Celebrating Matt's Life, with Bill Moran and Dr. Roy Vongtama

SHOW NOTES: The world lost a positive force of nature, a friend, brother, a husband, and a father of two amazing girls on August 20, 2023, when Matt passed. Over the past 3 years while Matt lived with his cancer, he created 71 episodes of With Gratitude, Matt. During that time, he shined his light on many others and helped give a voice to stories filled with life lessons. He modeled how to live with gratitude every day and how to be a man for others. His earthly presence will be dearly missed, but Matt’s spirit will be with us in many ways including on future episodes of this show which the Moran family will continue to do in his honor.

Matt’s older brother Bill hosts this episode with Dr. Roy Vongtama, who was guest number 1 in July of 2020. Dr. Vongtama was Matt’s integrative cancer coach, friend, and an inspiration in how Matt approached his treatment and daily routine, much of it pulled from Roy’s book, Healing Before You are Cured. In this episode, Bill and Dr. Vongtama discuss how Matt approached his diagnosis, his healing and the choices we all have in how we see tomorrow when given tough news. Dr. Vongtama also shares his thoughts on grieving, living without resentment, serving others and, of course, the power of gratitude. Dr. Vongtama’s new online course, Healing After Your Cured: Science Backed Post Cancer Care is due out soon and will be helpful for anyone looking for how to best care for yourself after being declared healthy or cancer free. Resources and course information are available on Dr. Vongtam’s website  https://www.mdroy.com/. You can also connect via Instagram : @doctorroyv or Facebook Roy Vongtama, MD 

Please enjoy this episode and next step forward. You can listen here or watch here.

SPECIAL NOTE: Matt was admired and loved by countless family members, listeners and friends, many who reside in Cincinnati, Ohio. On October 7th at 1pm, please join us for a Celebration of Life at St. Xavier High School. If you are unable to make it and would like to send a note to the family about what Matt’s podcast has meant to you, please leave a comment attached to this episode on the WGM YouTube page.  

Transcript

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Well, hello with gratitude Matt listeners. My name is Bill Moran, and I met my older brother. And today I'll be your host. It's with a heavy heart that I share some news about Matt passing away this past August. Please know that Matt appreciated all of your support. Your love, your prayers and your generosity during his journey, His wife Mary and the entire Moran family are so grateful and blessed to have you in our lives and for your continued support. It's really humbling to be presenting here today. Matt always said with gratitude, Matt was a place that others can come to find the courage to be grateful regardless of how powerful a storm is. He started his blog Gratitude Match.com to Track his Cancer journey. Matt did it. Amazing and staggering 71 episodes of With Gratitude. Matt and his goal was to reach and inspire more people and help them practice gratitude. I'll introduce our guests in a moment. But today, we're going to honor Matt by looking at how he inspired us to find the courage to be grateful, regardless of how powerful his storm was. Today, we welcome back. Match first guest, Dr. Roy von Tama. Roy is a radiation oncologist, actor, husband and Matt's friend. Roy is the author of Healing Before You are Cured. Roy's message of the Four Houses of Health help formed a foundation for matched journey and his message of gratitude. Matt asks us to develop an attitude of gratitude by being aware of what we feed our mind, body and soul. Roy, thank you for being here today. Thanks, Bill. Happy to be here and happy to honor Matt in this way. Thanks. Roy So what are the things that we talked about and you talk about in your book is healing. Why don't you kind of explain for our listeners the difference between healing and being cured? That's a great question. Healing to me is about an inner journey. It's about inner alignment with with what's really there underneath it. And it's something that you do for yourself. It's a journey that you direct healing versus curing, which is something you give the power to, to something outside of you, whether it's in Matt's case, chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, and you're accepting treatment from the outside, where healing to me is something that you drive, something that you take responsibility before they both result in the same thing, which is health, hopefully. But one is driven by you and one is driven by others. So like you're obviously you are a friend of Matt. You helped Matt in his life, and especially since the diagnosis. What changes in his life and and how did you see it manifest itself in his healing journey? Well, for Matt, it was really powerful. And I do want to acknowledge, too, it's very like it's very amazing that I did the first episode 71 episodes ago and now the first episode with With You, Bill and in Matt's honor. So it's kind of like a new start and and a bookend to something that's really beautiful and continuing on. So that was the first thing I wanted to say. And looking back to the time with Matt, when we first met, I was introduced to him to help him with with an integrative look at his cancer because he just found out that it had become metastatic. So what that means is that it has spread and he had to come with different ways to look to to take care of the