside for health. And so when those health scares, especially something as serious as cancer rolls around, like you truly like hits you like a ton of bricks, saying like, oh, God, what am I valuing? So luckily, one day later, we called my sister, who actually is an oncologist, which is awesome. And we were able to have her talk us through the process. And her first thought was, hey, just FYI, testicular cancer is like 95%

curable. And if you're in stage one, it's like 99% curable. And so that was just the utmost sigh of relief at that point. Because up until that, those 24 hours, we were thinking worst case scenario. Sure. Wow. That's so powerful that you actually had to, strengthen up to match Colby's resilience. It's insane. I mean, throughout this whole thing, he's like, you know what? I could wait. Now I'm going to do it myself. It's like he's he's just done everything in his whole power to be like strong and be like now. Like I don't want to like, you know, shy away from this. I want to tell everybody, inspire people. I want to get this done as fast as humanely possible,

whatever I need to do. And I think everybody has taken that as like a learning. Like, oh my God. like crazy like crazy experiences and especially traumatic experiences you can either back down and shy away from or you can take headstrong and he's taken that like to the fullest extent and that's awesome thank you for saying that yeah i mean my take on it was did you know he felt that way you've told me before but not to that extent so thank you for saying that but uh yeah i mean I was just for myself making jokes about and trying to say positive. And I think the main thing in my head is I just said it is what it is. Like it already happened.

Why would I be upset about something that is literally inside of me as we speak? Like it doesn't do anything to sit down and cry about it or worry about it. It just makes things worse, if anything. So I was just kind of, yeah, on game mode where I just was like, what can I do? And we're just so fortunate to be in the position that we are that we can travel and have a team that can help call and stuff like that. It was more like, all right, game plan. This happened. I'm going to survive.

That was my biggest fears were death and infertility. Those were my two things. And so after researching and talking to Allison, shout out to his sister, oncologist, we realized that like both of those were going to be okay. You can bank your sperm if you need to. and again 99% like survival rate if caught early and so it was just kind of like a okay now step by step what do we need to do and I think the major thing was not thinking too far ahead yeah I didn't even think about like the possibility of chemo I was just thinking about like okay what do I have to do today okay I have to go to a radiologist today okay tomorrow I have to do

blood work so you did like one foot in front of the other exactly not thinking too far exactly and just like oh my gosh Google was my worst enemy like before and And after the diagnosis, before I was like, it was that one day where like really flared up January 15th, I like was going on Google and I saw the cancer word and I was like, there's no way. There's no way. Like it's definitely like inflammation for sure. Exactly. That's how everyone I think would think of it too. Well, you'd be surprised. Sometimes it's the opposite end of the spectrum where it's people have headache. They'll go on a web MD and they'll see cancer and they're like, I have cancer. So it works both ways. Interesting. Yeah, that's interesting, but I mean, I just try, like, I have, you know, Sam or my parents look up anything that I'm, like, worried about on Google. If I, like, really want to figure out, like, an answer, I won't Google it. I'll just have Sam do it.

And then he'll be like, hey, like, this is what I've read and probably, like, weed out some of the stuff that I don't want to hear, maybe. Just feel like Google in general. This is a horrible way to get advice. Yeah. I think Google on its own is not great, but Google to prepare you to ask good questions, to have a baseline understanding of a situation to then go work with a doctor is great yeah yeah this is why i think a i is not replacing doctors because the ai can tell you all the great stuff the survival

numbers this that it's all factually accurate in most cases but it doesn't have the humanistic component of what to expect what's the next step what's the process here who do i call who gives me this information how do i get emotional support how should i be thinking about this that's where the AI suffers. So I don't hate Google. I hate Google when people use it on their own without someone guiding them through the process of Google. I think it's easy to make assumptions using

Google because they'll tell you every spectrum of possible outcomes and it's up to you to figure out which one. And so it's like you can spiral really quickly. Very quickly. Go down a bad rabbit hole of like Reddit reading personal stories and stuff. Yeah. And what I will

say is you truly are breaking a to talk about an area of the body where people are uncomfortable talking about generally, which is problematic because they wait so long to seek care. So hopefully you're encouraging people to see care earlier when they are having symptoms, whether they felt something abnormal, like with their fingers, like they felt a mass, or they felt a symptom in that area. They're more likely to go.

But then also you're laying a foundation of how a person should handle health problems. Not so much that you push through and you were a soldier. That's great. not everybody will have the capacity or ability to do that, but the fact that you advocated for yourself, that when a doctor said something and you didn't feel like it was right, you saw a second opinion. You went to someone else.

You confided in your friend. That kind of advocacy is probably the biggest factor on good health outcomes. And it doesn't always have to come from you, even though in your situation it did, and that's awesome. Sometimes it's having another person in the room who can advocate on your behalf when you're, so distraught with a new diagnosis. That's why I encourage everyone when they're going

for a serious medical visit to bring a trusted partner with them so that if you're having the cancer word completely dissociate your mind and you're not thinking clearly, your friend can say doctor, what you're saying is not making sense. He can be the objective voice in the room. And maybe not even Sam because Sam

might not be as objective because he's also emotional in the situation. But having a friend or someone who can be more objective than you, that's going to go really far for people. I appreciate you doing that for people. I think that's the moral story right there is like you were like, all right, I'm not going to take no for an answer.

Like, I'm going to do as much as I possibly can in my willpower to make this as quick and as healthy as possible. Yeah. And if guys out there, like, think it's embarrassing, especially young guys since it is like a young man cancer, it's really nothing to be embarrassed about. Like, I've told so many people about this and especially like doctors in not one instance to somebody, like, made fun of me for it. Yeah, no.

