- Hey, humans.
How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey Human Podcast.
- This - Is episode 3 96, and my guest is Caner Sherman.
Caner was 43 when she was diagnosed
with stage two rectal cancer.
After holistic options failed.
And in advanced to stage three, she opted
for more traditional methods,
but no one told her about the toll that would take on her,
specifically on her sexual organs.
And she wrote a book about her experience called Healing the
Deepest Wounds, where she talks about the physical
and emotional toil that chemotherapy
and radiation caused her.
And I mean so many others.
It's something that I think we all know that the treatments
for cancer, basically, in a lot of cases,
bring you within an inch of your life.
It's, they, they practically kill you to save you,
and the aftermath of
that on the body is just severe emotionally, physically.
So she's, she's really open about it.
In this conversation, we talk about
everything she went through.
And just as a trigger warning,
there are some explicit conversations in here,
and be aware of that if that is something that might
trigger you or, or something you might not wanna listen to.
She has had all sorts of interesting career paths.
Uh, most notably now she's a life coach, a hospice
spiritual care provider, and a patient advocate,
and she tours around and talks about her experience
and helps others through their experiences.
Check out, hey, human podcast.com for links.
And to learn more about my guests in the show,
check out Susan ruth.com.
To learn more about me and my other artistic endeavors,
follow Susan Ruth and hey, human podcast on social media,
and find my music on Spotify, apple music, Amazon music,
wherever you get your music rate.
Review and subscribe to, Hey, human podcast on iTunes
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you for listening. Be well, be kind, be love.
My gosh, we need it desperately in the world.
I feel like every time I turn on the news,
another horrific thing is going on in the world.
I'm trying to take in as much good news as humanly possible,
as a way to combat all the sadness and,
and horribleness out there.
There's more good. I promise there is.
We have to look for it. Take care of yourself. Be well.
Here we go. Nart Sherman,
welcome to Hey, human.
- Thank you so much for having me.
- It's nice to see you. - Yeah, you too.
- Shout out to cousin Michael. - Totally. Hey, Mike.
- Let's go back to the beginning of you.
Where were you raised up? What was family life like?
What shaped you?
- So I was born in Israel.
My parents divorced when I was four.
And so there was some, a turmoil around
normal divorces and children.
And, uh, I lived with my mom for a while, then moved
to my dad's, then we came to the United States
Middle School here, high school, college.
Went back to Israel for six years, did my master's there,
and then I came back to the United States.
- And was your master's in mathematics?
- No. My master's is, is in the life sciences
and my first degree is in biochemistry.
- What drew you to that? - Um,
I thought about maybe working in medicine,
maybe being a physician.
I wasn't sure. It just happened to be
that I was good in math and science.
I got the high school math award
and the high school science award and other awards,
and it was just like the path kind of rolled that way.
- What do you remember about your childhood in Israel?
I think a lot of people don't really
know what it's like there. What do you recall?
- It's very, uh, communal, kind of very social.
It's not like in the United States
that people live in separate houses.
They live in apartments. People own their apartments.
And so it's easy. Just go downstairs
and go visit the neighbor's kids.
There's a lot of kids. A lot of neighbors.
And it was fun to go
after school to visit, you know,
from one person to the next.
Just a normal childhood living in the suburbs
of Tel Aviv in a town called Raman.
- Only child. - No, I have an older brother.
And, uh, too much younger.
- The fact that your parents divorced so young did,
when you were so young, did you end up
with six stepparents?
Anything like that that shaped any part of your life?
- Oh, yes, definitely. Definitely.
It, I think it all shaped me. It all shaped me. Yeah. Yeah.
My father has been married several times,
and my mom remarried.
Definitely. Every stepparent had some kind of an influence.
- When you went back to Israel for six years,
what brought you then back to the States again?
- I went back to Israel for a million reasons.
I ended up doing my master's there, my first one.
But I went there, uh, also to get close
with my mom
and her family to see what it was like
to live in Israel as an adult.
At the time. There was, um, some peace accords,
uh, between, that were being signed
between robbing and Arafat.
That brought a lot of hope for me.
So I think a lot of reasons together.
I lived there for about five and a half years.
Family situation.
There was more challenging for me, family life here.
People were very warm and accepting.
And I think with the family in Israel at the time,
it was, it was challenging.
And then my brother, who was here, called me,
he would call me on the phone and say, Hey, I miss you.
I want you to come and live here. I miss you. I miss you.
I miss you. You should come live here, .
And finally, I did. I came over. I came back.
- Sounds like you've had quite a lot
of changes in your life.
Uh, I wrote it down, uh, math teacher,
spiritual psychology, time, massage, chaplain.
It's a lot of different lifetimes.
- Yeah. So I, you know, I think in, in,
I've always had an artistic side
and I've always had a science mathematical kind of side
and a humanistic kind of side,
all playing together, um, really nicely.
And, uh, because I was good at math
and science, you know, I, I really wasn't sure, shall I do
that or shall I go to the performing arts?
And my dad had a lot
of influence on me going into the math and science.
So I did. But I could see it wasn't my
passion, but I wasn't sure.
Research wasn't my passion. So I, I wasn't sure what was.
And so then I, I worked as a teacher for a while, adults,
uh, children.
