KEEP F’N GOING (KFG) With HOWARD BROWN

Hello. It's Howard Brown. It's the Shining Brightly

Show. I got some big news for you, and not all of it's very

pleasant or good, but I need to share with you. First of all, I

want to thank you. This has been an amazing run of 112 shows,

raving fans, 275,000 plus downloads, and just listening to

the most interesting, amazing people and their stories of

human resolve, what they've overcome, what they've learned,

and how they lift themselves and lift up others. And it's quite

simple, kindness, kindness matters. Kindness for yourself,

kindness for others. That's that's the starting point, and

that's how you build a resilient life with hope. So let me dig

right in and share the news. Unfortunately, I've been

diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. It's cancer of the

bone marrow. It is because of all the other chemotherapies and

radiations and side effects I've had through the years. Now I

don't like to be defined by cancer, but it's been such a big

part of my life. It's who I am. And now I've got a third

mountain cancer, mountain decline. And so let me take a

step back for you bring you up to speed. So when I was 23 and a

half years old, I was diagnosed with stage four, not Hodgkin's

lymphoma, and I was told that I had six months to live, and I

was failing a ton of chemotherapies. And the only

good news I got in February of 1990 remember, this is analog,

no internet, no computers, no cell phones. This is really an

analog time. But my sister, my twin, CJ brown genres, and she

was an exact what's called HLA match 10 for 10. And slowly but

surely, they loaded me up with chemotherapy and got me into a

very short remission, and I got a bone marrow transplant. That's

what it was called. It's now called a stem cell transplant,

may 24 of 1990 and that little bag of life gave me 26 years to

put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I did a clinical trial

that strengthened my natural killer cells, and I moved from

Massachusetts to California and put my life back together,

emotionally, physically, financially, with my career and

in relationship, and so I started to get back to work

again. I started to heal emotionally from all the trauma

at such a young age and build up my my resistance, because just

going to work and working a full day took time, and I got back on

the basketball court and into the gym, walking on the beach,

and my career was starting to get back, but together and I met

my wife, Lisa, and we had a fairy tale Hollywood Wedding at

shutters at the beach in July of 24th of 2000 and I'm sorry, of

1994 and became a Big Brother, did a lot of community service

and really got my life back. And so miracle number one, my twin

sisters, bone marrow. Miracle number two, before I did a drop

of chemotherapy, I ended up going to the cryogenic center,

cryo what sperm bank, and I delivered a sample, even though

they told me I was going to die. And it was one of the best

decisions that Dr Eric Rubin told me about, because 11 years

later, frozen sperm became our beautiful miracle girl, Chapter

Six in my book, Emily, our frozen kidsickle. And what a

blessing just to be able to become a father and and have

just an amazing daughter to to basically live our lives out

with. So I was working in Silicon Valley when that

happened, and my twin sister says, I'm moving to Michigan.

Well, Lisa's from Michigan. We have family there, and Emily

could grow up with her cousins. My sister has three kids, and

Marley, who's now 26 and twins that are going to be 23 soon,

and Emily's 23 and then also cousins that were at that time,

four and six years old. So we built a life back here. Been

here for 19 and a half years, and I was basically running two

platforms serving the world's largest social networks. It was

called Planet Jewish, and then circle builder. So I was

basically built an engine, an events engine to find out what's

going on in Jewish communities around the US and Canada and

even internationally. And you could do that basically on web

one, oh, type of work, and find out what you wanted to do and

get involved and volunteer or take a class or do a mommy and

me so. And we process millions of events over the course of 17

years. And we then started circle builder. Circle builder

was for Christian builder, Catholic builder, Jewish

builder, Muslim builder. Had new builder. And we built a whole

different platform, Ruby on Rails, 1.0 and this is in 2006

and rolled that out to churches and ministries, and really

started the whole movement of a church beyond its walls on

Sunday and basically able to serve your congregation and get

them the information they need to be able to become more

involved and volunteer and do Bible study and anything you

know, you wanted to share your interests with them. And so life

was good. Playing basketball in Michigan. Found my crew played

four and four full full court, basically on short court. And it

was awesome. And unfortunately, at age 50, where you're supposed

to go into a colonoscopy, the screening age is now 45 so time

out, go get screened. Don't get cancer. It's horrible. It's just

a terrible existence. But if you get screened and deal with your

health checkups, so for cancer, it's, you know, cologuard poop

in a cup, or the gold standard of colonoscopy, and that age is

45 unless you have symptoms like blood in your stool,

constipation. It's confused with Crohn's disease and irritable

bowel disease. Sometimes it's hard to be diagnosed, but go get

your colonoscopy. If you're 45 or if you have family history,

you can actually eat it sooner, and so my daughter will be

getting one sooner, and also get a mammogram and check your

prostate and go to the dentist, a lot of that stuff we couldn't

do during the pandemic. And now we need to get healthy and stay

healthy, and that's what, really what you need to do. So I was

diagnosed with stage three colon cancer right sided, and I had

resections and tons of chemo, and unfortunately, a year later,

I went metastatic. It spread outside of my colon to my liver,

my stomach lining is called peritoneummentum, a bladder. And

second time in my life, I was told to get my affairs in order.

