Speaker 1: This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Dherny. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: this is Taylor Dane on Let's Be Clear. I've been
Speaker 1: making music for somebody told me and reminded me thirty
Speaker 1: seven years today, since nineteen eighty seven, and obviously way
Speaker 1: before that. But my first song came out in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven, like tell it to my heart and prove
Speaker 1: your love. I'll always love you, love will lead you back.
Speaker 1: This has been a very very interesting couple of years
Speaker 1: for me. Something very close to my heart these days
Speaker 1: is reaching out to the cancer community. It's become a
Speaker 1: part of my lifestyle talking about my own personal journey,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to share that with you today and
Speaker 1: hope that we will make more people more aware and
Speaker 1: more health conscious, and more women to make their checkups
Speaker 1: and their health priority. I'm honored to be a guest
Speaker 1: host here today on Shannon's show and podcast and to
Speaker 1: share my story with you today. And part of my
Speaker 1: story is very simple. In my fifties, in my early fifties,
Speaker 1: everybody's like, have you had a colonoscopy? Have you had
Speaker 1: a colonoscopy? Have you gone for your mammograms, have you
Speaker 1: gone for your mammagas you know, we get these notifications
Speaker 1: and we get you know, told from our friends and
Speaker 1: you know, just in general. And by fifty four I
Speaker 1: had not gone for ancolonoscopy yet. I said, eh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to try a virtual one. So I did that,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately the results came back very oblique, and I
Speaker 1: mean that is just non committed to anything. So then
Speaker 1: I had to go a step further. So then I
Speaker 1: said I might as well just going for the colonoscopy,
Speaker 1: which was what was suggested originally. This was twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: so not that long ago. Two years ago. I had
Speaker 1: the surgery in August ninth, because by July twentieth I
Speaker 1: was told after my colonoscopy that he had to remove
Speaker 1: seven poulaps. I didn't know I was creating polyps. That
Speaker 1: turned me into a very deep search for DNA, doing
Speaker 1: testing seeing what was genetically in my family. My parents
Speaker 1: never stupp with cancer. That's not in my genetics that
Speaker 1: I know of in my family line, and it was
Speaker 1: a real wake up call. He removed seven polyps and
Speaker 1: then he says, you need to come back in six months.
Speaker 1: Nothing here came out highly aggressive, but we need to
Speaker 1: keep a certain eye on you, and I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I just figured that would be the end. He cut
Speaker 1: all the polyps out. I went back six months later now,
Speaker 1: July twenty twenty two, and he cut probably another seven
Speaker 1: I had. And I got a call and I was
Speaker 1: used to this now and I was going every six months.
Speaker 1: That was part of what I knew I had to do. Now.
Speaker 1: He was very clear on that, and he goes, well,
Speaker 1: we got your test results day afternoon. Let me call
Speaker 1: you on Monday, but we need to talk about one of,
Speaker 1: you know, the biopsies I did. And he goes on
Speaker 1: a Monday, I spoke to him and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of your one of your poll ups tested highly aggressive, aggressively.
Speaker 1: We need to do, you know, surgery cut. But the
Speaker 1: good news is that this is highly early detection. The
Speaker 1: bad news is, just tell me what you want to do.
Speaker 1: You want to cut the whole colon. Well, you want
Speaker 1: to do a partial, which is called the collector me
Speaker 1: and I was like wow, Now I'm sitting here at
Speaker 1: fifty seven going WHOA. Okay. So I spent one year
Speaker 1: going back and forth. This is what it tells you.
Speaker 1: Between six months where I had no cancer to now
Speaker 1: having an aggressive form of cancer to then saying you
Speaker 1: ten days to decide what you want me to cut,
Speaker 1: not how, but what I felt. And I've done since then,
Speaker 1: done a very strategic every six months. I only decided
Speaker 1: to cut twelve inches of my colon, which was all
Speaker 1: around the infected area or the cancer area. I chose
Speaker 1: not to do a full removal of my colon. But again,
Speaker 1: early detection is the only thing that saved me. That's
Speaker 1: quite frank because within six months I had such an
Speaker 1: aggressive form of cancer. I went in on August nineth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and I had surgery, I had removal,
Speaker 1: and from there it went to quite another level. Nick
Speaker 1: the blood vessel developed us in an infection a hematoma.
Speaker 1: Months later, twenty five pounds later. I did not because
Speaker 1: of the early detection. I was cancer free after he
Speaker 1: cut me. I still go every six months because there's
Speaker 1: no guarantee and because I didn't remove the colon and
Speaker 1: we didn't see any signs of that. And I'm very,
Speaker 1: very committed now to health and wellness, and that means
Speaker 1: on a whole, very extreme level, because the healing that
Speaker 1: I needed to go through was so extreme, because I've
Speaker 1: developed an infection while in the hospital and while recovering
Speaker 1: from the surgery, so I take it very seriously. I
Speaker 1: did not experience one symptom. Like I said, within six months,
Speaker 1: I had aggressive cancer. And only because I went in
Speaker 1: from my scheduled colonoscopy that I did and personally pushed
Speaker 1: the book because most of them will say come back
Speaker 1: every five years. But now when I'm reveling, I'm developing polyps.
