11/03/2025
50 miles! Can you believe it! 50 miles! Just yesterday my son, Josh, and I participated in the Bike the Coast event and rode the 50-mile ride. I can’t even tell you how epic that was for me. It’s not that I’ve never ridden 50 miles before. You can look back and see all the different rides I’ve posted about. You can even see that about 6 months ago, Josh and I rode 63 miles. But the reason why this is so epic, is because it was on November 2, 2021, when I received the official word, prostate cancer. Prostate cancer with a Gleeson score of 8-9. Extremely aggressive stage 4 prostate cancer with metastases in my lymph nodes in my neck, near my heart, in my abdomen, and as I’d find out later, in my groin.
It was four years ago when my life changed. Four years ago I found out why I hadn’t felt well for the last five to six months; why I constantly felt like I had a low-grade flu. I still remember the whirlwind. The news came by phone. It was my urologist who broke the news. He called because he wanted to get everything moving as quickly as possible. He said that it was a very rare and very aggressive cancer. He told me the start of the treatment process we would follow. He set up appointments for me over the next 3 weeks. On the third, I was scheduled for a CT Scan. On the eighth, I would come in for my first injection of Firmagon. Thirty days later I would receive my first Lupron injection, which I would then receive every 6 months. On the twelfth, I met with my oncologist for the first time and that was when everything became real. Up to that point I could pretend it was happening to someone else. I could imagine that the diagnosis of stage 4 was not that bad. But when I met with my oncologist, the truth of my situation crashed down on me like a wave crashing down on a surfer, knocking me off my board and leaving me spinning underwater, not really knowing which way was up.
We talked for quite a while. I’ve said in the past that I spent a couple of hours with him. I know it really wasn’t a couple of hours, but he did take time with me. He answered all my questions and he walked me through options. I know I was in his office for at least 45 minutes, possibly longer. When it came to Chemo, he didn’t force me and he didn’t fight me. He was willing to see how the Hormone blockers would work. But he told me that they weren’t a cure. We’d do it until it didn’t work anymore, then we’d try something else. A couple days later I had a bone scan, thankfully it hadn’t metastasized into my bones! A few days after that I met with another doctor over the phone and on November 22, I met with my urologist again and we went over the results of all the scans I had that month.
I don’t remember when it was, but it was sometime between the very end of October and the first week or so of November that Josh and I went for a two-mile bike ride. It was only a few weeks after my biopsy, and I was afraid that my bicycling days were done. Not merely because I was trying to ride a bike too soon after a biopsy, and it was very difficult to sit on my bike, but also, because I felt weak and used up. I felt like my strength was used up and that my health was failing. I was afraid that I would be sick for the rest of my life and that I wouldn’t have the energy or the strength to ride my bike the way I loved to.
Fast forward to yesterday. Nearly four years to the day after receiving my diagnosis, I’m out and riding fifty miles for the sheer fun of it. Now, I know that not everyone will see riding fifty miles as fun, but it’s what I love. Even though the last ten miles were exhausting as we rode into the wind all the way back to the finish line, I am so thankful even for that! Had I not known about Gerson, I’m sure my riding days would have been done. But here I am happier, healthier, and stronger because of the Gerson therapy. Though I’m not completely healed, I’m so very close. I like to say that I’m 85 to 90% healthy. I figure I still have at least six months if not a year more before I finally get to the point of being cancer free.
I know that it might sound like a lot of time, especially when most people follow the protocol for two years. Honestly, the last four years have been nothing more than a drop in the bucket of my life. They went by so quickly that it’s hard to believe it was four years ago I received my diagnosis. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been following this amazing protocol for the last three and a half years! But without it, I don’t know where I would be. I don’t know what kind of health I would have. Even through my most difficult healing days I knew I was regaining my health. Though the going was slow at times, and there were days I was worried that I was going backwards rather than forwards, today, my health has nearly completely returned. My friends and colleagues all talk about how good, I look, how healthy I appear, and how amazing it is that when they see how far I’ve come.
This, my friends, is what awaits you. Though we all have different journeys and heal at different rates, as I love to say, keep fighting and keep moving forward. Keep following the process and trusting the amazing health system that Dr. Gerson established. Keep fighting and keep moving forward, because you, too, will begin to regain your health. You, too, will start to have better days. You, too, will start to see that you are enjoying more and more healthy days and fewer and fewer healing days. Keep fighting and keep moving forward, because, before you know it, you’ll be able to take up that hobby you love, travel again, get back on your bicycle, or simply ________. Though it is terrifying when we receive any diagnosis, though it can be difficult to start, through there are times when we find that we are not healing as quickly as we hoped, before we know it, we find ourselves walking out on that beautiful vista of healing and enjoying things that we worried that were left behind for good. So, no matter what, keep fighting, keep moving forward!
David Shilling