And when I was in middle school, teaching middle school,
once there was, um, I had to meet at the,
at the eighth grade math teacher's classroom,
I mean English teacher's classroom.
And when I went there, she had a sign on the wall
and said, you are the author of your own life story.
And I couldn't take my eyes off of it, Susan. I couldn't.
There was just, something was fucking my whole presence
into this one sign.
You're the author of your own life story.
And I was 30 years old, and I thought, oh yeah.
Oh yeah, wow. I write my life story.
How's my story right now? And I thought, wow.
I'd be so bored if I were reading my story,
I'd be super bored.
And I was like, oh, no, I gotta change.
And I, and I didn't know what, the only thing I knew was
that I had traveled between the ages of 22 to 30.
I would just go somewhere with a backpack by myself
and travel for two, three months.
And I said, okay, you're going to go and travel
and you're going to come back when you're ready
to come back, because the other travels.
I was never ready to come back.
And so I went, I took a leave of absence for a year.
I went to the Far East.
And then when I was there,
probably my third month in, I was in Thailand.
And people told me to meditate.
And a friend of mine sent me off
to my travels with a book.
And it, the book said
that if many people tell you the same thing,
you sh it's the universe's way of telling you
, you need to do it.
I was not interested in meditation whatsoever. Zero.
I had zero, zero.
And no matter who talked to me, I said, I'm not interested.
I, you know, my brainwashed, my brain is already washed.
I don't need to wash it again with more
ideas and more concepts.
But truth is that I was fascinated.
Went to a 10 day silent meditation retreat,
and I was fascinated and mind opened up
and I thought, wow, this is incredible.
And then I stayed five more days
because I was so fascinated that I asked one
of the participants there to show me what she does,
because she really, I could see 10 days I watched her.
She knew she knew how to meditate,
and I was still fidgeting.
My mind couldn't do it. I Maria, well, you teach me.
And she did. She taught me what to do.
I sat with her three times a day and I did.
I just watched my belly move.
And once I could only focus on that, she said,
when a thought comes through your mind, just,
just notice it, give it a name, and then leave it.
Go back to just noticing the Brits.
So the focus was so much on the movement of
my abdomen only.
I just wouldn't let it my mind be distracted. Right.
And then the thoughts started coming
and I started naming them, planning, analyzing,
fantasizing, futurizing.
It was just wow, wow, wow.
First time in my life I could see what was running
through this mind.
And it was so fascinating.
I was like, oh, that was a fun game to play.
And then I was like, wow, I'm playing the game of me.
It's all about me. Oh, my ego really love that one.
It's me, it's my show. So fun. I loved it so much.
It was so much more interesting than watching television,
but it was like watching television, like, oh,
these are the stories that are happening.
That's what's happening in this screen.
And then as I watched it more and more,
'cause I was so fascinated, there became gaps.
They just came out of the blue
because the thoughts started calming slower and slower.
So I was watching them and there was gaps.
And the gaps were so lovely.
And it took me a while to notice.
And I then I thought, wow, this is even
nicer than the thoughts.
Wow, wow, wow.
Like swimming and quiet.
And I felt so good.
So I just kept doing it. And it was so fun.
I could sit there and watch one thought, sit
and watch thoughts begin to form.
Not even when they were forming.
There's energy coming on my right and one on my left.
And if I watched them, they wouldn't fuse into a thought.
They'd just go out of the field.
And it was all about being present, completely,
completely focused.
And then on the 15th day, so the five days after,
after the first the attend day meditation
or I, I woke up in the morning and I sat in the forest,
and then, um,
I waited for thoughts.
And then just the whole construct
of canary left.
There was no canary, just the whole ego, all the thoughts,
all the feelings, all the memories,
all concepts disappeared.
They just went. And there was
no er, she didn't exist.
It's fake. There was an energy
inside some kind of a light that was so loving
and so powerful.
And it was the clearest of the clearest
that that was truth.
And the personality was an illusion.
And that all of life is an illusion
of the senses of perception.
That for 30 years, I had no clue there was,
there's actually no, I, I don't exist.
That was a huge realization.
And that home was inside.
It was not outside, not in anything or anyone.
It's that light that's beyond
anything that I can see in the physical.
And that energy had no religion
or that energy light, I'm gonna call it.
And it also didn't have a gender,
and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced.
And so that changed the trajectory of my life
because I had no context.
So I started going to spiritual centers in
Thailand and, and India.
And what just happened? , what was that?
The ego came back.
The ego came back, and it, there it was same thing as
before, dealing with the exact same issues, afraid,
scared, doubtful, , righteous,
judgmental, on and on and on and on.
And I thought, wow, wow. What do I do with that?
There's this spiritual, and then there's what the ego does,
and how do I live like that?
Yeah. So then, you know, I wasn't interested anymore in
teaching in, I wasn't,
the only thing I was interested was going
to meditation centers and meditating
and learning more about the spiritual life.
So that's how, you know, things changed.
I went from science teaching to
spiritual understandings and learning more about that.
What is that? Yeah.
- How does a soul, for lack of a better word
or energy, exist in a world
that requires food and water and shelter
and healthcare and all of that.
How do you find the intersection that allows for you to be
of spirit,
but also know that the shell casing the spirit's been shoved
into has to be cared for without being, I mean,
how does one be in it and not be of it?
