The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – One Life To Live: My Journey Through Health, Healing, And Faith -Surviving Stage 4 Cancer by Barton H Dunn

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

One Life To Live: My Journey Through Health, Healing, And Faith -Surviving Stage 4 Cancer by Barton H Dunn https://www.amazon.com/One-Life-Live-Journey-Surviving/dp/B0F1JYZV75 What would you do if you were told you had only months to live? In One Life to Live, Barton H. Dunn shares his extraordinary true story of faith, resilience, and the power of miracles. What started as a simple doctor’s visit quickly turned into a life-changing diagnosis – Stage 4 A.L.L. Leukemia. Facing impossible odds, Bart embarked on a grueling journey through chemotherapy, radiation, and ultimately a life-saving bone marrow transplant from his identical twin brother. This inspiring memoir not only chronicles his battle with cancer but also highlights the profound spiritual encounters that shaped his healing process. Through each hardship – from the devastation of his diagnosis to the miraculous moments of divine intervention – Bart’s unwavering faith carried him forward. Part personal reflection, part spiritual testimony, this book is a beacon of hope for anyone facing life’s toughest battles. Whether you’re fighting illness, walking alongside a loved one, or simply seeking inspiration in times of adversity, One Life to Live will uplift your spirit and remind you that miracles still happen. Join Bart on his journey through health, healing, and faith – a testament to the incredible strength found in hope, prayer, and the unwavering belief that God is always listening.

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Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hey folks, Voss, here from thecris Fosho.com. Ladies, I'm going to the show. Welcome to the big show, as always, for 16 years, 20, 100 episodes. We're bringing the Chris Vos show. And we need to just to refer your family, friends, and relatives to it.

Go to Goodrease.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, YouTube.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, and all those crazy places in the net. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we're an amazing young man and an author on the book and his friend who helped edit it. We're going to get into it with them and talk about their books and all that good stuff.

The book is entitled, One Life to Live, My Journey Through Health, Healing, and Faith, Surviving Stage 4 Cancer out March 7, 2025 by Barton H. Dunn. And we also have his editor friend who's come on with them, Dennis, can tile welcome the show gentlemen how are you good great awesome sauce so give us your dot coms where can people find out more about you guys and what you guys are up to on the interwebs actually you could just do www.bartenh dunn.com and my website will pull up okay and did you have a plug too i'm going to be doing t-shirts for motorcyclists which is going to be called Marlboro County Choppers. Oh, Marlboro County Choppers.

Some Cowboys on bikes. Cowboys on bikes, because, you know, those horses, you know, they've been riding those forever, and it's getting little stale. You've got to upgrade your horsepower. That's what. Kind of like Bon Jovi songs. Yeah, yeah, all those Bon Jovi tunes. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your book?

My book basically talks about, when I was diagnosed with leukemia and the shock that I had when that happened and then going to the hospital and getting months of chemotherapy and then going to Emery and having 10 treatments of full body radiation. Oh, wow. And then having a bone marrow transplant from my identical twin brother, Steve Dunn. Oh, wow. Bone marrow transplant.

It's good that you had a twin brother there. Yes. Yeah. What are your thoughts on it there, Dennis? I've been... Oh, you've described the book. Oh, yes. I've been Bart's caregiver for over 30 years now.

I met him two years out from his boneworm transplant. It's been a long journey, kind of a roller coaster, right, if you want to say. Now, what was the proponent for writing the book? I imagine the cancer is this, would you call this like a memoir? What would you call it? It would be more of a memoir. of my life, some highlights going up to the point of being diagnosed and in the book having many miracles. And I felt needed to share my testimony by writing a book so more people can

be blessed by it. And that's good, sharing those journeys. So tell us what was it like when you were, you know, cruised along in life and then you got, you know, cancer came upon you. I was at a trade show with my twin brother in St. Louis for a couple of days. and when we got back, I was North Carolina. I felt like I had the flu. And so I went to my regular doctor and I told him what happened. He did some blood work.

And his comment to me was, your whitesail count is extremely high. Come back tomorrow morning and bring somebody with you. And when I heard that, it didn't sound too good. Yeah. especially when they want you to come back the next day. Usually they tell me to come back in a year. And when I went back to the doctor, he told me I had A-L-L-L-leukemia stage four.

And I said, how do you get leukemia and how bad? How high is my white show count? He told me it's 300,000 and you should be dead. Wow. I was really shocked. You should be dead. I think that's the biggest fear I have is, I'll walk into the hospital one day or the doctor,

and they'll be like, you got about five minutes to get your fares in order. Really? That's exactly how I felt. Yeah, yeah. So it probably was like a freight train, maybe impactful. Yes. Yeah.

