Topics
- Something wasn’t right [00:02:53]
- Opting out of western medicine [00:08:14]
- The Gerson Therapy Technique [00:11:27]
- Cancer is more than a physical disease [00:16:47]
- The next stage of healing [00:20:00]
- Amy’s life today [00:28:35]
- How cancer changed her musical performance [00:34:53]
- Meaning to life [00:38:04]
Links and Show Notes:
- Submit questions here or use #FIKApodcast on social media.
- Gerson Institute, Mexico
- Colette Chase
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FIKA PODCAST EPISODE 014: Amy’s Self-Healing from Cancer
Erica Eriksdotter: Hi lovelies! It’s time for FIKA! The Swedish word that means bonding and connecting with friends over coffee or tea. This is the place to be for real talks and discussions about everything from healing, fine arts, motherhood and entrepreneurship to health and fitness. The focus is connecting the dots through consciousness and elevating how consciousness is directed through each guest’s career and life path. My name is Erica Eriksdotter, fine arts painter and owner of Studio Eriksdotter. I’m a certified Intra-Dimensional Healer and PR and Social Media Strategist. I grew up in Sweden and have lived in the DC area since 2000. I’m a modern woman, connected to Self who brings meaning to life through an earth centered truth.
Erica Eriksdotter: Amy McCabe is joining me again for fika today. In episode 11 she talked about her life as a professional trumpet player in a premier military band who often plays at the White House. She also talked about what led her to become a full-time trumpet player and kind of walked us through the path that led her to where she is today, including the moment in grad school when she hit a bump and discovered that she had a rare form of cancer and that would shape the the rest of her life. So, I asked her back today to talk about that and her journey of self-healing and how it was like at age 25 when you think that you have your whole life ahead of and your following your passion and you finally figured out what you want to do with your life and then you discover that you’re actually might be dying. So, on that cheery note, Amy, HI!!
Amy McCabe: Hello!
Erica Eriksdotter: Hello!
Amy McCabe: I feel so alive right now!
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing] I know!
Amy McCabe: [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: For those of you who did not listen to Episode 11, Amy, as I said, is an insanely talented musician. She is a professional trumpet player who often plays at the White House and all around the world and at funerals at the National Arlington Cemetery. She grew up in Illinois and moved to D.C. in 2006 and I have known her since 2010 when we met in an energy workshop and have been kindred spirit ever since. So, let’s dive in to this difficult topic. But, I’m very grateful that you’re here and talking about it with us.
- Something wasn’t right [00:02:53]
Amy McCabe: Yeah. I think this is really cool what you’re doing Erica. I think it’s important to hear all sorts of stories and I will start off with a caveat that all of my choices and everything I went through was all my story and all of my decisions. I would never [laughing] …I guess I want everyone to make decisions for their own self and if I inspire you to take a different path, that’s great. But, I would still say that if anyone is listening to this and is in a similar situation to really listen to their own gut as far as advice and things like that and to doctors and all that sort of stuff.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yes. Neither one of us are doctors, so these are not medical advice, like you said.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. I guess I just wanted to say that. I think that’s the huge lesson, at least that I learned through my path of illness is that you do have to listen to yourself. You are your own true healer and any decision that you make will be the right one because it was the right one for you.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah. [laughing] So, in grad school, how did you get the diagnosis?
Amy McCabe: Umm, I wasn’t feeling well. I’d had a really rough summer. I was working a couple jobs and not taking very good care of my mental or physical self for sure. Found out that I had been bleeding a lot from the wrong hole. [laughing] That’s the professional way to say that. I’m sorry!
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing]
Amy McCabe: Do you want to delete that? I don’t know how to say it!
Erica Eriksdotter: No, go ahead!