- Well, somehow we find ourselves in this,
in this body suit, right?
somehow.
And so we, we get to choose, we get to choose
how we wanna care for this expression of life through us.
And do we wanna, how much we want to play
and what we want to play in the world of form.
As long as we keep it as play, of course we forget.
We forget that it's play.
- Absolutely. So that what drew you into then
the spiritual psychology degree?
Explain what that is, first of all. Yeah,
- Yeah.
So, you know, after I came back, it was clear to me
that I couldn't just be a regular teacher
and that I needed to find a vocation
that would be better suited
for my new understanding of life.
And so I was looking around
and I found the University of Santa Monica
and I enrolled in spiritual psychology program,
which was a master's program.
And it's about the understanding that we are, you know,
there's a spirit having a human experience.
And again, how do we reconcile the two?
How do we draw on the spiritual side
and yet still address our human side, which judges
and blames and has big feelings
and tantrums all over the place,
and how do we reconcile the two?
And so it did call upon, you know, speaking
with our higher self or our soul self, uh, for guidance.
There's a lot of metaphysical learning there too, about
how do we focus, where does our mind focus as far as
what we're creating in the
- World?
Did you have an idea of where you wanted to take
that degree, or was it more about being in the learning
and see what happens next?
- It was being in the learning and seeing what happens next.
- Mm-Hmm. . - Yeah.
- So what happens next? - Well,
I still didn't know what to do.
I, I did study a Thai massage when I was in Thailand,
so I said, well, why don't I do massage?
I couldn't, I couldn't, uh, work in a regular job.
So I babysat family were all freaked out
because I wasn't normal.
And they were very concerned
that I wouldn't have money to pay for life.
So they started sending me people to babysit.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere,
people were calling me to babysit.
And I was like, who are you? ?
Well, your uncles gave me your number, my uncle gave you.
Oh, right. You know, nice Jewish family.
Nobody asks, they just send people to call you.
I started to babysit and I started doing time massage,
and I started pet sitting.
And that's how I lived for about eight years.
And about a year
after I finished the,
the spiritual psychology program, I was doing massage.
And a woman came in
and she was, um, wow.
She came in and it was like the dark, I don't know what kind
of dark spirit she was in.
And I was like, wow, whoa.
That was like some darkness around this lady.
And I said, Hey, what's going ons?
Even though I was doing massage, I, I couldn't,
I couldn't let her,
I couldn't let her be the slow, it bothered me.
So I said, Hey, what's going on?
You know, I sat and I talked with her a little bit.
I, you know, reflected back kind of what I heard.
And, and then I said, you know, I see life
and I see what you said in a totally different way,
you know, would you like to hear?
And she did. And then she had such a transformation.
She was like a different person.
She had light, she had a smile.
I was like, wow, that, that was amazing.
She came back like two weeks later
and she said, I don't know what you did,
but I was on a high, like for a whole week.
And then slowly started coming down and I became me again.
Yeah. And so then I started working with people
- Doing energy work or time massage or both together,
- Like talking to them and doing massage
- Both.
Yeah. And then 2015 happens.
- Yes, 2015 happened
and I, uh, started feeling odd.
And then there was, there was like blood,
like a blood clump smeared on the stool.
And I went to the doctor
and I was diagnosed with rectal cancer
- At age 43 ish.
- Yes. 43. mm-Hmm.
- . Yeah. And was that, did you have
that in your family history? Was it shocking?
- Yeah, it was shocking. Yes.
My parents don't have cancer and didn't,
and only one grandparent had cancer,
and that was when she was 68.
So here I was at 43,
and yeah, this came outta left field completely.
- And did they have any indication at the time as to
what might have brought it on,
and did you have any symptoms other
than seeing blood in the stool? So
- Blood in the stool was the first thing.
A little bit after that.
There was like something in the pelvis,
something in the pelvis wasn't right,
and I could feel something odd.
And I didn't know if it was the female organs.
Something was odd.
And then I started feeling a sucking sensation again
inside my pelvis as if something was sucking my blood
or the, my body's blood onto itself.
I could feel it. And I,
and I didn't know, I knew it was in the pelvis,
and I remember telling people that,
but I was like, that is such a weird sensation.
So, so weird. And then hemorrhoids.
So hemorrhoids are also quite normal
for people with rectal cancer.
Often patients go to their primary physician
and they say, oh, I'm seeing some blood on the stool.
And then the physician looks
and says, oh, you have hemorrhoids.
Go home and take a hemorrhoid cream.
And that's what happened to me also, except
that I knew it wasn't the hemorrhoids,
because I'm, I didn't have hemorrhoids usually, like
what was causing the hemorrhoids, you know?
So I was, I was nice and I took the, the hemorrhoid.
I didn't take the hemorrhoid cream.
I, I just went back a week
later and said, something's not right.
I'm feeling a whole lot of things here.
Please do more testing.
And then they did more testing
and everything came back normal.
And I, and I, and then my roommate said, you know,
do you wanna have a colonoscopy?
And I said, I do. And I, I went back to the doctor again
and I said, I want to have a colonoscopy.
I'm actually not gonna leave this office until you tell me
that you, you're putting a referral to a gastroenterologist.
And I hear this so many times from so many patients.
Oh, I went, they told me it was a hemorrhoid.
So I went home, I went, they did some testing,
they said everything was okay, and I went home.