So what did you do then? What were, what are some of the steps you took and helped you get down the road of survival? I remember the doctor said, you need to contact your parents. I was so shaken up. I kind of froze. So I said, I think you need to call my mom and let her know what happened.

And so he spoke to the doctor. And the next thing was I had to go by ambulance from Monroe, North Carolina, to Presbyterian Hospital downtown Charlotte. Mm-hmm. And then started chemotherapy. And that lasted for several months. Several months in therapy. So after several months of therapy, did you end up healed?

No. Actually, the doctors had never seen somebody with such a high white sale count, so they didn't have a protocol for me. They knew that if they wanted to get me in remission, and then they gave me chemotherapy, every day for almost four months, almost to the point of dying from so much chemotherapy. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, that's not going to be fun.

What was it that helped get you through all that? What was the thing that you found? What are some resources that you're utilizing to navigate this? And keep your head positive and above water? I've always been a person who has a great faith in belief in God, and that helped and a lot of praying and of course having my family there and that helped quite a bit

I had my family come visit me at the hospital every day so I knew that I wasn't alone as far as family-wise your faith I mean what were some aspects of that you got to give me some deeper reasoning if you can I mean like how how and what's the type of faith and how did that

how did that enhance what you're trying to do. I've always had faith in God, trusting God. I read a lot of scripture, and I knew that with God, all things are possible. I wasn't going to let what happened to me defeat me, so I just kept praying every day without ceasing. What was it that gave you that gumption? Why did you want to fight to stay alive? Was there a reasoning or purpose you had in your life? I knew that at a very young age, was special. And I said, at five years old, I remember praying to God and saying, please watch over me. And whatever comes my way, good or bad, I know that you're going to watch over me and protect me. Hmm. Yeah. And now, was there anybody like family that you were

worried about seeing and, you know, that we're going to help you and take care of you? Or what sort of the condition where you're on there? I was able to see all my three brothers and my mom and dad and friends that would come by the hospital. So all that was very uplifting and very positive to keep a positive attitude. Yeah, very positive attitude. As you ended the book, Dennis, what were some of your thoughts of what you saw in there and his journey? There was a lot of things that transpired between him going from North Carolina hospitals with a radiation, the chemo.

And then going to Atlanta to Emory for the radiation process. And at the time, you have to realize back then, this is in, what was it, 19, 1993. A lot of people at that time, when you were diagnosed with leukemia, it was like a death sentence. Yeah. And a lot of people did not survive it back then. Now they've got more meds and they can catch things earlier so that you, a lot of times you can just take pills for some things. unless it's extreme enough to do a bone marrow transplant.

And at the time when Bart was there, he was going to tell you this, but he didn't. When he went to Emery, at that time, he was number 535 person to go through the radiation and the bone marrow transplant. Wow. Year to date, now they've done 35, or 350. 3,000. I'm sorry. Yeah, 3,550 of bone marrow transplants. So he was in the early stages even for Emery to do the bone marrow transplants back then.

Wow. I'm glad they're developing these things and hopefully we're still investing in science. It's been a weird year in 2006. But science is the key to these things. I mean, understanding how the body works and it was great that you had a donor that had your match and stuff like that. So once you, once you had the donor care, was that the key to kicking it? That was the main thing, having the perfect match. But even with the perfect match, I did have some issues, all the radiation.

Yeah. I had 10 treatments, full body radiation. And they gave me the max of chemo because they didn't really have a protocol. So I was in intensive care for 10 days. and during that time my skin color looked like the color of a Coca-Cola can

and I had put white cream on my body so my skin wouldn't come off oh geez I mean it was just horrible wow and then my body temperature

was 105 and higher and on the 10th day my your own a cool mattress oh the other thing I was on a cooling mattress that was at 40 degrees.