Speaker 1: So I went. Now, since my surgery and my cancer recovery,
Speaker 1: I've gone had three other colonoscopies because do the math
Speaker 1: every six month, and they've cut seven polyps one time,
Speaker 1: four polyps another time, and I'm just fortunate none of
Speaker 1: them have developed into cancer. At this point. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to face. What goes through your mind is
Speaker 1: you know, I've always been a very strong, kind of
Speaker 1: independent thinker, So what went through my mind was, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I do, What do I need to do,
Speaker 1: what do I have to do to get through this?
Speaker 1: And I'm very grateful to the doctors and the therapies
Speaker 1: I did do, but not until I got truly sick
Speaker 1: because doing the surgery and removal, I became very ill.
Speaker 1: There's no guarantees when you cut yourself open, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen and how much more they're going to find.
Speaker 1: Prognosis is for me now daily that I go every
Speaker 1: six months and we see and we go from there.
Speaker 1: There's so many developments, you know, medically and as far
Speaker 1: as stem selling, as far as research, and I know
Speaker 1: they'll have a cure for it, and I know they
Speaker 1: will also find another way. So the surgery was my choice.
Speaker 1: It was a success, but being that sick and being
Speaker 1: a month and a half in and out of the hospital,
Speaker 1: I also woke up to a scar that was because
Speaker 1: they had developed a problem in there. Obviously there was
Speaker 1: a flooding of fluid. So it changed my life, but
Speaker 1: it also opened me up to a different reality of
Speaker 1: the value of life, the gratitude and also purpose and
Speaker 1: knowing I have a purpose. Obviously I've been very successful
Speaker 1: in my career, but it opened me up to people
Speaker 1: and companies that were looking for people with voices that
Speaker 1: have gone through something like this, but in a very
Speaker 1: grateful way, because I learned a lot. I've learned a
Speaker 1: lot through this process of healing and helping heal others.
Speaker 1: I really see them and I see you, and I
Speaker 1: understand what it means to have a platform now like this,
Speaker 1: and why WA Cole reached out to me and then
Speaker 1: and asked me to be their brand ambassador for WA
Speaker 1: Cole and for their fifth to the Cure campaign, and
Speaker 1: why October is a month of breast awareness early detection
Speaker 1: for any of these Breast cancer has become a big,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking point for me obviously making sure we
Speaker 1: get in and do our appointments, because the only way
Speaker 1: you can knock this out is by getting it early.
Speaker 1: And then you're really talking about less wear and tear
Speaker 1: from radiation, everything, and it really makes all the difference
Speaker 1: in the world. I'm changed because I wanted to I
Speaker 1: wanted to live. You make a choice. I was laying
Speaker 1: there and I being so sick. It wasn't necessarily the cancer.
Speaker 1: It wasn't chemo, it wasn't radiation. It was such a
Speaker 1: bad infection and around my pancreas and my lungs and
Speaker 1: my spleen from the removal. Once you go in and
Speaker 1: you cut, things change for me personally. When I was
Speaker 1: given the diagnosis, it was by a doctor that now
Speaker 1: I had spent a year to two years doing colonoscpties
Speaker 1: with and monitoring. Because I was a polyp developer, there
Speaker 1: was no doubt in my mind. Every time I went in,
Speaker 1: He's like, I cut one to seven, eight just didn't
Speaker 1: even matter. Six months in between there was always pollups,
Speaker 1: There was always an issue. So when I went in
Speaker 1: that time two years ago, this August, and when I
Speaker 1: got his results back and when we talked about it,
Speaker 1: and he was like, he went from like, yes, we'll
Speaker 1: just keep monitoring, you too, make a decision. You have
Speaker 1: two weeks highly aggressive and let's cut your whole colon out.
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, And he goes, well, you could
Speaker 1: cut a portion, but he goes, we're not talking like
Speaker 1: an inch, We're talking about twelve inches. Has to be
Speaker 1: completely around it. This is a really rooted type of
Speaker 1: pollop and this whole area needs to go. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I had to trust his diagnosis, but also I did,
Speaker 1: do you know second? You know first and second opinions.
Speaker 1: Once you look at that biopsy, you know it is
Speaker 1: what it is. The big scare was do I remove
Speaker 1: my entire call in for this? And I just felt,
Speaker 1: now it's not the time to do that. I just
Speaker 1: felt for me personally, and at that choice, I didn't.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not young enough that I would say, you, oh,
Speaker 1: if it was a hysterectomy, would I have opted for that. No.