situation. And one thing I do with patients and people who want to work with me is to actually look and see where they actually want to start their journey. And my whole system is physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It's coming at it from all four aspects in a Evidence-Based way. And the one that that Matt really gravitated toward was the mental. He really, really wanted to master that. And that's where we started. So for him, that healing journey was getting his mind really, really positive. And we none of us, you nor I knew how far he was going to take that that, that mental attitude that that that power he had inside of him. He really brought it all the way. And that's something that is unique and remarkable. So he talked about and he often talk about this in public and in other podcasts. But one of the things that I found was that he found an inner peace. And and you you speak about that in your book, in your research and in your writings. What how how do how do we can tell how do we tell listeners to go through some exercises to help them make those changes where they can find that inner peace? Yes. You know, I, I came upon a quote a few days ago and in preparation for this and it really summarizes how Matt approached everything. Like he came to my wedding in July of 2022, and he had just gotten out of the hospital right from surgery. He's like, oh, I had I had this procedure. And, you know, I'm great to be here. And like literally it was one line to the next that he was in in surgery. And now he's on a plane to California from Buffalo to come to my wedding. No big deal. And the quote is this It's by this Indian mystic named J. Krishnamurti. He says, You want to know my secret? I don't mind what happens. Wow. And that's Matt, right? He didn't mind what I was like. Okay. Yeah, I have. I have some lesions in my brain. Yeah, let's go. You know, it wasn't like, let's go. Just like, Okay, Yeah, well, I'm getting treatment on Tuesday, and then I'll play golf on Wednesday. You know, it wasn't he never. And that, that to me really was something of the whole on that what did you just say is, Oh, I was in the hospital for six days. Yeah. I'm so happy to be here. Wow. Look at the weather. It's amazing. It wasn't like he he he put it down. He just. Just like that. He didn't mind it. It was what was happening to him, and that was it. It wasn't laden with a lot of heavy emotion or or sadness or making you feel like you had to hold space for him. He was always holding space for himself. And so to me, that that line, he didn't mind what what happened. And then he had this other thing. And that's what I think inner peace really is, is that alignment with what's happening to you outside of you. So that immediately, like in my case, never a thing for him to align right away to what's happening. Right. And he could immediately find joy in a moment, even in spite of whatever is going on with him. He didn't he didn't make it anything about about what was happening outside of the actual facts. Right. Like one story I want to share our listeners is Father Peter, who did his funeral service. And he was talking about when he came in to see Matt in hospice. And Matt said, Hey, guess what, Father Peter, I get to see Jesus for you. Do you know what I mean? Is that like this, this, this Father Peter's come in and minister to Matt, and Matt is in the moment. Happy to see his friend. Yeah. You know, and the one thing and I'm. Thanks, Roy that was beautiful. And one of the things that I observed was it was well, excuse me two things. One, it was never about Matt, like you mentioned, but but he never viewed himself as a victim. And how is that important when you are dealing with the day to day? Because you could I mean, this this could take you at a really dark place. Yes. You get this diagnosis. Yeah. So how can you help listeners figure that out? And in looking at Matt's life and how he did. Yeah. Matt's great example of of what you just said. He never let himself be the victim. He always maintained responsibility. And that what I call responsibility. Right. He always had the ability to respond in a moment to to whatever was called upon him. And it never became something where he didn't have enough, what I would call inner bandwidth. Like when you're when you're on a computer or your computer has a certain bandwidth, and if it exceeds it, you slow down, right? So people who are computer savvy, but in Matt's case, his bandwidth for life was always bigger than the moment. And people, you know, they call it in the past, they would call like, you know, your shoulders are big enough to handle it. But in our in our terms, I call it bandwidth. So for Matt, he always had this bandwidth. So he never felt victimized by a moment. He was always bigger than that moment. And that's something that I always I actually look looked up to him in that way. I was like, how could he how is he maintaining that that that spirit? How is he not defeated in this moment? And that to me, I think that's part of victimization is like you acknowledge defeat the moment is bigger than you. And and in terms of what you just asked about people going into their final stages, you have stage four or whatever, a cancer or whatever disease you have and you know, your time is limited when the reality below everybody you know, and nobody makes it out alive. They don't. So it's just about your perspective on that, on that timeline. Now, it went from, you know, maybe 40 years to five years or ten years or whatever it is. But the point is, is