And then I, and then they wait six months, a year,
18 months, and then diagnosed with stage four.
- Right? I mean, we have to be advocates for ourselves
because we are in our bodies and nobody else is.
And doctors may see things on a nonstop basis,
and they, they're not us.
They're not in our bodies.
It's so, so important to, I mean, they work for us.
Let's be clear that we have to demand
tests when we feel like we need to get them.
- Yes, absolutely. Women - Especially.
- Yes, absolutely.
- And people of color, people of color as well.
People tend to be ignored.
- Yeah. Yeah. But yes, we are the ones living in our bodies.
And so it's, it's our job to advocate.
It's our job to go
and say, okay, you didn't hear me the first time.
Let me say it in a way. You can hear me.
How can you, what, what is,
what is it gonna take for you to hear me? Did
- They push back with you?
- Yeah, because when, when a person is under the,
the normal age of whatever they decide the testing is.
Yeah. Yeah.
So like I said, I had to return three times before,
before I was referred to a gastroenterologist.
And the first time I spoke with a gastroenterologist
and I was describing my sis my symptoms on the phone,
they said, oh, honey, you gotta come in
and you gotta come in like fast.
They knew already. So how shocking, you know, between,
you know, the primary care physician
and the specialist who knew exactly what I was dealing with,
bef, you know, they probably didn't
even need the colonoscopy
- Level of care with specialists is hopefully they listen a
little bit more clearly.
So you are diagnosed with stage two rectal cancer.
- Yes. - You're diagnosed stage two,
and what happens next?
They say, here are your options.
We're gonna give you chemo or radiation.
And you didn't take to those options very well.
- Yeah, I was actually quite shocked, you know,
at, at the treatments.
Um, it was going to be radiation
and chemo followed by a surgery
and having an, an ileostomy
and then an, and then more chemo. And another surgery.
- Explain what an ileostomy is.
- An ileostomy is an opening in the abdomen
where the end of the small intestine is called.
The ileum is pulled out outside of the body
and then cut, and then then feces
or digested food goes outside of
the abdomen into a pouch.
And that's instead of using
the large this intestine, um, system,
because in that particular surgery they cut out
the rectum, uh, with the sigmoid colon
and they want the area to heal.
And so then, then create this stoma, this opening outside
of the body for a few months until the area heals.
So those, those treatments to me, seemed really harsh.
I was scared of radiation, I was scared of, of chemotherapy.
I did know what, what they would cause long term.
So I refused it.
And I listened to something called,
uh, the Truth about Cancer.
And I heard a lot of stories of people
who healed from cancer naturally.
And I decided to try. And so I did.
I tried, um, many different
modalities, treatment plans.
- Did you get pushback from your doctors for that?
- I did, yes. Yes.
There was definitely, I'm gonna say judgment.
Um, and many doctors, you know,
they were very concerned for me.
I'm gonna say they were concerned for me.
And so they, they thought I was crazy.
And you know, that for rectal cancer,
the traditional medicine has
a pretty high success rate, curing rate.
And so they were concerned that I was doing something that,
you know, I would not recover from.
And so it came at me with a judgment
and a lot of concern.
And that was challenging, you know,
'cause I still needed to, to have, um, scans done
while I was doing what it, whatever method I was doing.
- Were you afraid of the chemo and radiation
because of the damage those things do
while they're killing the cancer?
Or was there something else that made you afraid of it?
- Many things. Radiation to, with rectal cancer,
the rectum sits right under the vagina, the uterus,
the bladder, the ovaries.
And so they were all going to get hit.
And the long-term effects from all
of those I wasn't sure about.
I knew that my, my grandmother had osteoporosis
and she had a hysterectomy
and an, was it called it ooo ectomy, uh,
what we ectomy when they take out also the, the ovaries.
And, and then she became hunched back.
I was concerned about that.
I was still considering getting pregnant with a partner
that I didn't have yet.
So all, all of those reasons, um,
I was concerned and afraid of. Yeah.
- And what were the alternative treatments you sought? Um,
- The first one we did a lot of cleansings.
So I took a lot of herbs and mushrooms
and did a lot of cleansings
and went to, um, a guy that had a machine
that would scan the body and like, like a rife machine,
and then would, um, send back frequencies
to kill the, the cancer.
I did that. Um, I went to, um, saunas
to do some heat therapies.
I did UV bloody radiation, uh,
three weeks of vitamins C um,
le trill, which is apricot pit
ozone insufflation, which means there's a catheter that goes
inside the rectum and it's hooked up to an ozone machine.
And I would put that because ozone supposedly o has
to, has a lot of oxygen and that can kill cancer.
So I did a lot of different things.
Um, later on I went to, uh, hope for Cancer.
It's a, a clinic in Mexico.
And I did their, their program
and their program halted the growth.
Um, so it stayed, let's say at five centimeters.
So if at first it was 1.8, then
what I was doing the first step, the first things
that I was doing, it went to 2.2, then 4.5, then five.
- So it was really growing during the alternative therapies.
- It was, - That didn't dissuade you at all?
- Not yet, no. I, I kept believing that there's a way
as a way to make it work.
It worked for them. Why wouldn't it work for me?
You know, it works for some people.
So I just kept reading about people
who were healing from it.
And I said, okay, well if this is not
it, well, let me try this.