Amy McCabe: [laughing] Okay. There was a lot of blood in the toilet and that immediately made me know that something was wrong. But, to be fair, I think I had been ignoring some signs for years. It turns out that I found out that I had a pretty large rectal tumor that was right there, large and in charge at that point. So, the first thing I needed to do was get that removed and fortunately had a wonderful, wonderful surgeon who is amazing and did a really great job for me and I’m very thankful for his portion of my healing path. He’s a really great guy in Chicago. So, yeah, that was the first step. At that point, it was just that tumor there and pretty soon after that, about 2 or 3 months, it had quickly spread to other parts in my body. The lymph node chain, my lungs, a couple spots in my liver, my spinal cord, they thought they saw a spot in my brain at some point. Where I had a lot of relief from surgery, obviously I was not done with whatever I needed to learn. I started pursuing some other healing modalities.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah, before we go into that, because in healing that’s what we say right? As long as you have cancer, you’ve got something to learn about it. But, before we jump into that, your 25 and you had the surgery.
Amy McCabe: Mmm, hmm.
Erica Eriksdotter: But, you’re out of the hospital and then you’re going back for examinations and that when they discovered all the other stuff.
Amy McCabe: Yes, yes.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, the rare form of cancer wasn’t the rectal cancer. It was what happened afterwards? Or, is it all connected?
Amy McCabe: It was all connected. Those were metastases from the original tumor. Neuroendocrine tumors behave a little differently. They are typically resistant to chemotherapy and radiation which is how we typically like to treat cancers. We’ve had some success with that, so it’s wonderful. This does not work as well because it’s slower growing which is a blessing, in a way, but it’s also slow enough that the chemo and radiation which normally targets fast growing cells wouldn’t affect. So, it was still recommended to me to do some radiation, some chemo and after seeing some specialists, I made the decision to not do either one and to just sort of try these other things out. That’s what led me down to originally the Gerson Institute which is in Tijuana, Mexico.
- Opting out of western medicine [00:08:14]
Erica Eriksdotter: How did you find that place? Do you just Google?
Amy McCabe: I had a friend whose mother lived in San Diego and had heard good things about this place. Did a lot of research and as far…I know there are a lot of clinics down in Mexico because it’s technically illegal to treat cancer in the United States by any other means except for the chemo, radiation route, so that’s why a lot of these places go to Mexico. A lot of them are very integrous some of them are not very integrous. You just have to be really careful and suss out where the good places are. This place is, flying colors, wonderful. The Gerson Therapy is sort of this intensive routine of basically like a salt free, vegan diet with tons and tons and tons of freshly pressed juices. It’s extremely labor intensive. It was developed by this doctor in Germany in the 1940’s and it cured a lot of issues. Migraines and just tons of stuff. He started using it with his migraine patients and then was given a lot of people who were Stage IV cancer and ended up being able to bring a lot of those people back into a full physical existence. Yeah, it was really cool. It’s like probably one of the only juicing, there’s a couple others now that people can pursue, but I think it was one of the only ones at least when I was kind of going through it.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, when the cancer was popping up a little bit everywhere and you decided to forgo the medical treatments and explore this, is it Grayshon therapy?
Amy McCabe: Gerson.
Erica Eriksdotter: What was the diagnosis? What was the severity of, what phase were you in of the cancer, did they let you know?
Amy McCabe: Well, anytime it moves to a major organ, they usually call that Stage IV. So, it was in my liver, so they technically called it Stage IV but with neuroendocrine it’s a little different because it is so slow growing.
Erica Eriksdotter: Oh, okay.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. On top of that, I never wanted to know like, I did not want a timeline. I didn’t want like a, You’ve got ‘x’ amount of years to live. I one-day Googled information like that and you know [laughing] don’t do that! [laughing] I don’t know, the internet tells you so many things and that is not the story about you. You are creating your own story.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yes. Shaping your own destiny. You are in control with Spirit. So, you find this clinic and you travel to Mexico. You basically, if I understand it correctly, they basically teach you this technique?