that it was never set in stone that you're going to live forever. Well, and I think understanding that as the first step is that, you know, okay, I have new information now. I'm going to try to make the best of it from what I can. I'm going to be sad. I'm going to be angry. I'm going to have these things come up. I'm going to have to mourn the life that that I thought I was going to hear. But I'm going to be present in the moment. I have at the same time. Now, that's beautiful. And I, I Roy, you're a master at Wordplay. I will tell you that. But. But to to prove your point or kind of emphasize your point, you know, and this is this is a tough part of the character avocation for me to share. But I do want to share it because I think it's important. One of the. Matt called me, you know, and he's on his way to hospice and he told me that he was going to die. And I think that was at that moment that he realized that all of the medicines and all the wonderful doctors that have treated him and and done an amazing job, you included, that his life was his earthly life was going to come to an end and I responded to him. And I don't know how I I mean, it was, you know, thank you, God, for giving me these words. But I said, Matt, we all are. It's just you're getting called to your eternal life earlier than we are. And then kind of fast forwarding, when I met with you the first time at the visitation, you told me that, you know, Matt is with us and his soul is with us. And those were beautiful reminders to me that he is and that he will be so I thank you for that. I do want to talk about morning and I do want to talk a little bit about sorrow. What are the things that I think our listeners can learn from is is is for me. And that I was I was probably negative in the sense of, you know, I was like, Ash Matt, how you've this diagnosis how in the world can you are you denying the diagnosis? How can you carry yourself like that? It was really hard for me to and I'll use my words, get real like Matt, you know, and and I think maybe expand upon that and and I felt guilty about it. But then I also was admiring Matt for his ability to stay present and stay in the moment and deal with this. Bill, thanks for sharing that. I think a lot of people even listening felt that conflict within them about what Matt was doing with his perspective and what everybody else was doing with their perspective, right? So there's that certain dissonance you're looking at someone that you know is going to leave this. I don't even call. Do I call leaving the body because you're soul, right? There you go. You live on. And he's out of his body. Soul. The soul. I mean, that you know, everybody has listening, has their own spiritual tradition. So I'll just say it that way is that, you know, going to heaven or whatever you want to call it, you're still around, though. You're not. You're just you're not in the body anymore. So that that that would be where I responded you the way I responded to you in that moment at at the visitation. But looking at that that question of denial, I think that's a really interesting question because people did come up to me, they're like, you know, some people were like, I wish he would have, you know, been real house, like he was real. That's his it's his real you know, it wasn't your real you know, your real will be different. It doesn't mean that everybody has to go through the end of their life in the way Matt did, but he chose to see the positive. He chose to live in gratitude. And if you think about our everybody, our own lives, you meet Bill, and we make decisions sometimes that we were no one's perfect, right? So we always make these decisions based on what we think we were looking for in our goals in our life. Right? So if you're if he's deciding to see the positive and the gratitude in every situation, it that's his right. And he is. And if you were around him and you were and I was, he did not allow anyone to live around him and that that wasn't going to live in his reality. Right. How powerful is that? It's almost like a star power you when you get around somebody that that has that thing like, whoa, whoa, he just didn't let it. And you may have other things going on your mind like why was he doing this? Like, why is he coaching basketball? Shouldn't he be doing this? Shouldn't he be doing that? Like, why is he taking a trip? Why is he driving out of Boston? Why did he stay here? He only has a year left with his family. Like all these things that we think that's all our crap. That's all our junk. And he's like, No, I don't need that. You're just projected on to me, you know? And he wouldn't even allow that to happen. It wasn't out of anger. It wasn't out of like a like a like, like, please don't talk about that. Or it was just it's just how he lived. So when you're around that energy, so that I think, is the example for for all of us to take in that way. It's like it's like, yes, there is there is a sadness and there is like weird talk about mourning. There is there's an aspect of that. But that's our mourning, right? That's our journey in that moment. When you see someone on the other side that you think is going to die, quote unquote, when in fact we are going to die, He just he just shortens this time period is shorter in the body. That's it. And so for him, he's like, you know, I'm every minute I've spend sad is one minute I'm not happy. You know, in a way, that's kind of how he approached it. So I think that that was his his thing, and we can learn from it in that way. So so to everybody