Speaker 1: But this was a call in situation, and I also felt,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in my fifties, I feel strong enough.
Speaker 1: I don't want to remove my colon. I want to
Speaker 1: see what we can do, and I'm willing to go
Speaker 1: through the process of monitoring this and keeping on my
Speaker 1: early detection. He kind of was didn't really at that point.
Speaker 1: He kind of checked out. He was like, surgically, I
Speaker 1: have to get in there now. It doesn't matter. You decide,
Speaker 1: and he kind of was like, Okay, you want to
Speaker 1: do a collect to me, fine, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: cut out like a hunker stuff. And believe me, when
Speaker 1: I woke up and I was cut from here to here,
Speaker 1: he cut out a hunk of stuff. So I think
Speaker 1: at this point it's safe for me to say that
Speaker 1: at my age and being through my fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: now we've all been touched by cancer, a friend, a
Speaker 1: family member. You know for sure. I've had girlfriends that
Speaker 1: have really fought the hard, the hard fight, and quite
Speaker 1: frankly radiation and really getting into things. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: getting into tough scenarios and removal and surgeries. And my
Speaker 1: mom even is going through something now, whether it's cervically,
Speaker 1: and my mom's much older, and yet she's still thinking
Speaker 1: of going in and cutting. And I actually, because of
Speaker 1: all the research and now everything I went through, you know,
Speaker 1: my first inclination. For some it's all about age and
Speaker 1: what you can tolerate and what you can handle, what
Speaker 1: your body can handle. Again, back to early detection. That's
Speaker 1: what saved my life because there is no cancer in
Speaker 1: my family history that we're aware of. Yet. My mother
Speaker 1: now but she's eighty nine, is having very you know,
Speaker 1: her paths were coming back very abnormal. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I don't want you going into radiation, and I also
Speaker 1: don't want you to cut. You're at that very pre
Speaker 1: pre pre and if your doctor's willing to scan you
Speaker 1: and really keep you under close watch every six months,
Speaker 1: then this is something you monitor and you really just
Speaker 1: monitor it and if it's not growing then and you're
Speaker 1: not glowing, then don't be cutting. So if it's just
Speaker 1: staying as is, you know, I understand that there's different levels,
Speaker 1: and I understand what people are very nervous about lymphatic
Speaker 1: where breast tissue moves. But I am also a fan
Speaker 1: of not cutting if you don't have to, because once
Speaker 1: you go in, things get moved around. My body's not
Speaker 1: the same, it does not react the same. I do
Speaker 1: not go to the bathroom the same. I mean, I
Speaker 1: am definitely was put back together after they took everything out.
Speaker 1: Asked ninety percent of people who have been in the hospital,
Speaker 1: a lot of them get sick and get sepsist and
Speaker 1: a lot of things just from opening up the said wound.
Speaker 1: And it's really shocking numbers. These are big decisions, they
Speaker 1: really are, and any doctor will tell you get the
Speaker 1: hell out. And they tried to get me out within
Speaker 1: four days. But I mean I had a catheter. I
Speaker 1: had I couldn't and within four days they were trying
Speaker 1: to get me out of the hospital, and I knew
Speaker 1: something was wrong. My action was just swelling and swelling
Speaker 1: and swelling, and I didn't feel good. And then I
Speaker 1: did get you know, but they don't want you in
Speaker 1: the hospital either, because of course you're you're completely you're immused,
Speaker 1: you're completely open to whatever infection and by and large.
Speaker 1: There was something going on inside me I had I
Speaker 1: was filling up with blood. And again my situation personally
Speaker 1: was a nick blood vessel around the colon, around where
Speaker 1: they cut around all that, and it turned into a
Speaker 1: disastrous and a horrible, horrible infection and which took months
Speaker 1: months and pick a line and then me just dragging
Speaker 1: through things for three four months, meaning took me that
Speaker 1: long to just get back to say I could take
Speaker 1: a breath off my lungs like my lungs had been
Speaker 1: you know, aspirated and everything, just the fluid, it just
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop. So that's my journey. So I look at
Speaker 1: my mother, who I can help, who's not a cancer,
Speaker 1: not at a point where it's cancerous, it's just level.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, just let's watch you. Let's just watch you.
Speaker 1: That's all we got to do. Don't cut if you
Speaker 1: don't have to, but when you have to cut away,
Speaker 1: get it out. Just take care of yourself afterwards, get
Speaker 1: in that hyperbarrack, watch your effect, Be very very careful
Speaker 1: because infection is really the killer. That's where people go.
Speaker 1: If they get pneumonia, they get sepsis. That's really what
Speaker 1: happens I've met some real warriors out there, and it's
Speaker 1: an honor too in some levels to be part of
Speaker 1: the club. But I also understand the journey is long
Speaker 1: and arduous and it's complicated, but some people are up
Speaker 1: for the task, and then some of the people need
Speaker 1: a lot of support, and that's nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 1: you know. Being a voice for wack Hole has helped
Speaker 1: me knowing what they're doing for the women, for the
Speaker 1: community of cancer survivors, and putting their money where where
Speaker 1: their mouth is, you know, the Susan B. G Comann
Speaker 1: Foundation and what and what what cool has been doing
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, They've raised over six million dollars
Speaker 1: for the fight against breast cancer and helping Susan G.
Speaker 1: Comann Foundation and helping women. I've done enough and a
Speaker 1: number of these these appearances now for Dillard's and Belk,
Speaker 1: they're number one Rea Tailors stores. When women get a
Speaker 1: chance to meet me and also will come in and
Speaker 1: get what's called the free brofitting. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but a free brofiting is probably life changing
Speaker 1: for most women, because God knows, when I had a proper,
Speaker 1: real correct profiting that alone and knowing five dollars of
Speaker 1: your money is donated directly to this foundation. And what
Speaker 1: you know, again, walk Hole has done with some of
Speaker 1: their bigger stories like Dillards and their retailers and Belk's.
Speaker 1: It's quite amazing. And I love the stories and I
Speaker 1: understand the stories, and I love when the women tell
Speaker 1: me I'm double misseectomies, I'm free cancer free right now,
Speaker 1: and you know, meeting you and understanding, and I said,
Speaker 1: but your broad don't fit, so let's get in there.
Speaker 1: Let's buy a new bra and let's get a free fitting.
Speaker 1: Because it's all it's everything's a win win here when
Speaker 1: you win at your health and you slow it down.
Speaker 1: And that's really what I felt. This experience as being
Speaker 1: the spokespersons has given me this platform, but it also
Speaker 1: was a platform I never asked for. But it also
Speaker 1: turned into such a blessing. I meet people on their
Speaker 1: path where they are at the moment, and people need
Speaker 1: to be surrounded by people that understand that moment. And
Speaker 1: oftentimes women I speak as experienced put ourselves last, and
Speaker 1: so this was a this has been an incredible journey.
Speaker 1: Now and as being a spokesperson for walkholl you guys,
Speaker 1: can all get involved with Fit for the Cure. You
Speaker 1: can donate to the for the Cure campaign for wak hole,
Speaker 1: and you can go in and get your free brofitings,
Speaker 1: and you can do that online virtually as well, because
Speaker 1: they the numbers are extraordinary. And think about it, six
Speaker 1: million dollars over the course of these years walkhole has
Speaker 1: donated for breast cancer awareness and of course the fight
Speaker 1: against it. And I'm ever grateful to be and that's
Speaker 1: what's been shifted in my mindset. I'm ever grateful and
Speaker 1: I'm ever proud, and I always say, be a warrior
Speaker 1: for yourself, be your general. And it's hard when you're sick,
Speaker 1: and that's when you rely on the people around you.
Speaker 1: But be a warrior. You still have to advocate for yourself.
Speaker 1: And that means taking your tests. That means going in
Speaker 1: annually and doing your mamograms, and that means going in
Speaker 1: and doing your colonoscopy and getting checked early detection. On
Speaker 1: a happier note and on a more practical note, what
Speaker 1: I do during the week is I do a lot
Speaker 1: of things that keep me physically. What I learned to
Speaker 1: do between doing the hyberbaric oxygen that helped my infection
Speaker 1: go down to ivy, you know, drips. I do maybe
Speaker 1: twice a month. It just helps me. It's just another
Speaker 1: self loving part of my medical and holistic care and
Speaker 1: love for myself, and I feel good when I do that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: working out and I did pilates after I had surgery.
Speaker 1: The biggest difficulty was just to sit up because I
Speaker 1: lost all my strength, and so pilates ended up becoming
Speaker 1: such a big part of my and has become such
Speaker 1: a big part of my daily practice of wellness and
Speaker 1: again being a warrior for myself and feeling strong because
Speaker 1: that's way you want to feel. As far as music,
Speaker 1: music has never been more forefront in my career. We're
Speaker 1: working on our new show. I'm very excited people see
Speaker 1: me out on the road right now because I'm bigger
Speaker 1: and more badass than ever. I feel it. I just
Speaker 1: feel the love that warms my heart. So I want
Speaker 1: to thank you all for joining me here on Shannon's podcast.
Speaker 1: We have lost a beautiful soul, but she continues to
Speaker 1: resonate through this podcast. So amen, I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for having me on today. So let's be clear, guys,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening and of you missus Taylor Dane
Speaker 1: h