- The Gerson Therapy Technique [00:11:27]
Amy McCabe: Right, yep, Mmm, hmm, you learn how to do it.
Erica Eriksdotter: You learn how to do it. You learn how to do various different juices and the importance of fresh ingredients and then, so what, you spent a week there, or longer?
Amy McCabe: Yeah, it was about ten days. They usually want you there for a couple weeks just so you get the routine down. You have what they call a healing crisis kind of within the first week because you are plowing so much fresh, nutritious food into your body that you have a reaction and they just want to see you through that typically. And, I did, holy cow!
Erica Eriksdotter: Oh, did you really?
Amy McCabe: Yeah, it was bad.
Erica Eriksdotter: What did you, how did you have your crisis?
Amy McCabe: I couldn’t stop throwing up for 24 hours.
Erica Eriksdotter: Oh my goodness.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. I was like, yeah, that’s not going to be me. I’m not going to go through that and then it was like WHAM! [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing] Oh, it’s always that way, isn’t it?
Amy McCabe: [laughing] Yeah.
Erica Eriksdotter: That’s not me! So, you’re at the clinic for 10 days. They teach you. You have your throwing up party and then basically you go home and you’ve got to do your routine yourself.
Amy McCabe: Tah!! Yeah.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, tell me what that routine looked like.
Amy McCabe: [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: Because it is pretty insane.
Amy McCabe: It’s crazy. I mean, you need a helper, you need like someone to like do half of it for you because… I had gotten it down to being in the kitchen for maybe 5 hours in a day. I started cutting corners just to make it only five hours because I was still going to school at this point. You’re making everything from scratch, which is great, but mostly the juicing you have to have a fresh juice made on the hour every hour. There’s a couple that will keep for a couple hours but generally you have to be around your juicer for a long time.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, basically you’re tied to the juicer while you…How do you do that while attending class? Doesn’t make sense.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. They refer people for you to talk to before you jump in and do this therapy. They referred me to a woman who had been on the U.S. Olympic Karate team who had done the Gerson Therapy as well. U.S. Olympic Karate team, talk about discipline.
Erica Eriksdotter: WOW.
Amy McCabe: She’s got discipline.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah, no kidding.
Amy McCabe: She moved next to where she was working so she could walk to work and walk home for breaks and things like that and figured out how to prep everything ahead of time so that way you could just make it all happen and still have a job. So, I kind of followed what she did. Otherwise, it’s like, super intense. I was lucky. I was feeling better. I was feeling well enough to do this. That’s the other thing, it takes a lot of energy out of you to lug around 40 pound bags of carrots and [laughing] things like that when you’re trying to do all this yourself and your trying to heal.
Erica Eriksdotter: You just saw me trying to use my $300 juicer and I was like, it won’t juice on its own!
Amy McCabe: Yeahh. I’m out!
Erica Eriksdotter: I can’t have this. I’m out and I was like…
Amy McCabe: [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: That was not being very healthy and I just couldn’t even bring myself to do that. So, you, fresh juice every hour.
Amy McCabe: Yeah.
Erica Eriksdotter: On the hour.
Amy McCabe: Mmm, hmm.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, and how long did you do this for?
Amy McCabe: I lasted a year. They recommend two years. I think they recommend three for me because of the nature of my cancer but I lasted a solid year! WINNING! I WON!! [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: I mean, that sounds amazing because I couldn’t even imagine drinking that juice every single hour for a week.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. You have to reroute to your chugging skills that I learned in college.
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing]
Amy McCabe: [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah, because it’s not the same juice but it’s not that many variations, right?
Amy McCabe: Yeah, there was a carrot-apple and then there was a green juice that I would do.
Erica Eriksdotter: Okay. Of course, when you’re doing this to survive, I mean, you’re committed so of course, I’m joking here, but clearly if its life or death then of course you are going to commit and you’re going to do whatever it takes to get there. So, you did it for 365 days.