Like, so, like, there's nothing really to be afraid of. And, again, this is your health out, like we're talking about here. It's, the most important thing is to go get treated, go get help as soon as possible if you think something's wrong. Because if you go and it wasn't a cancer or a big problem, the worst case scenario is that you went. Yeah, exactly. But if you didn't go and it does become a really big problem, that's a way bigger problem.

So that's, like, the risks you should weigh. Yeah. Like, maybe a little. little embarrassing because you didn't want to lower your shorts or whatever it is, but small trade-off for the win that you get. Exactly. So I hope they do that. Something also I wanted to tell the audience because they might be wondering why the next

step was right away to get the testicle surgically removed as opposed to doing a biopsy. It's because what we actually found, and this is a mistake that I didn't even know early on in my training, that when you get a diagnosis of testicular cancer, the actual actual biopsy is made when you remove the entire testicle. Because if you have the tumor markers, you have the findings on the ultrasound, that's enough to warrant the removal. And a biopsy, putting a needle in the area, can actually spread, facilitate spread of the cancer. That's why, because if you have a cancer elsewhere, we usually do a biopsy before surgically removing it to understand what it is. But the testicle is a unique area where you don't do that. You just

remove the testicle. If you have the tumor markers plus the ultrasound findings, you can go ahead and remove it at that point and then find out what type of cancer it is which is what happened in your case exactly and what a lot of people don't know too is there were so many of my friends rightfully so not making fun of them at all but like they were thinking that they literally like cut open the sack and take out the ball like that it's like not that graphic not that scary sounding it's like an incision right in the waistband and so it was honestly it was not that bad I was nervous because I've never been under general anesthesia before. And so it's just kind of nerve-wracking to know that I was just going to basically black out without my control.

But it really, like, it was so easy. They just count down from five and you can't even remember until you wake up. Like the next thing I remembered was Sam walking into the room, like filming me pretty much. Like, hey. How you feeling? Exactly. But yeah, to your point, like, they needed to take it out in order to take it to a lab to get the pathology report. And so, yeah, it was immediately get it out.

Did you also, this is something that wasn't sent to me, but I'm curious if you did. Did you also get imaging of like cat scans as well? Yeah, so I did a CT scan right after the ultrasound as well. Yeah, and the reason for that and why I assumed it was done is because when you're looking at the prognosis of testicular cancer, is you're looking for the pathology report, which you sent me that is what the testicle is made of, the testicular tumor is made. of. And then you're looking at the blood tests before and after the removal of the testicle. And the CAT scan results would show us if it has spread to other areas or lymph nodes,

the lymphatic system. So correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding of what has happened so far is the testicle was removed. It was found to be a germ cell type tumor, a mixed germ cell type tumor. Yes. And it was fully removed. There was no residual. amount left. There was no lymphatic spread. There was no spread to anywhere else in your body. Correct. And your blood levels of the tumor markers disappeared after the surgery. Yeah. So that was a scary moment because, so your HCG, your beta HCG, mine pretty much went back to normal the next week. Yep. But your AFP is known to have each time that you go. And so it took about six weeks, five weeks,ish for it to really get into normal ranges. And so it was something that

I've been calling scanxiety, where like, you just go. That's a good word, scanxiety. Yeah, where it's just like, you forget about it for a few days, and then you go and get your scans or you get your blood work, and then you have that scanxiety for like 24 hours. You get it, and then it's like, oh, yeah, it's like lowered. Hell yeah. But it basically got all the way to normal ranges now, so I'm normal.

So amazing. So that's a really great prognosis. That puts you in the lower risk category. But then your doctor has also brought up the possibility of doing one of two approaches. One is active surveillance where we just keep an eye on the area and seeing what happens with no more treatment now that we've removed the tumor. And the second option is doing a course of chemotherapy with something known as BEP, which are chemotherapy agents that you would get injected via IV. Take me through your

understanding of each of the two paths and what has your doctor recommended this far? Well, to give context of what I was thinking, I was like, I don't know when to do chemo. Like, it was like from... Well, how did your doctor explain it to you that there's these two approaches? Well, okay, yeah. So I saw the blood levels got to normal. Technically, that means I was cancer free. Like the oncologist said, you are cancer free.

That's your cancer free. Okay. See, so that's awesome. And so that was the first good news. I saw an oncologist and he was like, you're cancer free. Here's a thing, though. It was like one of those things.

I couldn't get too excited about it. He was just like, we could do the active surveillance or chemo. Active surveillance is where you would have to for that at least the next two years. He didn't give me a timeline, but he basically said, like, we're just going to need to watch you very, very closely where you're going to have to get blood work every single month, CT scans like every three months,

maybe even like an MRI like once a year. But again, he never told me a complete details on that. It's just watching it closely and you have to be diligent about going to checkups. And he said, or we could give you one cycle, 21 days worth of chemo, or I hope 21 days. I'm not 100% sure on that. And that will greatly reduce your risk of recurrence of it coming back. So what I had was like the garden variety tumor is I had something called like a four. 40% embryonal carcinoma.