who experienced that thought, I think I did, too. I was like, oh, you know, he's going to Boston. That's 6 hours. He could he could stay here and get to Roswell Park. No, he wanted to go to Boston to finish out his treatment there. And that's okay, right? That's his that's his journey. Yeah. He you know, I had the benefit of of being with him for a week when he got some of his treatment. And it was he would walk in and and he, like you said, to use your words Roy, he would project that. And I felt, I felt that when he was projecting that to his care team, what he's protecting it to the receptionist who's welcome walking us in. And it was always about them. And I kind of when I was I was able to speak at at his funeral. And one of the things I said was Matt never viewed himself as the main character in his own heroic Jude or journey. He always viewed himself as a collaborator in a massive, sprawling human epic. And that's really how I choose to remember his earthly life. And I think hopefully we can carry that on in our lives and project that. So thanks for reminding me of that and and how beautiful that was and what a gift that was. So let's touch a little bit. I kind of glossed over the mourning part and the sorrow part and which is natural for us as family, friends and listeners to feel How important is that? And we I mean, there's no right wrong way, but maybe expand upon that because you really write about that a lot. Sure. So I always come back to what are you experiencing? So in terms of mourning, when you have a feeling in your body, if you don't feel it, it stays in your body. So that's how a disease is caused. In a lot of ways. We take things in. We don't let them go. We don't experience seeing them. We don't experience and experience them. So in terms of mourning anybody losing something, whether it's the loss of a future life that you thought you're going to have or it's of a relationship, or if it's of your own life or whatever it is, you have all these stages that come up and they come up or whatever word or they are. In basic terms, we'll talk about the anger, sadness, denial when they call bargaining where you're like trying to mentally find more ways to in his case, live longer, all those things. And, you know, so there's there's all these things that come up. But the main ones, I think I see people skip over I call it emotional bypass is the anger and the sadness. So if you do have that coming up for you, it's so important to acknowledge to that's there in your in you the experience to experience it. So if you're mourning the loss of somebody it's really important to and you feel that sadness too to let yourself feel it. And if you have to cry, you have to crowd, you have to lock yourself in a bathroom and do it and do it If you want to write, I call some other exercise. I get patients called Burn Pages where you write and then when you're done writing, you don't show it to anybody. You burn it. So you can write whatever you want down. Like you know, you can curse, you can swear, you can do whatever you want, and you don't have to show it to anybody. It's not just about mourning, though. It's about any emotion where you don't feel it's appropriate for whatever circumstance you have. So so you know, and I don't want to get this is not a therapy session for Bill, but for me, it was you know, there was I struggled with, you know, do I outwardly show this sadness, this sorrow, this anger? And I, I think, you know, after talking with you, I think it really helped me let that go and let it be what it was going to be. And and there's no I thought it was like you said, it was personal in the sense of your sorrow and your your mourning of Matt and the loss of others. I mean, we nobody nobody's immune to this. Like you said, you know, nobody gets out alive. And so we are we're all going to experience the loss of a deeply someone we deeply loved. Yeah. So you kind of we kind of glossed over it. But I think it's a really important part about being present. And Matt always reminded his listeners to be present. And I think one of the examples and I spoke of this at his funeral when, you know, he met us, he would meet a stranger and he met a stranger. And how the impact that just that little meeting and Roy, it might have been a ten minute meeting but this cancer patient and I'm not going to divulge anything that, you know, shouldn't be divulged. But this cancer patient use Matt's words as inspiration to continue his journey and his healing path. And so how can we be present with others? And I know. And how important is that? That's a great these are all great topics. I mean, for for me, that example you're talking about, I remember you shared it with me privately about how he approached each moment. He's always looking to serve. And I think really all of us are only really happy, really, really happy in our lives when we are doing something on purpose and we're serving. If you don't have both of those things, so not in your purpose and you're not serving in that in what you're doing, then you are not going to feel grateful for that moment because you think you should be somewhere else. You think you should be doing something different. So you have this judgment of the moments you're not able to live in gratitude where the example you talked about Matt's just sitting out there in the hallway and you see some saying, Hey, how are you? What are you doing here? And then all of a sudden he's given they're exchanging phone numbers on the hallway and Matt's, you know, just finishing his