The hope for cancer,
their things kept it at five centimeters.
And, but it was $2,000 each month in addition
to the 42,000 that I paid for three weeks
and three and three months supply of the medication.
And I thought, wow, that's too much money
that I'm not going to have.
So I got off of that.
I went to the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego.
I did their three week cleanse,
and then I maintained their program at home.
Then I did a scan and it was 10 centimeters.
- So that's then stage three.
- Yeah. Then it's, yeah, I started moving to,
to the lymph nodes.
Yes. And, but I didn't give up.
I did a three week green juice fast.
There was just some vegetables.
- Were people around you losing their minds
that you were not seeing, that you weren't getting results
and worrying that you were heading toward the abyss?
- Yes. Yes. They were all very scared.
And they all knew that it's my life, it's my choices.
I get to try things the way I get to try them.
I think they were rooting for me,
but they were so scared they had no idea
if I was gonna live or not.
Yeah. That was, that was, you know, wow. That was so tough.
At the beginning. I had to tell everybody, I said, you know,
you might get scared about this,
but if you get scared, I'm gonna get scared.
And I don't wanna get scared.
You know, I, I'm gonna walk some kind of a path.
I'm gonna try it, hope it works, and please be supportive.
And if you can't be supportive, then, you know,
let's not hang out until, until I can.
- So what happened next? - Well, you know, nothing worked.
So I had to finally, you know, I, I went to,
um, to an oncologist.
He was really challenging for me.
'cause he was, I think, really frightened for me.
But he was also like, you're gonna die.
Don't you wanna be cured? Don't you wanna be cured?
Go talk to this surgeon. We're really lucky to have him.
And at the same day, you know, I insisted
that my cousin come with me, insisted that my cousin come
with me because I'm single.
So different people would
come with me to doctor appointments.
Her mom said, I'll come with you.
And I said, no, I want her to come.
Like, it was so clear
that my c this cousin had to come with me.
And when she came
and he said the name of the surgeon, she said, oh,
Ste Steen, Dr.
Steen. I, I know his wife. She was my gynecologist.
Oh, I love her. She's great. She's great, he's great.
And you know what, there was something about that
that made me say, okay, I'll go talk to him.
Yeah. And so I did talk to him. He was a wonderful guy.
I asked him about the treatments.
Um, I, you know, really appreciated him.
He was, he was very kind to me with no judgment.
And he was willing to consider all possibilities.
- Do you find that there is an irony to the fact
that the thing that you feared most about what would happen
had you done this traditional quote, unquote way
of going about killing a cancer when it was still
only stage two, that now at stage three to four was
starting to overwhelm your body
and then would create the scenario where things would
get really hairy, if you will?
- You know, I never, I didn't think about it.
I didn't think about it. I was just like,
this is my next step.
This is my next step. Just, just looking at the next step.
That's it. I mean, and when I got that, you know,
'cause I was still doing all these things, you know,
the beamer all the time.
And when I got the report one day
and it said that the meso rectal fat
was thick
and a couple of lymph nodes, you know, had involvements.
The meso rectal fat is outside of the rectum.
And that's when I was like, okay, ,
it's going out of the rectum.
If I don't address it right now, it is gonna be stage four
- Mm-Hmm. .
- Yeah. And that's when I put
that switch on and it was really hard.
It was really hard to say, okay, I'm gonna surrender
and I'm gonna need to use these really harsh treatments.
- And you did get damaged from it?
- I did. Mm-Hmm. - , can we
talk about that a little bit? Whatever you're comfortable
- With.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah.
So with radiation, radiation to the pelvis means it's going
to hit all these organs
for a woman in the pelvis and ferment too.
Uh, but women have more organs in the pelvis.
And so yeah, the ovaries are killed.
So there's immediate menopause, no more estrogen
and progesterone, at least what the ovaries produce.
Then the, the uterus has some scar tissue,
so it's non-functional
and can't go in into the uterus.
After several years
after the radiation treatments,
I started feeling pressure in the lower part of my body,
and then I needed to do a scan
and there was fluid trapped in the cervix
and the cervical canal.
And so they had to go inside and do a DNC,
but not, they couldn't get into the, the uterus
because of the scar tissue, but they had to open it
for the water to drain.
A year later. The same thing,
because the tissue is irradiated.
It is not a normal tissue.
It never goes back to being normal.
So, you know, radiation finished.
And I, I was told about menopause and the ovaries
and the uterus, and there was 15% chance
that the bladder would be also affected.
I was lucky that mine wasn't, two weeks later, af no,
two weeks later, two months later, I had sex
with a partner and it hurt.
And, and I didn't know why.
I thought, why, why does penetration hurt?
No one said anything. I thought, okay,
maybe still from the radiation, maybe it hasn't healed yet,
even though it's been two months.
Okay. A few days later, I got a, I got a text from my sister
and it said, my friend who is a radiation oncologist told me
to tell you that radiation oncologists usually don't talk
about it, but you need to use dilators.
And I thought, what are dilators?
No one ever mentioned that. I, I had no idea. Like what?
So I, look, I went, you know, looked online.
What are dilators? Huh? How interesting.
I, but I had surgery coming up in, in 10 days.
So, so I didn't look into it, you know, very deeply.