I had six months to live, and I didn't know if I was going to

ever see my daughter graduate high school. She was 15 at the

time, and I joined colon town, and I got to meet and talk to

other cancer patients that had this crazy surgery called

Cytoreductive Surgery, hyerthermic intraperitoneal

chemotherapy. (CRSHIPEC) So basically, they cut me and took

out all the cancer that they could see, and then poured hot

chemo in my pelvic and abdomen to kill micro cell, and that

saved my life. That's miracle number three. So it's absolutely

incredible. So bringing things forward, I got five years of no

evidence of disease, I was playing hoops, still on

disability, but during the pandemic, I wrote shining

brightly. Thank you David Crum and Frontage Publishing, and

Read The Spirit magazine. I did it over zoom. I interviewed 158

of the most influential, important people in my life, and

I built a book that you can relate to. It's inspiring. It

talks about families, and families don't get along. We

laugh, cry and fight together, and trips we've taken together.

And I talk about mentorship is true leadership. I think it's

the lost art of leadership to be a mentor to someone else, or to

allow yourself to be a mentee. And I talk about interfaith work

of knowing the other, their cultures, their foods, their

histories, and we're all different, but we're here to get

along. We're not taught to hate. We could choose not to hate, and

especially in chapter one, where my 100 year old grandmother said

to choose kindness every day, choose giving every day, choose

gratitude, choose joy and choose not to hate. These are simple

principles that you can look in the mirror as a mantra and say

every single day. So I'll take a break for a second, and I've got

chemo running in IV right behind me, and I shave my head, for

those that'll see it in the video portion. And I've got

another huge challenge in front of me.

I noticed a bruise on my forearm. I had played basketball

that Sunday before. I'd hiked five miles that Monday and

Tuesday, worked out, and I saw a bruise on my forehand, and it

wasn't from basketball. I took a picture of it. I texted my

oncologist, Dr rich Jackman, and he said, Come in, let's do some

blood tests. Well, those blood tests revealed that I was pancit

in anemia. So that means my white counts, my red hemoglobin

and and my platelets were critically low. And that's not

good, not a good sign. And we did a bone marrow biopsy, and on

october 25 I was told for the third time in my. Life that I

actually have acute myeloid leukemia. This is all chemo

induced and resistant from all the chemotherapy, full body

radiation that I had on my prior non Hodgkin's lymphoma, cancer

and colon cancer, and my sister's bone marrow just

stopped working, and my tank ran out of gas, the engine seized

up, and I got a lot of wear and tear and mileage on this, on

this, this old, 58 year old model. And so shocking news

zipped me back in from five years into evidence to disease,

back into the cancer world. And we tried a protocol of targeted

therapy, pills and chemo, and I did a bone marrow biopsy last

Monday, and we realized that this protocol wasn't working,

not the news we wanted to hear. In fact, the Leukemia actually

grew from 30% involvement to 40 a large cancer burden and very

serious. So got the Thanksgiving weekend to watch football, spend

time with my parents, my daughter flew in, and I'm back

doing high dose chemotherapy for the next six days. It's going to

knock me out. It's going to knock my immune system out, and

hopefully, when I have my next bone marrow biopsy will show

that the disease has been knocked down, because I'm

entered into the National Bone marrow donor database. I'm going

to need another donor like my twin sister is not eligible this

time, preferably a male age 30 to I'm sorry, 20 to 3035, to

donate their bone marrow after doing a cheek swab. And I'll

have information on the show notes for GIFT of life.org and

either match.org if you want to do that. Unfortunately, older

people's bone marrow is ineffective as younger people's

bone marrow. My sister was 24 when she gave me her bone

marrow, and so I need to get into some type of remission and

get a stem cell transplant. It's intense and but that's what I'm

going to need to do to save my life. And I've got a lot of

living to do my daughter Emily, who's in podcast 109 she said we

got to get busy living, and that's what we have to do. And I

want to I have goals. I want to walk her down the aisle someday.