Correct. And that's like an extremely fast spreading cancer. Correct. And so that specifically made my situation a little bit worse to where basically the oncologist said I had a 35% chance of recurrence. And he told me that five minutes after he told me I was cancer free. And so like I never really got to celebrate in my head. Like of course came home and Sam had like a cookie cake for me.

we like cheered and like celebrate yeah and all that but um it like deep down in the back of my head i was just still thinking about that recurrence number like that's a third a third of a percent chance or like that is going to come back possibly um and so would you have rather not known i think i would have rather known because that's where it it leaves my decision right now of and i wanted to ask you about this specifically and hear what you you have to say about this, but literally in a week from filming this is when I have to tell my oncologist what I want to do. I have a CT scan on April 6th. And then after that is the meeting where it's like, do I want to go this chemo route 21 days? Or do I want to just take the risk of

the 35% chance it could come back? So talk about like the day of when you found out and then the week after because you were pretty set in stone and you knew exactly what he was going to offer before you even walked into the doctor's office yeah so again I was like I knew there was the chemo word in the back of my head ever since like I got the diagnosis at first but I was just like I'll be fine I'll just do active surveillance and like it's a 70% thing like I'll be good but yeah it was just conflicting in my head because I went home wanting to celebrate and stuff and I was so positive up until like this past week I've still been positive but like the anxiety has hit me worse this last week than it's has this entire journey because it's now like

up to me to decide it's not like a doctor saying you should do this you should do this you can't just put your head down and say I'm going to push through this exactly now it's like you have to push your head down and push through one of two paths right right and there's like so many factors to each path it's like I could choose active surveillance and there's a 70% chance that it never comes back and I'm totally fine and that's like a pretty good chance but there's also that third looming in the back of your head so is that anxiety worth it and in my opinion I don't think it was so like doing the chemo is going to get that 35% down to 5% recurrence and then if it doesn't come back in two years that 5% goes down

to like two to three percent of recurrence for the rest of my life. And that's where I'm, that's where I'm at right now. How has your doctor relationship? I don't know if you're having these discussions with the oncologist or your primary care doctor who have been in discussing the pros and cons of this. Have they been positive? Have they just been like, hear your options now kind of screw off or? Kind of. I mean, so I've only talked to the oncologist about it like once in person and then haven't heard from them since. How is that? How is that? that conversation taking me through that combo it was like basically like I said where it was like all right so here are your options and yeah the percentages by it literally it was like you're cancer

free but it's like that's what it sounded like but you have a 35% chance of recurrence so here's your options we could do active surveillance where we do blah blah blah blah or we can give you a dose of chemo right now which is what I recommend so let us know in like a week or so goodbye it was like a 10 minute or less visit. That sucks. Yeah. And this is a recurring theme that I keep hearing doing these podcasts. Actually, Hannah Frye, who's a mathematician, was sitting in one of these seats not so long ago telling me about her cervical cancer diagnosis. And she faced the same exact thing where they were like, do you want us to take out everything? Do you want us take out some of the nodes? And she felt rushed because she's given statistics, but not a true understanding of what can happen.

So now, an important thing that I want to do before we get into the decision-making process of this, or at least the discussion of the decision-making process, is so people understand and they can follow along in the story why you're facing this decision. So because we keep saying you were low-risk, right? Because the type of cancer that you had, the fact that there was no lymph note spread, the fact that the blood tests all resulted normal makes you low risk. but there was one component that was the majority component of the tumor that puts you in a slightly higher low risk still category.

So like elevated low risk. And because of that, the act of surveillance and the dose of chemotherapy kind of start evening out in terms of what we've seen from evidence where the decision is not clear on what is the optimal route. Because had your tumor been made up of that same embryological carcinoma, you would just say active surveillance and you'd move on.

You would say no need for the thing. But because of that, it puts you in a slightly higher risk. Now it's a little bit more balanced. Yeah. That's why we're facing this decision. Now, medically, all of that, just for your understanding,

I'm not your doctor. I'm not going to tell you what to do, nor should your doctor ever tell you what to do. But in terms of just laying out informationally what happens in these scenarios, I think we're both comfortable having that discussion. I think it's valuable. For sure.

Because so people can see, what should happen during a visit. And if it doesn't happen with a specialist, because specialists are pressed for time, they're running in and out of rooms, a relationship with a primary care doctor should happen in this way, that the doctor can guide you

for you to make the best decision by laying out what the pros and cons are of not just the statistics, but of the reality. What is life like? Not just statistics, but how does your life change? Right.

And right now, we're facing the decision of active surveillance as being the one route where you're going to be doing some kind of scans. And there's different strategies to active surveillance, which you can discuss with your doctor, obviously, where maybe you do more aggressive scanning early on and then it gets more sporadic as you get older because of this potential risk of recurrence. Or do you go down this one single dose of chemotherapy? When I say dose, I mean, course, of chemotherapy. what has your doctor told you about risks of going down you know the risk of going down active

surveillance is that there could be a recurrence yeah what is your knowledge of the risks of the chemotherapy component well they gave me like a four page packet about all the side effects of chemo and so it was definitely hard to stomach but it's like one of those things where you can correct me if I'm wrong but doctors have to tell you everything that could happen yeah Well, legally, they're handing you the paper and they can check a box and they say, I've educated the patient on the risks. Right. And so there was, I can't even name all of them.

There was like, you know, it's, I can't name them. Yeah. There's too many of them. And the way that they explain them is, okay, 10% of people will have these side effects. One percent of people will have this list of side effects. And then really rare, even less than 1% people will have these side effects. Exactly. And then it's like, and then some people will have long lasting side effects.

So if you really look into that, that can be so anxiety provoking that it almost becomes the bigger problem. Yeah, exactly. And that's why this last week has been like the hardest for me is because I did accidentally go down a Google rabbit hole. Not going to lie. Of course. And luckily having his sister like to be able to call and she's an oncologist herself and actually cares to talk to me for a while. like roasted doctors I'm just kidding um she basically told me that like with one cycle which hopefully well what did google first tell you Google told me uh all the all the worst things like long-term

problem like lung failure like actually any organ failure like diabetes um obviously short-term side effects would be the hair loss which everybody is aware of um oh man there's just so so many So a lot of side effects. Yeah, like, like blood, like red blood cell, like decreasing down, like infertility possibly, like testosterone levels, tanking, so many I could go on and on. And I don't even know because I like stopped looking at half the side effects because I was like, I don't even know if I'm going to do chemo yet. So I was like, why am I processing all this?