treatment. That's not working anymore. It could have gone. He could have been he could just have made it about himself. But in his mind, he's like, you know, no, I'm here. And he didn't do it cautiously, even I think it's just his it became who he was like, I'm going to serve in this moment. This you know, this is this is my time. And, you know, there's a great quote from Paramahansa Yogananda is an Indian guru. He said that you change yourself, you change thousands. And it doesn't mean you have to proselytize just by being somebody, just just being more in that moment, as you said, being more present for what's there. You will change other people because you're being somebody that is reflective of if you're Christian, you know, you're you're reflecting Jesus in that moment, reflecting God in that moment, you're reflecting what is divine and what is good. And in that moment. And you can't help but change somebody. And you may not even know. Right? But just like with Matt, I got to the funeral and people are like, Oh, Matt told me about your book. I read your book and and I've 20 something people came out and told me that I heard the podcast with Matt. Wow. Was so great. And had I not gone there, I would have I wouldn't have known that, right? Yeah. But I was doing something that was on purpose for me. Bye. By working with Matt, by helping and making and writing this book and doing this work. So that's on purpose for me. Had I didn't know, I didn't need to go to the funeral to know that I was doing good work. But when you find out later, you're like, Oh, this is this is something moving forward, but you shouldn't need to know. Like, you know, you shouldn't need to know, get that sort of validation. Just know that it is true though. Yeah, I know. And Roy, I mean, obviously you're serving others and that is a beautiful thing. I also there's another quote, and I think this is by someone much smarter than I it says resentment cannot enter a grateful heart. And you said that, Roy, by the way. I love that. That is a beautiful statement. And let's kind of unpack that and kind of expand on that resentment cannot enter a grateful heart. Yeah. So resentment to me, I that's the reason why I know it's because I for a long time I loved I loved living in resentment because I thought I would have should have more or whatever. And that's where resentment is, right. Is that you will resume is generally defined to me is you think something that happened to you shouldn't have happened to you. It was in the past. But guess what? It's not in the past because you haven't you haven't accepted that it's happened. So what happened when you were 16, when you know, when Mark put your head in the dumpster, you're still holding on to that moment where you're like, that shouldn't have happened to me. And you're just waiting for that day when you can get Mark back, you know, whatever whatever that moment may be for you. Think about it. Think about all those moments you have that you stored up, that you're waiting to get that person back. That's resentment. And guess what that does? That puts you in a place of of a you haven't let the circle complete. You didn't let yourself feel angry and feel sad and then accept that that is going to happen. And that that is the last thing in mourning is acceptance. Your anger, sadness, resentment, denial, bargaining, and then acceptance. And so when we're talking about resentment, that's what we're talking about. Is that something in the past that you believe shouldn't have happened to you happened and it's wrong. So you're angry about it or you keep holding on to a place of of that that judgment about that moment. And so when you have that, you're taking up space in your heart instead of having that space open for gratitude or for the flow of love or the flow of God, however you want to call that that that divine flow, you're taking up some space because it's telling you, right? That's what I was saying earlier, is that you you have you if you don't feel something, if you don't let something flow, it's stuck in you. And when we're talking about anger that's in your heart, that's in your heart space, that's that's that's in that space where you're taking up space for yourself so you can't feel gratitude. You can in that moment. So so that's, that's, that's what I mean when I say resentment. You can't you can't feel gratitude in that state because you don't have any space for it. That's that's a great life lesson in and in really in forgiveness to forgiving yourself and kind of moving on to that. I find and again, this is not about me, but I can only tell you my experiences, but I find that I get I become my own worst critic and I'm maybe striving for perfection. And and what I saw, Matt Matt was imperfect. He was human. Yeah. And and how can we avoid that negative going down that negative path and becoming our own worst critic? And I think also I'll give you a little break here, Bill, because I think it's cultural to having what perfectionism? There's a lot of cultures that get, you know, 24 weeks off a year and they don't they don't care, you know, what they're achieving and they're having a great time in their lives. So part of it is cultural in our culture. We're looking to achieve. We're looking to, you know, plan our flag and and go further or go faster, go farther and make more money and do all these things. So that is that is our environment and that environment's always acting on us. 24 seven So even if you didn't decide to be a perfectionist, guess what? The world is going to try