Amy McCabe: Yeah, ish. Yeah, there was a taper at the end where I was just…Here’s the deal, this for me was like a big awakening where I started realizing that cancer is more than just a physical disease.
- Cancer is more than a physical disease [00:16:47]
Erica Eriksdotter: How did you figure that out?
Amy McCabe: Well, this program was so labor intensive and also I don’t think, I mean here we are having fika right now, going out to eat is a very social thing. Eating meals with people is very social and I had so many lovely friends that would come and have the food with me and do the thing. But, it’s like, I was missing all this stuff that I really craved. That was part of the reason why I got into music because I loved connecting with other people and now all of a sudden I was doing this thing that did not allow me to do that. It kind of pulled me away from that.
Erica Eriksdotter: It feels very lonely.
Amy McCabe: It was very lonely. It wasn’t really working I think because of that. I think because I was trying to probably do too much and also I wasn’t addressing the root causes of why I was sick.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, what led you to the next stage of your self-healing?
Amy McCabe: My friend knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew Colette [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing] Wait, what did you say!
Amy McCabe: I had a friend who knew a guy, who knew a guy…
Erica Eriksdotter: Oh, who knew guy! I was like, his name is Newgun! Like what?
Amy McCabe: No, knew a guy, who knew a guy.
Erica Eriksdotter: Who knew Colette Chase, who has been on this podcast many times.
Amy McCabe: Yeah, and it was the music world is small and I think everybody was a musician that had me connected to her. Even so, it was great timing for me to start looking at the other aspects of what was going on and to not deny the physical part but to include the mental, spiritual, emotional parts of myself that needed some serious attention and some serious healing. That’s when I started doing that.
Erica Eriksdotter: You’ve stopped the juicing. You’re back to eating normal foods, which must have been a shock for your system.
Amy McCabe: Yeah, you know, I’m not saying that some of these programs won’t help, in fact, I think they do. I think there’s a lot of good working in the anti inflammation diets. But, for me, it was not what I needed. I think again that’s the lesson here. I needed more balance with my emotional life and my spiritual health was completely out of whack. You can put 50 gallons of carrot juice down your throat but it’s not going to do anything unless you address all these other things.
- The next stage of healing [00:20:00]
Erica Eriksdotter: Mmm, hmm. So, you start your healing path with Colette. How long did you work on this symptom and the root cause of the symptom, specifically with Colette? Was it over several sessions? Was it over a year, was it less? How does it work when you have an illness and you go to a healer?
Amy McCabe: Well, for me, everybody’s different. I was in this space where I just wanted to kamikaze kick it out my body. I was like, we’re going to do this, we’re going to kick it out, I’m going to do whatever it takes. So, we worked together quite a bit at the beginning. I was still living in Chicago at this point. We talked on the phone and then I went out to work with her Colette and her teacher, Shirley [00:21:05] . Have you met Shirley, Erica?
Erica Eriksdotter: Yep, yep.
Amy McCabe: So, I worked with the two of them in person once and then did some follow up work and then took them reboundish and moved out to Washington, D.C. and then I started working with her more like full time and more as a student then at that point.
Erica Eriksdotter: By then, she had moved to Baltimore, right?
Amy McCabe: Yep, Mmm, hmm.
Erica Eriksdotter: So, you’re 26, so this is, what, 2006 at this point?
Amy McCabe: This is 2007, I think I was 27 when I started working with them which is the age of dramatic change, by the way, 27.
Erica Eriksdotter: Oh, yes it is 27. Yes.
Amy McCabe: [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: Interesting age. So, without going in depth about what you healed and what you worked out. What you are saying is that everyone’s healing path is different. What is triggering the cancer symptoms for you might be completely different than what it was for Amy. But, to get a sense of, for those people who are listening, who’s ears are perking up, oh, that’s interesting, but how the heck can you heal cancer? Colette has been on the show for a few episodes and we have touched on this topic and we’re going to the root cause very simple and in like two seconds on one of the time traveling episodes. But, for you Amy, what did this healing path look like? You touched on, without giving personal examples, what could be triggering this?