I think at that moment too for that first like week after receiving that packet going down the rabbit hole, you were like, oh God, this sounds awful. I'm just going to go do active surveillance no matter what. Yeah, that whole week. I was thinking, this whole last week, I was thinking the active surveillance route because in my head, I was like, well, here's a thing. If I do chemo now, there's going to be all these side effects and possibly infertility. But if it comes back and I do chemo later, it's going to be the same side effect. So I might as well just take that 70% chance I will be completely fine and don't have to do anything in the future. And then if it comes up in the future, then I'll deal with it then. But the thing about that, Was if it came back and crucial thing I forgot to mention was if it did come back I'd have to do three to four cycles of BP and possibly an RPL and D surgery to get the lymph nodes removed because that's where testicular cancer is shown to spread. Yeah. And so now it was like, okay, four months of chemo and surgery or 21 days of chemo to ensure yourself for life pretty much like essentially. And so that's where I'm at right now. And obviously when I called Allison, she was telling me that a lot of the longer side effects that you might experience in your 40s, 50, 60s come from multiple doses of chemo multiple courses.

And so that kind of put into my head where she basically like talked it down to where she was like, if you do one cycle, yes, there is potential side effect risks, but it's way, way, way, way less. than obviously doing three to four. Yeah. And so basically just talked, talked me down into being like, this might be the right decision just to ensure that safety. And it's only 21 days.

And again, the anxiety of that 35% like a looms on you where every day you're like thinking of that. Even if 70 is, you know, twice as twice as much as the 30, 35, it's still like something in the back

of your head of like, is this going to come back? Is this going to come back? And so for me, personally personally i just thought it would be better to get rid of that risk as much as possible and um i think just being completely honest with everybody i think that my biggest fear was the hair loss not going to lie that's a fair and i mean with our profession too like us being on camera 24-7 you understand like what i'm talking about like that is like terrifying it's so different than

if i worked just somewhere else doing another job but considering the job that i had it was like even more scary and having the whole like social media like looking at you too is even more scary so there was a lot of factors for me personally to think about but that's what the doctor needs to discuss with you yeah like the example i gave with hannah fry was if i'm putting on a patient and i know them well that they're a musician and i know the medication can cause a tremor i'm going to be much more sensitive about introducing that medication to them than i would a person who doesn't play the instrument and doesn't care if they have a mild tremor so that's the same exact logic that you're doing. So I'm glad you have a person helping you, even though they're not your official

doctor. Yeah, exactly. It would be nice if your doctor could have this conversation. I know. It seemed like every single doctor I've talked to besides one, a UCLA doctor, but like every other doctor in Nevada I've talked to. It seems like it's like, hey, I can only talk for five minutes. Yep, yep. Okay, okay. Cool. You're done talking to me. All right, this is what you need to do. I'm gone. Like five minutes only. I talk to the nurse longer. I talk to the doctor. So it was just kind of frustrating that it just shows that they nobody's going to care about your medical situation more than yourself. Yeah, exactly. Or close friends like his sister. But that just shows like even trying to schedule a conversation has been near impossible for you. Like you had that one conversation when you found out, but have you even been able to sit down with anybody since then? No, I've been trying to plan this chemo route and haven't been able to contact. But also based on how you were describing you seeking care early on, when the symptoms first started, it sounds like you don't have a primary care doctor.

They have a long-standing relationship with, right? Right, yeah. So that's the most important thing you can do for your health in terms of good outcomes because, A, they know you and they can think about this personal approach to health care and help you make these decisions and be that voice, how I would be if you were my patient. But then also, because they've seen you for so long,

not only do they know you well, they have a vested interest. Yeah. They become family. The care. I have patients that I have patients that I, I've delivered as a doctor, like baby, and then now they're like my five-year-old patient. Yeah.

So of course, I'm going to have a much stronger connection to this patient than if I ran into them in the ER for 10 minutes. So like that's why you really need a primary care doctor for those conversations. Obviously, it's great to lean on friends who are experts, et cetera, et cetera. But that's like how people who may not have that access can have that same conversation. Yeah, 100%. I'm lucky that I do have Sam's sister to, like, give me advice. But, yeah, besides that, all I've been looking at is, like, Google and, like,

we're having them look up, like, Google searches, so I don't freak out. And now, yeah, now it's, like, pretty much I have probably, like, a week from now, too. And both are reasonable choices, which makes it harder. Yeah, exactly, right? Exactly. When you have two reasonable choices, it's like, which path do you choose? Also, when you look at active surveillance, if they are going to be recommending that you get repeat CAT scans, you also got to think about radiation that you're getting from repeat CAT scans.

Oh, yeah. That's very true. So there's so many variables to take into consideration. It really should be your gut decision that you go with. And there's two things you have to do when you make that decision. One is you have to make it based on your gut and fully trust your gut. and fully trust your gut and go headstrong that you made that decision and two make peace with the fact that it could be the wrong decision that you can only decide based on what you know now

and with what you know now there is no wrong decision that's true okay like whatever you decide right now not wrong and see that already helps me feel like more at peace like even thinking that because again like you could say I decided to do chemo and then something side effect happens, but it's like, I don't know that now. Can't know. Yeah. There's never full proof answers in medicine. In fact, the enemy of making a good decision in health care, you know what that is?