And I have goals about my podcast and my book and my

speaking and my coaching and to helping others, and so I need to

get healthy first. And so it's been a very intense time, and

I'm going to have to put this podcast on hiatus. I need to

focus on my health, and I'm sad because this brings me joy. So I

choose to do this podcast weekly for the last almost two years,

and it's joyful. I've met the coolest people ever, inspiring

people that have gone through some really tough stuff to be

able to come out the other side and use their lessons learned to

help others. And we all need a little hope, H, O, P, E, that is

the fuel that keeps most of us going, and so this is kind of

where we're at. I love everybody that is sending me lots of

healing, prayers and hugs. I have a huge worldwide network.

It's by the 1000s that love energy is lifting me up. Please

keep it coming. I've also one of the things that I learned having

colon cancer, you know, at age 50, is that people say, What can

I do for you? How can I help you? And you have to have an

answer for that. And I do have an answer for that. And so on my

GoFundMe page, which has raised $75,000 on LinkedIn and

Instagram and Facebook. I tell people what they can do and make

that choice to help me in my time of need and help my family

in their in their time of need. And so the first thing is that

you can go to gofundme.com and search Howard Brown. And the

first co funding comes up is for colon cancer. Don't use that

one. Use the one of the third cancer, for AML, acute myeloid

leukemia. And people are just being very generous, because I

plan on living and I plan on getting back up again, just like

I preach. And I'm going to need those funds to get my life back

on track and get started and build Humpty Dumpty for a third

time, emotionally, physically, financially and in

relationships. So go fund me. The first thing they can do, the

second I ask people to send is healing, prayers and hugs, any

which way you can, and I can't keep up and answer everybody's

replies, but Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, direct messaging,

texting, email, it's coming, and it's just overwhelming, and it's

lovely. It's amazing. I just I'm so happy that people are

thinking about me and taking the time to join. Shining brightly,

movement and army to make the world a better place, and come

to me in my time of need, it's incredibly humbling, it's

incredibly inspiring. And keep it coming, for sure, the next

thing I ask is for people too in their local area to donate

blood, red cells and platelets. They're needed down for the

hurricane. Just go in and to your hospital and they'll

they'll take your blood. It doesn't take much time, and we

need blood for not just me. I'm going through blood transfusions

and platelet transfusions like crazy, because my immune system

is not down so low. But you can give blood, and that's a

beautiful way to shine brightly, and a beautiful way to act with

just pure kindness. The next is to swab your cheek. So this is

what I was talking about with a bone marrow donor registry. It's

worldwide, and the ability to swap your cheek gets you

entered. It doesn't mean you'll get matched, but getting matched

used to be a one in 25,000 chance. It's now less, but we

need people in the registry. This is a life saving gift that

can really help cancer patients in need, and so that swab will

put you in the database at GIFT of life.org, or Be The match.org

and you may never get called, but you may, and then you have

to consent. Then they'll take blood, and then they do it very

differently. 35 years later, they actually really get your

bone marrow all jacked up and super bone marrow. And then they

actually take it like giving platelets. So they take out the

stem cells, and they leave everything else, the platelets

and other blood, in there. And it's over a course of, you know,

three, four days, and then it is flown to the cancer stem cell

transplant center, whatever it is in the world, there's no cost

to you but, and it'll remain anonymous for a year in the US

and two years internationally and again, choosing giving real

simple choose to give your bone marrow if called and it's a

blessing. Next, I ask people if they can do a random act of

kindness, because kindness makes the world go around. Be kind to

yourself and be kind to others, and that makes the world so much

better, and that is truly shining brightly. Lastly, I ask

people to hug their family and friends for no reason, for no

reason, just go hug your family and friends. Just a great way to

have joy and be kind. But what are you doing? Why are you

hugging me? Hug you, because I love you, and that is truly

shining brightly as an individual and as a movement. So

I'm going to put this on hiatus. I hope to see you real soon.

Special thanks to front edge publishing, my book publisher,

read the spirit magazine where I blog, and I'll put that on

hiatus now as well, for a little bit, also for amplify you

amazing podcast production house that makes me look great, and

finishes my podcast assets every week for almost the last two

years. Also for one of my newer sponsors to speak and speak,

inspire and prosper, share and love. And also, I want to shout

out to Ali Horia from capes Avisa. And there's just so many

people that have influenced me and made things better, and I've

gotta go, just bear down, power through and I'll do that. We'll

do that because life, fighting cancer, business, family, it's a

team sport. Remember, I love you. Please pray for me, and

we'll see. We'll see on the other side, keep effing going.

It's all we can do every single day. Howard Brown, Mr. Shiny.

Brightly. Signing off for now. Love you.