I said, I'll deal with it after surgeries,
and there was surgery, blah, blah, blah.
And then, um, sometime
after that, um, I met a woman, she was introduced to me
and she had anal cancer and she had radiation.
Okay? This was like three years later.
And I said, Hey, do you have any, any pain?
You know, how's your sexuality?
Do you have any, any vaginal pain with penetration?
And she said, oh, um, well, I had radiation three years ago,
and a lot of scar tissue built up in the vagina.
And so my husband and I, we can't have penetration
because it's all closed up.
The vagina is closed.
And I said, wow, did anybody tell you that?
Did they tell you that could happen? Would happen?
Were you informed at all? And she said, no.
And I was like, wow, that's amazing. That's her and me.
And then I met another woman that had rectal cancer.
And I said, did you have radiation? She said, yes.
And I said, do you have pain within intercourse?
And she said, I do.
And I said, did anyone tell you that you,
that would, that would happen?
And she said, no. And at that point I joined
two colorectal Facebook pages
and I started posting is, is this normal?
Were you told, you know, what do you do with this pain?
How do you deal with it? How do you have sex?
How, how do you stay sexual?
And there were a lot of angry posts from a lot
of very angry women, um,
saying they weren't told that.
They told me that, you know, dilators have to be used.
Some of them said that on radiation oncologist office gave
them dilators.
Some women said, wow, I can't believe it.
What today they still don't tell you.
And in 2018, they still don't, don't say anything about it.
There was a lot of surprise.
I I asked them, you know, what about the pain?
And they said, well, you just lived through it.
You know, you, you, you, you, you know, try to masturbate,
try to use vibration to distract the pain.
And so I, you know, this was all new.
It was all new because I didn't know this was not
told, not shared.
And I, I had no idea.
And here I am in a dilemma, you know, after chemo
and surgery and living with a stoma, trying
to figure out the stoma needed to figure out sexuality.
Um, so it took, it took a while.
I went to a couple of different gynecologists.
They said the pain was because of dryness.
And I was like, it's not because of dryness.
There's something else. They're like, no, no, it's
because of dryness, because you're menopausal now.
No, no, that's not it. Okay. Take ex estrogen creams.
Okay. That's for the, you know, to, to,
to have more lubrication in the, in the vagina.
So, um, I called back the radiation oncologist and office
and I said, Hey, so I'm, I,
I have vaginal damage from the radiation.
I'm told that offices give women dilators.
And they said, we only give them to
gynecological cancers.
And I said, you're kidding me, right?
Like, the rectum is right under the vagina
and it gets hit when you're focusing on the rectum.
It passes through the vagina.
I'm sorry, we just don't do that.
My disbelief, my anger, my rage just went up the roof.
'cause I was thinking, what, how, how is this possible?
How are they just so unaware, uncaring, inhumane?
I mean, lots of women go through this is,
I'm not the first person.
So that was really shocking to me.
And after that,
I did a really big survey on the colorectal face
Facebook pages, and I asked, you know, who,
how many women were told of all the effects.
So then I learned that it was the scar tissue through the,
through the women on the Facebook pages, they explained
to me that what's painful is that there's scar tissue
in the vagina and the nerves get hit there
and they're hypersensitive.
So it doesn't matter whether it's a speculum that goes in a,
a hand, a finger, a penis, it's going to hurt
because it rubs against those nerves
and it, they send these pain signals.
So with pain signals, who wants to, to, to have sex?
Nobody who wants to use the, the dilators? Nobody. Why?
Because it's painful. So I kept
asking, what do you do with pain?
What do you do with pain? What do you do with pain?
Then one woman, finally, after,
after a long time, she said, she said that
after she saw five different gynecologists, the last one
gave her a recipe with some nerve blocker.
That helps. And I was like, okay,
so there's a nerve blocker.
Okay, then I could use the dilator. Yeah.
So yeah, that was kind of the process.
And out of the survey that I did,
and this was in September of 2018, a hundred women got back
to me and 25 of them basically were told everything.
Great. Yay. There are people that are told and are supported
and wonderful, and about 12%
were told partial things, not the whole thing,
but they had either friends who had this before them,
or they were on the Facebook pages and read women's posts
and then asked their, their radiation oncologist
for dilators.
And they asked questions.
And 63 women that got back to me were not told
of anything sexual that's going to be different
after radiation treatment.
And yeah, lots of very angry, A lot of pain.
A lot of pain. And so, you know,
after reading that I said,
you know, I just can't let that go.
You know, I can't let that's, that's gonna go in the book.
And somehow I want these women to have a voice,
and I want them to have a voice along with my voice.
Yeah. Things need to be different.
There has to be transparency, there has
to be medical transparency
and a shared decision making with the patient.
This is what's going to happen. Why do we do this?
Because this is the percent survival,
but these are all the things
you're gonna need to deal with after.
- Yeah. It is to me just a, a commentary, if you will,
on the value of women in society, especially when it comes
to their sexuality and what it's worth.
- Yeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna say it hasn't yet sunk in
to the whole of society.
I'm gonna say the medical field to
how important that is, how important sexuality is for,
for being human, for our connecting with a partner. Well,
- I've had a biopsy in, in my, you know, uterine biopsy.
They don't anesthetize you,
they don't give you any kind of numbing, nothing.