What would you say the enemy of making a good decision is? What's the opposite of a good decision? You're probably going to think bad decision. Yeah, bad decision. No, you're trying to make a perfect decision. Right. There's no perfect. There's no perfect.

And when you strive for perfect, it becomes bad. Right. Right. And you know what was interesting is like talking to like Sam and my parents about this. And again, I was on the active surveillance route the entire time. They were on my side as well. Like, yeah, no, active surveillance seems right. It was only till after the conversation with Allison, the oncologist, that it kind of flipped my view on it. And then everybody was also able to see that side. And nobody's wrong. It's just like you said, no perfect. Opinions, which is that's the important thing. Hear people out, but let your gut decide it. Because it's you. Your choice, you have to live with it. And if you choose someone else's, it'll be so easy to blame them. Right. But right now in this scenario where you're deciding what you want and you know that no answer

is wrong, there's no one to punish. It just happened. Just like you're not punishing anyone for the fact that you developed testicular cancer, the same way that you'll handle those side effects if they do occur. If they do occur. Yeah. And right now, if anybody's wondering, like I think I am on the chemo route, I think I will do that for sure just because if it is 21 days I'm still not aware of the cycle of BEP but if it's three

months that might like I might not do it that's where I'm at right now but the 21 days we are like very far ahead with filming and stuff and I could afford doing that right now and kind of like if I did lose hair had bad side effects I could you know hide away for for a second we'd still be fine with our business stuff so I think that is the right decision because for me personally that 35% is scary. That third of a chance in my head is what was keeping me up at night for the past week.

And so if I can get that down to 5%, that's great. You were saying even this last week and a half was more anxiety than you've had even learning that you had cancer in general. Yes, yeah, because I have to decide myself. So that just means like this scanxiety for the coming two years

would be probably the worst of this entire process. exactly yeah I'd have to wait two years of just being like it's going to come back every time like every single month getting like the tumor markers checked is it going to come back so yeah to me it's just not worth that that mental how do you feel about his thought process not the decision but the thought process I think it was very fair it was really interesting to see because when he first brought it like hey like I'm cancer free yes that's awesome I could see there was something weighing on him and you didn't buy it and well yeah i was like i'm for sure just whatever you want to do and as i was hearing his conversations and phone calls with everybody everyone said the same thing it's

like yeah like i can't make this decision for you this is obviously like whatever you want to do and at least from what the the lack of knowledge i have this the word like chemotherapy just seems horrible like oh you're putting chemicals in your body and you're going to be killing all your cells Like, that just sounds bad. All these, like, packets of informational side effects, it just sounds bad. So I was, like, definitely could see where he was coming from of doing active surveillance. And even from the day he found out that his tumor markers were starting to fall down, he realized, okay, the doctor was going to tell me I could do actress surveillance or chemo,

so I want to just do actress surveillance. So I knew from day one, he wanted to do that. So I was like, yeah, sure, I'll be on your side there. And literally, like, just a week ago, I was updating my sister on, like, whole situation and that's when I was like oh wait whoa like this is a lot more to think about and so I was like hey can you make sure to call Colby tomorrow and really explain this to him because like the way you're explaining to me is like really intense and so you know the next day I saw him having an hour-long conversations with my sister about it and since then it was

it's been changed but I could definitely see after hearing more about it like that I think he now has all the facts to actually, like, make a decision. I think previously we were acting a little more on impulse and, like, what he wanted to do, and especially with this job, I thought deep down, like, if the main reason for not wanted to do chemo was the aesthetic of, you know, losing hair

and or not feeling if you want to be on camera for a few months, that's a couple months of your life versus the happiness and healthiness of your entire. higher life. Like, yes, like a few, you know, bad months or sluggish times or awkward pictures for a few months is going to be worth the rest of your life. And so I think, at least in this, in this decision, now we've gotten past the superficial stuff. I think now he can definitely make a decision more deep down on what's beneficial to him. I think that's powerful. I also think if I had a patient in your shoes, because I don't want to influence your decision in any way,

I would tell them two things. One, you know how you said you have to decide in a week? I would get rid of that deadline. That's the first thing I would recommend. Okay. Because that's a deadline someone else set for you and it's your health. You don't have to decide anything. True.

Like if you want to wait another week because you need time with it, wait another week. This isn't life or death that you have to decide in seven days. The tumor is not like, oh, it's day eight. Ha! Like that's not how it works. Yeah. So do not create artificial time. minds that are not based on any kind of science.

That's what I would tell them. And second, getting the initial second opinion was smart, how you found a person to speed up the process of getting the ultrasound and getting the tumor removed quicker by doing the surgery was wise. I think if there was ever a time to get a second opinion and have almost two doctors argue with each other is now. meaning contact the leading expert in this situation and have them play devil's advocate

say I want to go the chemotherapy route be devil's advocate for me that's what I want you to do for me in this visit and see if they can present some kind of evidence that you didn't know because this is the important decision that you have to make the surgery was very obvious that you needed to do here

as we were saying both choices are reasonable you're not making a wrong decision with whatever choice, but make sure you have the best information. Right. And the best information doesn't come from someone who says, oh yeah, I gave that medicine once. Talk to the people that have given the medicine 10,000 times.