Amy McCabe: One of the first full on classes I took with Shirley and Colette was called, ‘The Original Cause of Disease’ and if anybody has heard of Louise Hay, I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, but she kind of has her own publishing company and publishes a lot of new thought books and things like that.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah.
Amy McCabe: What Shirley’s class was, was sort of a more involved version of Louise Hay’s book that’s called ‘I Can Heal My Life’, I think that’s the name of it. It’s this book that came out in the seventies. It was literally changing your thoughts based on wherever the problem was cropping up in your body and kind of repeating a mantra that would hopefully effect and starting healing something. So, if you have pain in your right knee, you say, I am safe and all of my needs are being met. For me, if you want to talk about what I was going through, intestinal stuff is like inner testing I was at this point in my life where I was going through a lot of tests both outer and inner and I completely understand why something manifested there. So, if you can start looking at these other levels than you can get to the root cause of why something might crop up for you and it’s super complicated. We’re not denying physical causes or DNA…
Erica Eriksdotter: Correct.
Amy McCabe: Or, anything like that. What did you say?
Erica Eriksdotter: I said correct.
Amy McCabe: Okay.
Erica Eriksdotter: We’re just saying that they’re ways to shift it.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. It’s all intertwined and it’s all looped together and it’s up to us to figure out what we need to either plug into or unplug in order to facilitate the healing. Sometimes, you can have an emotional healing and a mental healing and that will completely affect your body, many times. You can have just purely a physical healing and that’s that. But, it will also have a ripple effect of effecting all your other bodies too.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah. The example of just having normal stomach issues, like heartburn, that might be a symptom. Or, you might feeling stuck in your life choices and you just don’t know where to go from them. It is useful for everything. So, in Episode 11, we talked about your trumpet life, you mentioned that you were playing the trumpet for the wrong reasons.
Amy McCabe: [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: For the praise, for the accolade and for the applause. You said that manifested this type of issue in your life. So, can you talk a little bit more about that in depth?
Amy McCabe: Yeah. I mean I think, we all kind of have childhood wounds, it’s not to put the blame on the parents, but it’s just what your life you come into and it’s our job to grow up and address those, you know. I think that’s where a lot of that came from. There’s no judgement on people if that’s how they operate. Just for me, it was like that was not okay anymore. I had to find out different place to operate from. I had to upgrade the OS system.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah. When did you realize you were playing the trumpet for maybe not the most clean or more authentic reasons? Was it before or after the illness?
Amy McCabe: Definitely after. It’s still sort of an awakening. The ego is hard to release, you know. That’s a biggie. That was just one little piece of the puzzle there. I had also completely disconnected from any sort of spirituality or understanding of God. I had taken a bunch of philosophy courses and religion courses in college and just rejected any idea of God.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah.
Amy McCabe: Oh, this is busted. I had to write all these ten page papers on exactly why it was completely crap.
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing] Yeah.
Amy McCabe: It’s sort of like amputating your arm. For me, now, I’m just like how could I have ever denied that? Whatever that looks like for you. But, I had to really reintegrate that into my life, for sure.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah, that life source.
Amy McCabe: Yes, where do you source from for sure.
- Amy’s life today [00:28:35]
Erica Eriksdotter: So, you have done the clinic and the juicing for the year. Clinic for ten days and juicing for a year. You’ve been in Chicago, being on the phone with Colette for sessions. You’ve been travelling to San Antonio with Shirley and Colette, two on one healings. You’ve done the workshops. Now, you’ve moved to DC and Colette is now in Baltimore, you go see her face to face. How long has this process now gone on and how are you doing health wise at this point, when you continued seeing her?