to make you into that place. So you've got to remember the environments acting on US 24 seven and we're only active when we're using our willpower. We're only active. And so it's less than 24 hours. So you're you're not going to win that battle in a way. So so it take some of that. It's not all on you. It's not all of you. Right. So so but but there is that thing is is is like are my goals actually in alignment with what happiness is for me? So you may have a goal and you may look to achieve something. And if you don't achieve it, you feel like you failed. Right. And that's basically what perfectionism is. Is is is the not achievement now a mental not achievement and then the punishment for yourself that you didn't achieve it. And it's constant because guess what? None of us are perfect. None of us are going to achieve. That's the whole point, right? We're not perfect. So so holding that that unhealthy perfectionism. And look, I was raised by two, you know, I mean, two physicians. And my my dad said to me, he said, you know, you can do anything you want after you finish medical school. Right. So, I mean, I'm locked in for them, locked in for 25 years, you know. So for me, that was that was really hard to to buy in any place where I was. Okay. So a lot of that work for all of us. I think listening and for you and for me is is that forgiveness? Is that compassion of self is. And we're not here that long and well, here that long. Every hundred years, everybody recycles on this planet. We're all we're gone. We're nothing. We're gone. You know, we're all halfway through. Pretty much everybody listening is way more than halfway through, you know. So then it's like you have 20, 30 years. LAUGHTER 40 or however you have. Anyway, it's going to end soon. So what are you going to do in that time? Are you going to live in the moment? Are you going to live in joy? Are you going to live in gratitude or are you going to be achieving goals that don't matter because guess what? There's no news article about you coming out tomorrow, right? Is this your own right? Is this your own judgment of yourself? Well, that day sort did it and that's why I add that that gratitude practice, I call it five stars a day smile, piece of paper refill. What was good? Whether you saw a butterfly, you felt the wind on your face. You know, your wife made you laugh or you saw something funny. Just write it down and feel that again because your body doesn't know the difference between replay in a memory and feeling it in the moment. It just knows it's feeling something good or conversely, feeling something bad. So choose the good one that's great. And and you can, like you said, you can remind yourself of those wonderful experiences and they don't have to be life changing, but they are beautiful. And you can find gratitude in those in in the experience, but also in reliving it when you write it down and read it and and practice it. Roy You you've really touched on a lot of things, but I kind of want to hear a little bit about your exciting new venture and how that might help us learn more about ourselves and help us on our journeys. And could you tell the listeners a little bit about what you what you're doing now? And Yeah. Absolutely. So I'm creating a new course is called Healing After You're Cured. And my book is called Healing Before You're Cured. It's primarily for people who've been through disease, especially cancer, using evidence based techniques to help get you healthy. So in cancer, after Western treatment, whether it's chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, immunotherapy, you get your scans and you're done. They don't give you anything else to do and the system doesn't account for you in that way. But guess what? You're leaving 20 to 30% recurrence rate decrease on the table by not improving certain things like your diet, exercise, mental wellness, stress reduction in spiritual wellness. There's a lot of research in those areas that isn't being reimbursed by insurances right now. But what I wanted to do was to create a platform, and that's what this is healing after cured, where you get an intent to take a one month course and then go on an ongoing course where you can maintain these things and have accountability to improve your diet, improve your exercise, improve your mental wellness, improve your ability to handle stress, and find the area where you're you're looking to work, right? So find that area will make that weakness into strength and you can use it for the rest of your life. Well, isn't that what I mean? And again, you've already talked a little bit about the for houses of health, but isn't that what your book? Yeah. Healing before you're cured, you know, wasn't that to create the habits to help you make the change and is this this new venture is that more of of kind of continuing down that path and building on that. It it is I found that with the book is people read the book and were inspired and then I've asked them what they changed and they're like, oh, you know, they got inspired and they would take one or two things. But I found like for myself, it's good to have accountability, it's good to have a group and something to go forward. And I think that's something that I really after experiencing mats, mats, passing and going the funeral and seeing the effect of the work that he was doing through the work that we did, I said, you know, I got to just I've been thinking about this course for a while. So finally I got back. I'm like, look, this is this is to honor Matt in a lot of ways. This