They just like, this is gonna hurt like a motherfucker
for a real quick second, and then they do it.
And I, after I had that done, it was negative.
But after it was done, I asked around,
and many women had had the same experience.
And I thought, my god, they would never do that
to a man ever.
He's numb to high heaven when they take care
of the old vasectomy situation.
You know what I mean?
and women are just expected to endure these things.
- Yeah. So, yeah, I think that you're right.
And there's just, it's just, I don't, I don't know if,
whether it's people not being comfortable
with women's sexuality, talking about women's sexuality.
Yes, yes. Yeah. Or whether it's complete ignorance. Yes.
You know, lack of awareness. Yes. . Um, yeah. Scott
- Speaking on the line, really - .
Yeah. You know, some, some centers now do talk about it.
Some centers are great.
I was just reading yesterday
for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, that part
of their treatment plan with rectal cancer, female patients
is they send them to, to a, um, to a sex therapist
as part of the center
to talk about what's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen.
Great. But that should be the standard everywhere across
- The board.
Sure. Standard of care. But I think you're right.
I think there is, there's something about
the shame around sexuality more specifically
and how it is for people with uterus
or people with vaginas.
- Yeah. You know, when I first started receiving the
radiation treatment, within a week, I could start
to feel the labia buzzing lab and clitoris.
And I was like, why are they buzzing? Why are they buzzing?
Are they irradiating the labia?
Like, like, am I like gonna be like sexually nonfunctional?
And I went to the, to the technician
and I said, listen, my labia is buzzing, so
I think something's wrong here,
and I think they need to look at the calculations.
And he brought me to the radiation oncologist
and I said the same thing.
And he said, okay, let, let, let us check.
And the next day when I came, I went to visit him
before going to the treatment, and he said that I was right.
And they, and they changed their calculations.
But isn't that amazing, the errors,
the not paying attention, the not, not meticulous about
valuing, again, sexuality, women's sexuality can, that,
that is so important to preserve pleasure
and bonding, that they really, for those types
of calculations, they have to look really, really like,
do 'em over and over
and make sure, can we do it this way or another way?
Or how can we not go through that area?
Yeah, yeah.
And, and I'm guessing that there are women
who wouldn't say anything. Oh,
- Of course.
Let's talk about the book, uh, healing the deepest wounds.
You decided to take all this information
and to be a voice for the voiceless.
- Yes, yes, yes.
I wrote a book and it does it,
it contains the whole journey.
I did wanna be a voice for the voiceless. Yeah, yeah.
And, and to raise awareness about how important it is
to keep the patient
and women specifically their
wellbeing after these treatments, especially radiation,
especially to the pelvis, you know, that has to be part
of the standard of care and has to be talked about.
And honesty and transparency.
This is what's going to happen. You know?
So I mean, I would love there to be a, you know, a,
a universal sheet of paper, a video
explaining a consultation with a sex therapy
or a sexual health nurse ahead of time,
and a sexual health nurse checking in with the patient
during treatment,
after treatment constantly, you know, to make sure
that sexual health is preserved.
It's not going to be in all cases
because of the nature of all, of
how tight everything is in the pelvis.
You know, cancers can grow, especially again,
if women don't stand up to themselves
and they don't go to the doctor when they see bleeding in,
in the rectum, you know, bleeding on the stool.
They don't go and say, check this, check this, check this.
It's not a hemorrhoid, it's not a hemorrhoid check.
Again, they don't do that in time.
It can spread to the vagina, to the ovary, to the uterus,
you know, and, and then a part of that could be taken out.
So many things there are so important to
- Statistically speaking, uh, they are seeing a huge
increase in colon cancer among young women specifically.
But in just the younger generations. Here's the thing.
Well, when people get colonoscopies, they're supposed
to get them age 50 and onward.
But it's starting to happen to people at such a young age
that if you are feeling like something is wrong,
just across the board, oh, whatever gender you are,
however, it doesn't matter if you feel like something is
wrong, stand up for yourself.
'cause nobody else is gonna do that for you.
And likely, I mean, if you have an advocate, great,
but most of us don't.
And you are important, and you deserve to be treated
with respect and dignity and have your voice
and your body be heard.
I cannot stress that enough to the listeners.
It's so important. It's vital.
- Yeah. It's so important.
You know, I keep saying in the, in the book, over
and over, advocate for yourself.
Advocate for yourself. Advocate for yourself. Yeah.
Because no one's gonna do it.
And, and actually it's, it's our job. It's our job.
We are the ones living in this body
and advocating is actually empowerment.
And especially for us women who, you know, were, were,
were kind of reared to be nice to, you know, not,
not make trouble to, you know, authority,
listen to authority.
Especially this is, this is a journey of empowerment.
It's like, I'm gonna stand up, I'm gonna stand up for me.
Yes. And I have to do it. I have to do it.
You know, it's a matter of life and death
and we have to do it.
Yeah. When I saw that smear, that red smear
on the stool, it was clear, something is wrong.
- Also, I advocate being a poop.
Look, looker, look at your poop. , .
It's certainly gonna tell you a lot about
your health and wellbeing.
for sure. It's interesting.
It's such a journey that you spent all this time
in the soul searching and,
and touching that part that is so not of
the grounded body, if you will,
and then being so forced into your body
to have to stand up for it.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was, yeah, interesting and weird and odd and, and
- Terrifying and all of the things.