Amy McCabe: I came to a point where I realized physically, like when I go get a CAT scan, it’s not totally clean, but what is meaning is that I still have a few spots. But, the ones that are there, just don’t grow. They don’t change, nothing happens. With neuroendocrine tumors a lot of times they release a substance that can affect you in numerous ways and mine are non-productive. Mine are sleeping, they are not awake. [laughing] So, while you know some people say like, ‘Oh Remission is no evidence of disease for five years or whatever’, that’s not what the clinical people would say about me. But, for me, I am cancer free in my brain and my heart and you know all the other parts of me. How much physical are we? Not that much.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah. So, you did the actual hard core healing with Colette a year or two?
Amy McCabe: Yeah.
Erica Eriksdotter: And, then you’ve continued, which is how I met you. You continued taking workshops and you continued working on yourself since which is up to today.
Amy McCabe: Totally, yep. Mmm, hmm.
Erica Eriksdotter: First of all, let’s take a moment and for me to say congratulations. That is an amazing journey that you’ve had and I’m so proud of you at working so hard at evolving and finding the root cause and not giving up and continue to strive to heal yourself.
Amy McCabe: Thank you. That means a lot coming from you.
Erica Eriksdotter: How has the healing stuff changed you? I mean, clearly, it saved your life. But, besides that part, like what does it mean to you and why do you continue doing it?
Amy McCabe: You know; I think healing can come in lots of ways. Someone can quit their job and experience a major life healing in their physical body. Someone can get a divorce and experience a “miraculous” healing. It’s not this, what am I trying to say? I don’t know. Obviously, they had so much to do for me but everybody has their own path and what I did isn’t necessarily the path for everyone. I think that it is up to people to take ownership of their own health and find out what it is that they do need. Then the “miracle” will then happen.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yep.
Amy McCabe: I think it’s really easy for people to put their blinders up and not look at what the real issues are because they are hard and sometimes…
Erica Eriksdotter: They’re very hard.
Amy McCabe: Sometime disease is easier. I’m not placing any judgement on that. There’s no judgement on that statement, but sometimes that’s easier. As people are multi-dimensional and there’s a lot going on there, I just encourage people to find out what that is for them, what’s missing, what’s not quite right.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yep. Yeah, and then, I don’t know about you Amy, but for me, it’s so hard to look at yourself and evolve, yet, that is one of the most wonderful things that I love doing in life. Like, I love evolving and digging deep and solving those root causes and figuring out what needs to be healed and working on myself and striving to become a better person every single day and in that course helping others become a better self. I guess when you constantly see the results, you know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Amy McCabe: Yeah.
Erica Eriksdotter: Therefore, you know that you just have to push through what could be a little uncomfortable to say the least.
Amy McCabe: Yes, that is true. There is hope. Every corner, every rock you can look under, like just to know that there’s hope for change.
Erica Eriksdotter: And a safe space and a safe arena for you to grow in and evolve.
Amy McCabe: Totally.
- How cancer changed her musical performance [00:34:53]
Erica Eriksdotter: So, how do you think this has changed you as a professional trumpet player?
Amy McCabe: Oh man, well, I think I touched on it earlier, definitely music it’s not about you. Your sort of, we have the opportunity as musicians to recreate beautiful sounds for other people. It can be for you sometimes. Sometimes, I can sit and play through some beautiful music and think like that was just for me. Like, I love playing Bach by myself. I would never play it in public because some of the Bach is really hard and most of it is written for string instruments. But, I think it’s meant to be for other people and I think reminding myself that we are all connected. Skin is sort of an illusion, that we are all completely connected to each other and we’re here to help and to serve.
Erica Eriksdotter: You are actually also a Certified Intra-Dimensional Healer.
Amy McCabe: Yes, I am.
Erica Eriksdotter: The part where you know it’s beautiful, is that, you know every healer is different, and you are a healer 100% at any stage of the day. You heal with your music. That’s how you are a healer among other ways. You are an amazing healer in action as well. But, through your trumpet, you actually heal. How do you, have you seen, I don’t know, can you even actually see the change that you actually provide for people when you play? Or is that not something you think about?