is the work that I think everybody should be doing. And let's say we have right now, we're you know, there's about 1.5 million cancers being treated, life threatening cancers. And out of that 30%, we can prevent 30% of those recurrences. We're talking, so say 1.5 million. Now, we're going to get a little mathy here. 1.5 million people with curable cancers. We care about 1.2 of them right now, but 30% of those 1.2 will recur. So you can drop that recurrence rate down by 30% if you do these things and no one's forcing you to do it, that's the thing. They'll just set you back your life. But one thing I found is that the life that you got is the life that created the situation that got you sick. So in a lot of ways, you have to take responsibility. Like you said, you have to not be a victim in that moment. Say, you know what? Yeah, I did have a little bit of part to play. Maybe I should have dropped £20. Maybe, maybe I shouldn't be getting so angry. Maybe I should deal with that reserve and maybe I should do some work on forgiveness, you know, So this course gives you the permission to do it in those safe spaces. That's beautiful. And I think. Well, and you said it earlier, and it is. And I was I was really proud of Matt. And as his older brother. When you said that, well, the first time we met, you said, you know, I said, thank you for all that you've done to help Matt and and educate Matt. And your words back to me were that, well, Matt taught me, you know, so for first someone is learned and and well educated and all have all the empirical data behind it to say, Matt taught you well, that's pretty cool. It is. So it is because, you know, I was sitting there, I go, man, you know, why haven't I put this course out? I'm like, Wow, I don't know if anybody wants it. So. So I had this thought in my head that was stopping me, right? I go, Do you think do you think Matt would have just. No. He's like, So he started the podcast. When you became stage four, it's like it's like, why would you, you know, if you're being rational, why would you start something new when you know you're going to you know, you're going to pass? But that's not how he thought. He's just like, I'm going to help people. I want to do this thing. I want to do this podcast, I'm going to do this is going to help a lot of people to share my experience. And I just said, I go. I go, What? You're you're not doing the exact same thing that you were helping him to do. That makes no sense. So you need to go ahead and move forward with what you're doing to honor Matt, but to honor yourself, to to move forward in this work so you can put it out there and other people will be helped. And and that's really what it's about, right? So to me, this course is honoring Matt more than anything else in the work of moving forward. Well, Ryan, and then we're going to wrap up here pretty soon, but I really want to thank you for for that message. And boy, I I'm holding back tears, but they're tears of gratitude. Believe that. And please know that I'm just grateful for your friendship with Matt, your careful guidance with Matt and now that we were able to reflect on his life and what a life of gratitude meant and what it can be to all those listeners out there, it's I encourage all the listeners out there to read Roy's book, Healing Before You're Cured. It is a life changing book, but please don't just read it. Please try to implement some of those wonderful life lessons into your life and incorporate those. And Roy mentioned having a five line gratitude journal each night. But Roy, as we close here, if there's anything, any final thoughts on, you know, Matt and his life and anything you'd want to share with the listeners. Yeah, I would just say it in the end too. And you can comment this too. I think his integrity in that way he was living. It was real. It wasn't something he was doing just in front of other people. He was doing it all the time. And I think I think that integrity is really important for it to be real for yourself, because if you're only doing it for show, whatever you're doing your life, you'll know in the end that you're false. And that that I think is the thing that really inspires people is that integrity. And he had that and and that's something I aspire to, too. Well, I agree and I, I witnessed that as well. And you articulated it so beautifully, Roy, I'm so grateful that we met through Matt and Mary. Your book is inspired, Matt and many others to work on our four houses of health and find healing in our lives. While Matt certainly met many roadblocks, his dedication, focus and work ethic and willingness to change helped us. Healing journey. There's no question. Roy, I know our listening audience will be inspired to draw from your knowledge research and your careful advice. I'm so inspired by your work that you have done and that you continue to do. Today. Our listeners think about Roy's comments and how you can incorporate those in your lives. There are three things everyone can do each day, and Matt always reminded us, and I'm going to close our episode here with those same three thoughts find the courage to be grateful regardless of how powerful the storm is, be truly present to those you're with. Pay attention to what you're feeding your mind, your body and your soul. Again, our guest today was Dr. Roy Von Tomah. For the listeners who enjoy this show, please share with your friends. Comment. Download it and subscribe. With gratitude. Matt Listeners. Until the next time, find the courage to be grateful. Godspeed, my friends.