Yeah. And talk to the people who've not given the medicine 10,000 times and see what their experiences have been like. And that's where, because evidence can give us a clear answer, that's where anecdote might give you some reassurance one way or another. Yeah, 100%. And luckily with this,

like my team finding, UCLA doctors and stuff too. I can do just that. Exactly. And those are the things you don't need to go in for a visit. You could schedule a virtual. Yes. Yeah. So like there's flexibility in that. So that's that those are two things that I think are very reasonable. Throwing out artificial deadlines and then seeking the knowledge. Not don't sit tell doctors tell me what to do. Just what what what what happens in these scenarios. 100%. Yeah. No, I appreciate you saying that because yeah, again, fortunate enough to have multiple people that that I can talk to that are professional in different states too completely don't even know each other

type thing like they can argue it out and help me decide for sure you know right now what we're looking forward to in the medical sphere is learning which individuals are actually the ones that would benefit from the chemotherapy most interesting like as we continue studying individual DNA we start seeing that there's some individuals that have a better response than others some have side effects more than others. And I think over the next 10, 20, 30 years, that's a major breakthrough that we're going to see within cancer treatment. So that's pretty exciting. 100%. And do you mind if I touch on one thing really quick? Okay. Yeah, we can cut this out if there's not time, but a lot of questions have arisen from like young men of like, how's life now?

Type thing. Like what's working type thing. Everything is normal. And I didn't know that at first too. like losing a testicle, I was like, what's going to happen? Did you a sperm bank, by that way? I did not before the surgery. They told me I need to do that if I decided to do the chemo route, but surgery, they said, your one working testicle is going to basically work overdrive and you should have the same amount of testosterone, same libido, like everything looks normal down there. I got offered if I want to do a prosthetic, like a little fake ball to put down there.

Did you do the fake ball? I did not. Okay. No, I decided to. What was the choice? I'm curious about that. Well, that was an interesting choice too and like, kind of like something I battled with because I was like, well, I don't think it'll look too different. Like I just didn't know. But my biggest fear was that the body tends to reject foreign objects. And so I didn't want to have the anxiety of like, you know, being 30, 40, whatever. And like, be like, wait, this year is, you know, like my, is this ball going to fucking get rejected out of me? Like, what the hell? You know? Sorry I'm laughing. It's not. It's all good. Like, funny situation. but like that's to me I was just like I should just go natural and then I just kept telling myself I was like if I'm really embarrassed about if I really really care then hey in a year I can just get a surgery and get one placed in that was my thought process okay and I'm telling you like all the guys out there that are dealing with this it does not look any different down there everything works perfectly I've been able to work out I just got my testosterone tested two days ago and it's like normal ranges so everything's great and I think that's

a big misconception is like guys think their life is over as soon as like they get this diagnosis or like they just don't know what's going to happen and it's really nothing nothing changes like your other one takes over what was your first question when he said that he was going to get a taken out what did you think that could go wrong well yeah I thought one like infertility yeah and then yeah like what what is this future look for him like is that going to actually affect anything specifically testosterone and infertility, but pretty much all those questions were answered almost immediately. And what was really interesting was, I think the doctor, correct me more wrong, but the doctor

was like, yeah, if you sperm bank before the surgery, it's like not really like anything different because the cancer is pretty much already taken over that ball. Your other ball has already risen to the occasion and is working overdrive already. So that's how you know you're chilling. Like you're going to be fine afterwards. me feel like a lot better just being like being like hey man your ball has not been working for the past two months man like he like it was going to be gone it was already gone man yeah so I was like oh in that case like everything's been working pretty good down there so yeah it just like relieved that

anxiety that's a great way to takes over okay so I'm glad you had one good interaction in the medical exactly it was interesting how I think for at least a week or so you were on the I want to do the prosthetic side yeah I did think about that for a while because it was just superficial reasons again. I was just like, I just don't know if, you know, I don't know what it will look like and I don't want to be embarrassed if I'm doing, like if I'm hooking up with somebody and somebody says something. Did they show you pictures of like befores and afters? They did not. No pictures. And they didn't even, what was interesting is when I got the surgery, they didn't even like bring in the prosthetic. They were just like, did you

want one or not? And I had to just say yes or no. And I said, no. But yeah, I thought they would like, You know, like, they should. They should. They show you pictures. They should say this is what it would look like without. Exactly. And there was risks involved not only like the infection, your body rejecting it, but like, there was like horror stories I was reading of them being like the doctor placed it too high.

And now. Didn't you look up that like one and three like over time get like either an infection or their body rejects it or something? It wasn't like infection. It was like one in three people are disappointed. Oh. With the result. Yeah. whatever that may be sure yeah so you felt I'll make a decision later on if I need to exactly and

like yeah I was just like since I didn't know if it was going to look super different I was like might as well just wait till all swelling goes down and then again if a year I'm insecure about it then I'll deal with it yeah but speaking up to like the scar for example like that is up in the waistband so it's like really nothing looks different down there that's basically what I'm trying to say for peace of mind for guys dealing with this that's an important piece of mind because guys are oftentimes the worst to bring in before there's a problem or early on in a problem. They really wait for a long time before they come in. I've seen that in my practice.

Because they think about that stuff. Yes. But we want them to come in and we want to be proactive. And at the same time, I want to talk about your scanxiety that you brought up, and that's such a good term. Because sometimes people come in with the idea that we can order every test and prevent every problem. And just as I said earlier, the enemy. of good is perfect in medicine, we can't prevent every problem. I can't give definitive answers. Like for myself, I can't tell you if I'm going to have a heart attack in five minutes or that I

just have a heart attack. I can tell you clinically, it doesn't look like I'm having a heart attack. I have no symptoms of heart, but I can't say I definitely did not have one. Because in order to say definitely, I need to go in and prove it. And we're not going to do that because that carries risk. Right. So that's, part of that skin anxiety is not going to a doctor that's going to over-promise you things and say, we can check everything. If you pay us extra money, we'll guarantee you don't have cancer, we'll do these genetic tests. It doesn't exist yet. There's some things we can actually be proactive on, colonoscopies, cervical cancers for women and getting pap smears done, those things we can be proactive on. That's not the complete list, but those are the some of the

proven things. Other things have fallen out of favor because in order for the screening, the test to find out if the problem exists in someone who's not showing symptoms, that feels fine. In order for that test to be beneficial, it needs to prolong their life, decrease the risk of them dying from the cancer, improve their quality of life, and most importantly, not cause this anxiety.

Exactly, yeah. Because so many people are like, just scan my whole body, see if I have cancer. I'm like, well, I don't wanna do that because people have lumps, bumps, masses in their bodies, that mean nothing. But if I just start scanning and finding, oh, there's a one millimeter nodule.

Now I'm scanning it. it and giving you skin anxiety for the rest of your life and radiating you with radiation causing a cancer for no benefit, which is why we don't scan everybody. That's really interesting because going through this whole thing, I think from an outside perspective, outside of once he's all healed up, I think the main thing that I took away and a lot of our friends did was like, well then we should like be way more proactive about figuring things out or like doing checkups and you know to what you just said maybe that's not a perfect situation but the perfect situation is go and let the doctor guide you as to what tests you need

and you'd benefit from versus what tests you don't because there are some tests that you do not need like if a healthy person comes in and says hey check me for testicular cancer while we can do like a outpatient exam to see if there's any lumps bumps or masses I'm not going to be ordering ultrasounds on healthy patients for sure right yeah so best case scenario you know when there's something specifically wrong going that specific you know test however just make sure to get a regular test often or not regular checkup regular checkup yeah because for example for me as a primary care doctor we have institutional guidelines of things we should be checking each age group each demographic and we should say in this person they have high rates of condition x and if we scan for this condition

X, we can actually prolong their life. So we do that test. But then there's some things like if you just come in, like if you came in and you're like, hey, I want to make sure I'm cancer-free. Scan me, give me a cat scan. I would never order it for you. Okay. Because that's actually going to cause you harm with skin anxiety, with potentially

finding something that's not going to be worthwhile. And now we're scanning you over and over again, radiating your body further, maybe doing a biopsy, getting a problem from the biopsy as a side effect. And all of that because you had no symptoms. there was no benefit to doing it. So let's say someone at home right now is listening, like, wait, well, I do kind of feel something weird. I have been feeling something weird.

If you feel something weird, that is no longer screening. Okay. Because screening means you're healthy with no symptoms. So if you have a symptom, me ordering a test is now a diagnosis, a diagnostic test. So basically, if you come to me and you're like, Dr. Mike, I have a terrible pain in my right lower quadrant of my abdomen. It's terrible. I'm vomiting.

Now I'm ordering a scan because I want to diagnose you with appendicitis. Okay. But I'm not ordering that test. If you're like, hey, doc, can you just check if I have appendicitis? I want to make sure. Yeah. Well, why? I don't know.

My mom had it. Maybe I have it. I'm not scanning you. Okay. So are there tests or anything that someone should be doing, maybe not all the time, but like every couple years? Proactively. Well, like the tests I mentioned, like the colonoscopy starting age 45 for women at age 21, starting

getting their pap smears. there are tests that you have to do, not have to do, but you ought to do that have been proven to extend life and get the benefit. And then there's tests that you shouldn't do. But that's where you have to trust your doctor and have a good relationship with your doctor to understand why. And if your doctor is ever telling you, hey, you should get a pap smear, you should get a colonoscopy. You should have no fear like you advocated for yourself to ask why.

Why do I need this or why do I not need it? And if your doctor can't verbalize to you, why or why not, find another doctor. that's interesting but main thing is everyone needs a primary care doctor that's the main takeaway for everyone at home and if you have a concern about something like you had a concern down there no matter what the concern is get it checked out right because everyone says when should i go see the doctor with a problem if you're thinking about it go that's the trigger yeah like as soon as you have the thought go because it's so easy to make excuses and prolong it our minds are excellent at that at downplaying the issue but just go because again the worst case scenario is you'll get a clean

bill of health that's the worst case scenario exactly very true yeah i was going to say like don't tough it out too too long like don't think you just overcome it's not worth it it's not necessary because again if you go and it's just oh no this is nothing just a muscle sprain you know whatever good you know it's a muscle sprain now you know what a muscle sprain feels like yeah there you go there we go just gets rid of the anxiety altogether yeah totally Well, let's play some lightning round questions. Let's do it. Okay, Sam, with you first.

What's the healthiest part of your body? Oh. On me, currently? Yeah. I don't know. My stomach? I don't know what. What?

How about you? Definitely not my testicles. What do you mean? Your other testicles doing a stellar job. Oh, yeah. My right testicle. That's what I'm going to say. There you go.

That's my right. My right's good. There you go. Okay, Sam. What's one part of your body that you wish you could replace? Oh, God. my dude these are really hard

questions my ankles because they always hurt when I run okay that's a problem oh man shoot I would replace probably my my lower back sometimes

hurts when I stand up too fast lumbar spine fair that's what I should have said I broke my back and why didn't I just say you got a new back we're on the spot man

too much anxiety what's one thing that raised your blood pressure this week? This situation. Probably saying. Fair answer. Okay. So now one to ten, I'm just going to give you a list of things, and then you just say one to ten for each of them.

You could say it at the same time or take turns. From one to ten, how scared are you of ghosts? Five. Seven. Movies. Scary movies. Two. books

10 mummies mummies mommies zero zero wow aliens or UFOs six eight they're real

possession or exorcism exorcism nine ten it's gonna happen one day monsters like bigfoot yeti Godzilla one zero loneliness

10 10 10 um war slash invasion 10 10 zombies one seven whoa dude there could be zombies dude think of all the pandemics out here man like you guys watch last of us yeah dude that's what's awesome oh god no I haven't seen yeah he doesn't need this anxiety in a year to half watch the last of us okay failure zero zero wow doesn't matter Meteor Apocalypse You said Apocalypse?

Meteor It's not pretty likely Two? Okay, being canceled Eight and a half Eight and a half Financial collapse Two Four

Intimacy Scared of intimacy Yeah Three Five The unknown Oh, 10 Dark deep water

Oh, God, 10 Frikes me out That's scary Getting punched in the face Yeah, one Someone can punch me Really? I've got six Because I can really be damaging

Oh, it could Depend if they're going to hit But if you just get a smack one You're going to recover Right Bees Oh, zero You got that

Two Flick them off Snakes Five Two spiders seven zero shark seven you're just like scream in your room

and you're really scared you're that scared of spiders they're like tarantulas and like Australian spiders okay I have a cool fun fact there's almost no deadly spiders really oh I thought there was like a lot none it's just like

especially North America there's like there's never been a death never been a death in North America from a spider I don't know that. I thought brown recluses we're chopping people left and right. Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Interesting. In America, though, is what I'm saying? No, no, no. But even worldwide, it's almost unheard of. Wow. As long as, like, you get some level of medical care,

not like anti-venom, like a snake thing. But spiders don't kill people. Zero for spiders. Sharks. Zero. Four. Zero? I don't chill with sharks that often.

I just feel like I can avoid them. AI. 10. Okay. For sure. Horror video games. Oh.

Two. Nine. Nine? I scream every time we do a React video. That's true. The dark? Two. I'm not used to that.

Fair. Now, for the last portion here, you could answer as a team. I have a list of YouTubers here, and I'm curious how you would choose to scare them. Oh, that's interesting. Mark rober Oh my gosh He would be hard to scare Because I feel like he's like you

Evidence-based I wouldn't Mark rober We'd dangle him off the side of a Roller coaster Yeah we'll do that to Mark Mr. Beast Oh

Send him in the conjuring house alone Conjuring house alone And he just has to watch Like a thousand hours worth of something Like he used to do In the golden days Oh, that would be painful. Dude perfect.

Scaring dude perfect. Haunted golf course? I don't know. Like what? That's so hard. Send them in the world's largest maze. Oh. Okay.

All right. That would be overwhelming. That's good. Yeah, okay. Casey Nicestat. Oh, my God. Scaring that guy, it would be fair. Putting him in a.

bike lane and blocking it off. Telling him we can't run again. Oh, there we go. Yeah, does it have to be paranormal? No. Oh, what? What? What were you thinking? That's what I was saying in the roller coaster. I was like, how do I think dude perfect? Like, huh? Dang.

Air rack. Oh. We just scream at him constantly. For like eight hours straight. Why is that? So, dude, that would scare anybody. I'd be like if you just screamed to someone for that long. The try guys.

make each one of them go alone in a different haunted house and they have a walkie-talkie only pitch darkness pitch black night vision cameras Logan Paul Bring them to a forest Oh Just kidding Just kidding

Too soon Wow I didn't expect that I didn't really have Especially because the next one is Ryan's toy review. Oh my God. Dangle him over a roller coaster.

Oh, my God. He's probably scared of everything at this point. Ryan Trahan. Oh, my gosh. Oh, man. Probably just take him to a haunted place because he's just, he just, his vocally told us before in person, he just does not mess with ghosts.

He doesn't want that at all. Too scared. And I guess for me, you'd take me into a haunted medical institution. Oh, ban on hospital. Bay in a hospital. I would be so scared. No, I would probably, like,

if we. we do it, I have to wear a heart rate monitor the whole time, so you'll see that I'm not faking anything. So in real time, you'll see my pulse skyrocket. Yeah. If you're down, we'd know a million hospitals. That's a really interesting idea. We should do that too, like have heart rate monitors. Just get hooked up, yeah. You don't even need something crazy, just like the ones that go across your chest, like the polar heart rate monitor is, boom. That's actually such a good idea. Because we're like internally freaking out sometimes. And it's hard to show, yeah. Because that's something that we do when we think a patient is malingering.

It's, we feel like they're faking pain. There are some signs that we use that the body actually shows that someone is truly in pain and pulse is one of them. Okay. So if you want to prove to people that this is real and you're really scared, your pulse ain't going to lie. Oh, interesting. New idea.

Yeah, we should try that. Can I be there for the free? Let's go. New tactic. Cool. I usually ask a final question, but this time I'm, I'm only going to ask it to you, Sam, because I feel like I know your answer. Have you ever almost died?

Have I almost? Oh, yes. We almost died scuba diving 100 feet below when we ran out of oxygen. So we tried to get advanced scuba dive certified in five days, which is pretty much as fast as you human can legally. And we ran multiple people in our group ran out of oxygen 100 feet down. and we did not do any of the safety passes of going up as you're supposed to go. Oh, my God. Even some people in our group got the bends.

No way. It was rough. Wow, that's so scary. Yeah, definitely one of those that sent us into some anxiety-ridden things. Never been scuba diving again after that. Yeah, that was the last time. No wonder you said dark deep water was that. Yeah, exactly.

Now it all makes that real trauma there. Well, I'm happy neither of you have passed and that you're here to share this story. I think you're going to do a lot of good for the world. I appreciate your honesty, your transparency, because not an easy topic to talk about. So thank you for coming on and sharing your experience. And obviously for being a caregiver and supporter for your friend. Get through it, man.

We're going to get through it.