Amy McCabe: Well, again, it’s just like any other kind of healing, whether you’re a doctor or you work with energy healing. You’re just the physical focus and the outcome is none of your business.
Erica Eriksdotter: Again, because it’s not ego of course.
Amy McCabe: Yeah. I just want to prepare in such a way that I will perform a piece of music in such a way that it can move others. If it moves them, great. If it doesn’t, great. [laughing] Even if you’re not into looking at that process dimensionally or energetically, I think that’s good advice for any performing artist. [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah.
Amy McCabe: You’re not going to win over your entire audience every single day. It’s the same with healing. You might not affect someone the way someone else would or vice-versa.
Erica Eriksdotter: Or, with my art. It’s the same thing.
Amy McCabe: Yeah.
Erica Eriksdotter: It’s like with anything in life.
Amy McCabe: Yeah, Yeah.
- Meaning to life [00:41:14]
Erica Eriksdotter: So, throughout this whole time, you have been going and checking in with doctors. Maybe not for treatment, but for to check in where you were with the cancer, correct?
Amy McCabe: Yep.
Erica Eriksdotter: You were in contact with your doctors.
Amy McCabe: Yeah, Mmm, hmm.
Erica Eriksdotter: How often do you go back to the doctor’s these days?
Amy McCabe: That’s a good question. I was on like an annual, like I would go once a year. I kind of felt like that was too much. [laughing] Again, this is my own intuition, which the more you practice honing it the easier it gets to sort of feel these things.
Erica Eriksdotter: And discernment.
Amy McCabe: I’m kind of on a like every two-year schedule now. I think that feels right at this point. Obviously, if something changes, what a great barometer I have for looking for places to shift some stuff up. They’re my little friends now. They’re like my little compasses.
Erica Eriksdotter: Yeah, they’re helping you now. Before we wrap up, what do you want to say about like how this has changed your life and if it has brought more meaning to it.
Amy McCabe: I don’t know if I would be here today honestly if I wasn’t fortunate enough to sort of explore the different paths that I have. I don’t know, I can’t even see the person that I would be. Cancer was a great teacher for me. I think it is for anyone who has gone through something like that. With science today, I know we’re all about science, what articles are proving and things like that, it’s catching up. I think they’re starting to figure out that there’s more to the disease process than what Western Medicine can sort of explain. That’s not writing Western Medicine off at all. I think they can go completely hand in hand with each other because we are these complicated people. I think, if it’s hard for you to start on a path you can look for a mentor or healer or therapist or someone like that that you feel like can help you explore these other avenues of healing for your mind and your heart and your soul.
Erica Eriksdotter: Thank you so much, Amy for joining me and being brave and so open and sharing your story in the hope that it might inspire somebody else or give them hope to get through what they are going through or support a loved one. I really, really appreciate that and also for me having my Dad dying of cancer, it’s a topic that, there’s so many people today that are affected by this disease and having somebody who was diagnosed with a completely rare form and pulling through. Healing the world with music and with your inspirational story, I’m really grateful that you wanted to talk to me today.
Amy McCabe: Thank you Erica. Thanks for being the megaphone. [laughing]
Erica Eriksdotter: [laughing] You are welcome. That is it for this episode. Thank you for joining me Amy. The next episode will feature another guest but if you have any questions or shout out to Amy, questions about her story, feel free to use the hashtag #fikapodcast on social or use the link in the show notes. You can find me, Erica, at StudioEriksdotter.com and please join my email list if you want to stay up to date. You can access it at the bottom of my website and while you are on the Internet, leave the Fika podcast an iTunes review. Don’t forget to subscribe if you want to stay up to date on all the episodes. Thank you so much for listening, we are honored to have you joining us today.
Thank you!