Oh, wow. And so you're going to imagine shaking at 40 degrees and burning up at 105 plus. And I just prayed that, Lord, I can't tolerate this anymore. You're going to either have to take me home or heal me. And so when my body temperature got up to 106.9, I remember seeing a vision in the right-hand corner of the intensive care room. And I was so close to death. And I remember seeing God on the throne, Jesus on the right hand side of God, and God

was praying over me. And within two hours after God prayed over me in this vision, I remember that my body temperature went down to 99, and I literally walked out of intensive care. And the doctors had never, ever experienced somebody who had a, I guess, a miraculous recovery. When you walked out of the room, people were clapping and cheering and crying. And I walked by the room and I said, I had to clear the room. I said, I want everything back in my room right now. because after going through all the radiation,

then I had to prepare for having the bone marrow transplant. Oh, God. So the first miracle was surviving all the chemotherapy. The second miracle was surviving all the radiation. And then I was ready to have the next miracle with surviving the bone marrow transplant. And you have to realize, too, because leukemia is cancer of the blood. A lot of people realize that. So it's in your entire body everywhere.

That's why you had to do a full body radiation. Yeah. So normally if you have breast cancer, brain cancer, kidney cancer, they zoom the radiation on that spot, not your entire body. Yeah. So it takes a lot out of you to do that, but your entire body. Oh, yeah. I mean, that radiation treatment, it kills a lot of good cells too.

It's right. Yeah, it's not fun. But, you know, I mean, what's the last? alternative, right? The, you know, my, my dog had leukemia and I spent, I think it was like $3,500 in test because we were trying to find what we knew was some type of cancer, leukemia or, or cancer that you can look at. And after about $3,500 of exploratory, you know, scrap, we couldn't find it. They wanted to do another $3,000 to spend more time looking for it. I was like, what's the odds? It's just leukemia because it's really weird. We can't find it. You know, I've had other dogs that have had cancer and polyps and, you know, stuff that you can either visually see underneath the skin or outside the skin. And so, yeah, it was leukemia. And we weren't going to find it because, like you say, it's in the blood and it's in the system. And it's just a matter of time.

Sometimes with, you know, with dogs, you can't spend millions of dollars to fix them. I mean, I suppose you can if you want. But, you know, what's the reason to reach a certain age? you're just beating up on, you're just making their life miserable on top of everything else. I think, I don't know. Did you know that white cats are very susceptible to getting leukemia? Why is that?

I have no idea. Same way with their vision. They may have a blue eye and a green eye or a blue and a brown. That's wild, man. We have an old cat that got leukemia and we ended up having to put her sleep. That's unfortunate, man. It's cancer. or whatever version it is, it's just ugly.

That's an awful thing. So you survive. What made you want to write the book and tell your story? What was the proponent behind that? When I was speaking, I spoke with God several different times. And one of the times when he came to visit me about two years out, and I was at my house, God came to me in the spirit. And we had a conversation.

And I said, Lord, what is your will for my life? And he said, I want you to share your testimony every day for the rest of your life. And that's what I've been doing. And then he said, you need to get your word out to the world. And I figured the only way to do that is to write a book. It is really one of the best ways to get your word out. and you end up touching and inspiring so many people that you, a lot of times never meet. You know, sometimes you might meet them out of book signing or they'll write you and say,

hey, this changed my life. Thank you and stuff like that. And that's really wonderful. But, you know, sometimes I'll have 10 years ago by, 15 years ago by, and somebody will come up to me. You'd be like, hey, something you said on Twitter, changed my life or whatever it may be. And I'm like, wow, okay, that's freaking awesome. And you just never know sometimes until, you know, that moment occurs. But the fact that you can inspire people and reach so many people with a book.

And, of course, coming on podcasts like ours and telling the story, you know, it makes all the difference. And, you know, there's always that one person who's out there who needs that message. And I remember I was getting frustrated with my book at the end with the editing and just the monotony of it and slamming out text. And I was like, you know, I don't know if anybody's going to read this book. Is this the biggest waste of my time? You know, I was reaching that point where you're, where you're Jack Nicholson and The Shining typing, all work and no play, makes Jack a old boy. I'm like, I swear to God, that's all I'm writing anymore.

I can't even feel my legs. And the, and we were doing that scramble and editing where the editor's like throwing away everything you write and you have to rewrite it again. They're just like, yeah, we took those 500 pages and tossed them in the trash. Just redo them, book boy. And, you know, that sort of thing. And so I was just, I was just losing it, man. and my friends who were authors, they took me aside and they go, hey, man.

Okay, number one, the fact you're losing it means you're almost there. You just got to push through. They go, you're done. You just got to finish and you're going to be okay. But, you know, the pain's peaking, but this is the sign that you're near the end. It's almost done. So don't give up now. This is the worst time to give up.

The other thing someone told me is they said, you know, you never know who, there's somebody out there. This is what someone told me. They go, Chris, you have to finish this book. There's somebody out there that needs your message, and the only person they're going to get it from is you, and they're out there waiting. And your job is to get them this book. And you may never meet them.