- Yeah. Where - Are you now with your health journey?
- I'm good. It's been so, all the stuff
that I was afraid of, I did.
Um, and, and it did, it did save my life.
All the doctors saved my life, all the,
the equipment saved my life.
I finished chemo in January of 2018,
and my second surgery was in April of 2018.
So I'm good. Yeah. And I do my best.
Obviously this is a different body.
It's a di I had to learn how to do sexuality.
I had to learn how to, you know, uh,
an irradiated tissue in the vagina, uh,
with menopause is not a normal tissue.
And regular, you know,
thrusting sexuality isn't the best option.
So I had to learn
and educate myself on other ways of being sexual
and more tender with my female parts now.
And that's good. I've learned how I've learned how to do it,
and I'm grateful there is pain if I don't use the cream.
There's, there's always pain with penetration.
It goes away after, after penetration.
And so, you know, it's, it's good.
And, you know, I have a, a new, I don't have a rectum.
And so living with outer rectum as it's the whole other way,
you know, of living, and it took a long time to
learn how to be with that, but Okay.
- Do you, you have to use an external bag?
- I don't have an external bag anymore
because they reversed the ileostomy.
I had it reversed, um, in 2018.
That was the second surgery,
and then the body had to learn how to work again.
Now my colon was asleep for eight and a half months.
It wasn't working. And so imagine all the gut
flora has died, the good gut flora has died.
So it's probably pretty, pretty nasty stuff in there. Okay.
That has probably received some chemotherapy and mutated.
So I was pretty nasty in there.
The lining, the mucus lining of the colon that was asleep
for eight and a half months.
Um, when, when they first reconnected me, uh, it, the,
the, the, the mucus lining wasn't normal as it is.
And so what happened was that the, when CO would come out,
and I would need to have many bowel movements a day,
because rectum is, is, is a storage, it's stores.
And then when you don't have a storage, every time you eat,
you gotta go eat, go eat, go eat, go eat. Yeah. Or a
- Tube basically , it's - A two.
Yeah. Without, without a, a storage unit, it,
it would become acidic
and then the acidity would kind of burn around the anus.
So it, it really, it took probably a year for the acidity
to, to, to leave.
And that first year was, was so
challenging. So challenging. I
- Bet.
Oof. You have endured a lot.
And I mean, another thing of advocacy is now advocating
to your sexual partners.
And by you, I mean the role you, anyone that has to go
through this, I mean, one has to advocate
with sexual partners anyway.
That's the beauty of having sexual partners is you get
to say what it is that works for you
and doesn't work for you and things like that.
Have you found those conversations to be easier now
that you have had to advocate for yourself for so long?
- I'm so, I'm so open as it is.
I mean, this is why I can write about it so openly.
You know, I've been playing with this book forever and ever,
and I'm constantly doing things with it.
And so when I, when I date
and people say, oh, what, you know, what are you doing?
And I'm saying, oh, I'm editing. What are you editing?
Oh, I'm writing a book. What's about, about rectal cancer?
I had rectal cancer,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, it's a lot about, you know,
it's got a lot about sexuality, blah, blah, blah.
And then I tell them, you know, radiation did this.
It's in the vagina, so there's pain, there's scar tissue.
And so sexuality is different for me,
and I'm pretty matter of fact about it.
I'm not like, uh, let me tell you, uh, you know, no,
I'm just like, this is how it is.
Sexuality is different and, and then I have to teach. Yeah.
And so far everybody has wanted to learn .
- That's great. That's great.
Tell everyone how they may find you in your book,
and if they have questions for you.
- The name of the book is Healing The Deepest Wounds,
life Giving Lessons From My Journey with Rectal Cancer,
stage two three by Erit Sherman,
K-I-N-E-R-E-T, Sherman, S-A-G-R-M-A-N.
I also have, uh, a website t sherman.com,
and you can contact me through there or Facebook.
- Great. I really appreciate your story and your time
and your honesty and integrity with your journey.
Uh, it's, I think, really helpful for people to hear
that someone else has been through it and,
and maybe can help inspire someone to stand up
for themselves that much more.
- Yeah. Thank you. There's one other thing
that's super important for me also,
when people are on this journey
and not on this journey, forgiveness, self-forgiveness
and forgiveness of others.
Uh, it's also part of a self-advocacy
because we need, as, as much as we need to
being integrity, you know, with ourselves
and present ourselves with, in, in the world, with the,
you know, all medical things
or anything else we need to advocate for, we need
to also advocate for our own mental health
and our own emotional health.
And that's by letting go
doing whatever is needed to let go of holding on
to angers and pains and judgements and resentments
and guilts and shames and all that.
It, it is also part of the self-advocacy,
but that's the self-advocacy with self, with letting go
of whatever habits there are, you know,
that we haven't cleaned up with ourselves.
- Yeah. Well said. Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you so much for being
- Here.
Yeah, thank you so much, Susan.
It's really been a delight
and I'm so, um, happy to have met you
and spent some time with you.
You're so delightful.
- Oh, thanks. Thank you for listening, everybody. Bye.
Take care. Bye. Okay,
- Bye.
- Great review and subscribe to, Hey,
human Podcast on iTunes, Spotify,
iHeart, wherever you get your podcast.
Thanks. Bye.