Thank you everyone who has donated. As of me writing this, you all have sent me $6,800. I’ve enjoyed getting to see different names pop up on my phone and see people from all areas of my life donating. There have been people who I interact with regularly, people I haven’t seen in a long time, and people I’ve never met before all donating and it’s been encouraging to see how generous people have been. It definitely relieves some of the financial stress.

Some of you have donated to me directly to avoid some of the GoFundMe fees, and I’ve been able to manually log them on GoFundMe to ensure the GoFundMe amount shows the actual amount I’ve received. The fee is relatively small, so I’m not too worried about it, but I’m obviously more than happy to share my Zelle or Venmo with anyone if they prefer that.

Treatment Update

I am now in the execution phase of this plan that formed last week and am getting into a routine of radiation in the mornings at BAMC and Root Causes therapies in the afternoons. While my current life of treatment full-time feels incredibly strange, it’s consistent day by day which helps me stay on top of things and maintain a routine.

The biggest update from this week is that I met with a nutritionist from the Root Causes clinic and have a much needed new dietary plan. My current diet is mixture of intermediate fasting, a paleo diet, and a keto diet. From my understanding of it, cancer thrives in environments of irregular metabolic activity and continuous sources of glucose. I’m therefore sticking to only organic / clean foods and am eating:

• Primarily vegetables
• Eggs, fish, or poultry with each meal
• Occasional berries and sweet potatoes
• Lots of tea and no more than one cup of black coffee with a meal

This also involves cutting out:

• Dairy
• Grain
• Corn
• Sugar
• Fruit
• White Potatoes
• Juicing (PTL!)

In addition to restricting what foods I’m eating, I am also only eating 3-square meals a day without any snacks, and am fasting for 13-hours each night. I’m also doing a mixture of light cardio and some easy weight lifting at least once a day and sleeping for at least 8-hours a night.

If you were to tell me 2-months ago that this would be my diet, I wouldn’t have possibly believed that I could stick to it, but the Lord has given me far more self control than ever before. The mixture of the far less demanding lifestyle and the life or death consequences have really helped me prioritize what I need to. Life is a balance between taking care of yourself but not idolizing your health above what other things the Lord has called you. While I likely won’t keep up all of these habits once I’m cancer free and back to a normal life, the Lord has given me an unusual opportunity to reset my life after a busy / stressful past few years and I’m doing my best to be grateful for the opportunity and learn from it.

Professional Treatment

Once I found out I had cancer, I cried, prayed, and called my parents. After that, the engineering side of my mind kicked in and I started researching how I was going to cure it. One thing I saw many times was that traditional oncologist tend to minimize the effects of diet and lifestyle on cancer and overly prioritize finding a “magic pill” that’s going to make your cancer go away without any effort on your part. I had no lack of input and advice from doctors in the conventional oncology world, but felt like I was having to learn the natural side of things completely myself. There are several helpful resources such as Chris Beat Cancer, ChatGPT, scientific publications, and testimonials that help with the research, but it’s overwhelming to try and chart everything by yourself. One thing that comes up consistently is the benefits of a plant based diet with little to no meat and lots of juicing. After doing some research, I went on this diet for about 6-weeks, but in that time didn’t see any change in the tumor size and lost over 20-lbs. As I got on the scale every morning and watched my weight drop no matter how much salad I ate, I was starting to be concerned about my upcoming surgery and how much longer I would be able to sustain my diet. I was eager to meet with the nutritionist from the Root Causes clinic who specializes in cancer and got that chance this week. My diet has remained somewhat the same, but has added back in some meat which will help me build some muscle mass before my surgery.

Meeting with the nutritionist made me think more about the difference between paying for a professional and trying to figure things out on my own. I’ve always been both a control freak and willing to try new things, which often means I end up trying to save myself some money and learn how to do things myself. Through this process though, I’m learning that my body isn’t simple like a car, and while doing my own research and staying informed is important, I am well outside my expertise and need to learn to trust professionals. I am so grateful that my job is to just “quarterback my care” and rely on the experience of both the professional Conventional Oncologist and the professional Integrative Oncologist. This has been a humbling experience overall and learning to trust other people is a part of that.

Two quick caveats:

• While I lost 20 lbs, I definitely had some excess weight to lose. I’ve lost some muscle definition, but am still lifting about as much weight as before and am well within a healthy weight.
• From my understanding, a fully plant based diet can be very effective against cancers that grow (and therefore shrink) quickly or are hormone dependent. Since I’m dealing with a slow growing sarcoma in my muscle and not something like lymphoma, I now think I would reach a dangerously low weight on a fully plant diet before I would see any effect on the cancer.

Humbling Not Humiliation

This has been a very humbling time for me. Shortly before my diagnosis, I had achieved a few successes and was hitting the ground running in my professional career. The cancer diagnosis felt like running full speed into an invisible brick wall, and as I’ve picked myself back up and looked around, I’ve been forced to recognize how much of my value I was putting into my professional successes. I’ve been reading in James and came across the following verses in James 1:9-11 “Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flowers falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.” I tend to take pride in my ‘riches’ which right now definitely aren’t financial, but are the professional successes I’ve had. The cancer diagnosis has broadened my perspective and forced me to see my life on a more eternal perspective before it led to me “fad[ing] away in the midst of [my] pursuits.”

One thing that’s struck me is how gracious the Lord’s been in the method He has allowed to humble me and how He’s provided for me through the entire process. I’ve known people who have been caught in different forms of sin that resulted in aspects of their lives being shattered and ultimately their humiliation has they’ve had to explain to others why their lives have fallen apart. I am just as sinful as those friends. The Lord could have taken a step back and allowed me to follow any number of sins to their natural end point and gotten my attention after I had been humiliated when my sin came into the light. However, the Lord chose to wrestle my attention to Him through something out of my control and then provide in so many ways such as housing, an income, and the best treatment plan I could have asked for. The divine tap on the shoulder was there in both cases, but I’m thankful it led to my humbling and not my humiliation.

Thank You Again

Thank you again to everyone who’s been praying, encouraging me, and have donated. I have been very encouraged by how much people care and the encouragement has made a massive difference. I also want to re-emphasize that I appreciate the text messages and the questions. I made the website to try and communicate more broadly to people, but I think some people have been hesitant to text after I made the website. I am in a really unique position right now and have the time to respond to messages, so please don’t let the website stop you.

Here’s the donation link again: https://gofund.me/fa99d5dd7

I don’t have any great photos to share this week, but here’s a photo of the enterence to Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC) where I’m doing my conventional treatments. I think it’s a pretty cool looking building.

Thank you,
Ryder Swan