You may never know who you touched or whose life you changed, but they need this. And that's what I went. Okay, let's finish this. One of the interesting things about when I meet people, it's almost like a divine intervention, because when I meet people, I tell them my story and they say, I need to hear that because I've been just diagnosed or I'm a cancer survivor. It's amazing how many people that are out there that actually needs a little bit of encouragement and hope and just want to hear that someone has survived it.

Yeah. And that's what hope is about. Hope is rings eternal in humanity and our nature, you know, finding hope. having hope. I mean, without it, we probably wouldn't survive as a species because we just give up and quit, of course. And so that hope is, go ahead, Dennis. They say if you give up hope a lot of times that it's over. Yeah. You know, you really need to have hope and keep going forward to make it through a lot of these things. I remember, it reminds me of a story about the Holocaust. They did a study of

the people who survived the Holocaust and the people who didn't. And it wasn't, you know, an ultimatum of these people did this, these people did that. I mean, obviously there was, you know, there's, you know, exceptions to the rule. But they found overwhelmingly that the people who didn't give up hope, who believed that they would be saved, who tried to find ways to escape or try to find ways to survive, or, you know, even tried to find ways of getting out of the gas chamber when they get rounded up and disappear, you know, or go hide or something. And those are the people that largely survived the Holocaust in the camps.

And they've just found that the people who had given up and kind of reconciled themselves to what they believe was the inevitable end, those are the people who didn't do so well. And yeah, hope is the big thing. It drives us, it keeps us alive. It makes life worth fighting for. I think it makes all the difference, really. Now you've had the book out for a year. Is there any further books or anything else you're working on maybe that you want to get out? I haven't thought about a second book yet, but I may decide to do that.

I also wanted to let the audience know that you have to, miracles happen for people who believe. That's why you need the hope and inspiration so you can believe in miracles. And God is able to do all things, and God told me that he's, that he's real, he still performs miracles. I'm certainly one of them that people should realize that God is still there and he still performs miracles even today. So as we go out,

give people final pitch out to pick up the book, tell them where they can find it and give us your dot-coms and all that good stuff. Okay, they can go to just my name, Barton, H. Dunn. It'll pull them to my website. Dot com. You can order it for,

from Amazon or the website or the website and I have a paperback book and a hardcover book and there is on white paper larger print so everybody can have an easy read there's lots of pictures and it truly is a book showing miracles that I had and actually a little more detail on what I went through you don't want to get the whole book away yeah you got to buy the book to find out all the good stuff that's right it's starts out with him being five years old into the driveway. And him and his twin brother took a wild bus ride at the age of, what was it, four. Four years old, the two of them went on an adventure on a bus in the city of Charlotte.

Can you imagine what they would do with that today? Four years old, yeah. That mom will be in some serious trouble for that. Yeah, mom was taking a nap and they were speakers and went out the side door and decided to be adventurous. That's what you did in my generation, too. Yeah. Well, there's things like that in the book, too, that man. make it fun to read just besides.

Absolutely. We didn't want to get too involved or it went over people's heads. Yeah. We wanted to understand what it was, what it's about, and how we got through it. And I didn't want to make it too medical because I didn't want people to

scare people in case they have to do with leukemia or any other cancer. But then again, like we said, leukemia back then was a death sentence worked. Nowadays, it's not, it's still bad, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. Yeah.

And I'm glad you got, you've survived that, man. It's such a horrible disease, and it's just the suffering and stuff that goes on behind it is things. But that's why we do the show. People come share their stories, their journeys, their lessons of life, how they survive cathartic moments. And they share those survival blueprints with other people, and you share hope, you know. So that's the big deliverer of passing it down to the pike and passing hope on to others so that more people can possibly live from some of these, horrific diseases. That's right. I told God that I told people that God put me in Bards slight to kick him in the butt and keep him moving. When I first met, he was a pretty

rough shape. Oh yeah. You certainly would be. And I wanted to mention that in the book, it also talks about how I met Don Dennis. And that was also God's intervention. Intervention to meet me. All right. Thank you gentlemen for coming in the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for honest for tuning in. Order up his book, wherever fine books are sold. Makes a wonderful gift to a loved one. One life to live my journey through health, healing, and faith, surviving stage four cancer out March 7th, 2025 by Barton H. Dunn. Thanks for honest for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning,

consume too much of the Chris Walshow podcast. Can lead to people thinking you're smarter. Younger and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed.