Life After Brain Cancer. Let's Talk- Ep47- Outsider Log Cabin

[Music] [Music] spring has arrived the snow is mostly gone and the seasoning piles are bare [Music] this week we'll be prepping the cabin site for another season of building the first job on the list was to remove this big stump which has been in our way since the beginning of the build back when I cleared the cabin site I left the stump where it was because I knew it was going to be a pain to remove we've done our best to work around it so far but now it must go so I bit the bullet grabbed my undersized chainsaw and started cutting [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] to make things even more interesting the stump was full of dirt now if you aren't aware nothing dulls a chain faster than running it through dirt but with half a dozen sharp chains at the ready I came fully prepared knowing that most of them would be dull by day's end [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my dad joined me for the second task which was to move the rain barrel from the lower clearing up to the sawmill [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] I'm glad that I decided to add 200 pounds of wheel weights to the front tires this year the extra weight kept the front wheels firmly on the ground especially on the OP Hill grade with a full weight of the barrel in tow [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] finally our last prep job was to fine-tune the braces to make sure that all the window frames and door frames were perfectly level once we install a course of logs above the frames we will finally be able to remove the bracing and install the subfloor up until now we've had to watch our step within the cabin so that we wouldn't slip between the joist or trip over the bracing so having a solid floor in place is going to be a very welcomed milestone this year all right mister by the stone to the Spade bit more money wait yeah well you know that that carpenters compass I lost last fall I ended up finding it today feel it where it was just by the rock it's really rusted though all right I'll hold [Music] this has been a great week at the cabin not only because of the preparations we've made but also because my amazing wife has finally been well enough to join me out here [Music] I was thrilled to have her make the trek with me this time not only because I wanted to show her what I've been up to but also because I've been wanting her to tell a bit of her story mrs. outsider is such a beautiful and vibrant person which is why you'd never know by meeting her that she is a brain cancer survivor in remission for ten years now ever since then she has been on a journey of healing and I've had the great pleasure of walking it with her it has been a challenging and often heart-wrenching road for us but it is also one of great joy faith and hope I know this is a bit of a departure for my regular programming but I believe my wife's story is too important not to share especially if you or someone you love has been affected by cancer [Music] hello fellow outsiders and welcome to this episode and I have someone very special with me today actually the most important person in my life and this is mrs. outsider my wife and we've been wanting to I've been wanting to have her out here with me for a long time but just for health reasons and and having a little girl that is very busy and needs taken care of she hasn't been able to come out a lot until now man it is so windy today I hope that I hope the audio caches our voice is well enough hopefully it does that spring wind okay so lapel mics we're gonna get those anyway it's kind of hard to know where to start with today's episode if we're to tell her story we should really go back to the beginning yeah so I guess going back to the beginning starts with my story yeah yeah okay so it goes back to 2007 when I was and I was diagnosed with two brain tumors and the way it kind of came about was I've been having vision loss and extreme headaches and so went to the eye doctors so I could tell something was really wrong so just one test quickly progressed to the next was in a matter of a couple days and by the end of it I had an appointment for the next day to see the top neurosurgeon in Toronto and so I just okay whatever this means we'll get through it I'll get through it together so what Matt was the neurosurgeon and it was I had two brain tumors we didn't know at that point what that really meant the pathology of them but I was I was scheduled for surgery within a few weeks the one was kind of suffocating my pituitary gland and the other was wrapped around my optic nerve so what the worst of it I had between both eyes I had gone 70% blind and this needed they needed to get out as soon as possible so I had this surgery they came for the surgery it went very well it was I think five and a half hour long surgery I think my parents were just a racket can't that something like that can't be easy on any any parents watching their child go through that and after it was done the doctor said okay so we were able to the one the one tumor was more cysts lake we were able to kind of drain that and take giorgia thought out the main tumor the one they are most concerned concerned about was they got half of it out we've got 50% out the other 50% was too intertwined with the optic nerve and if he went any further I would have gone completely blind and so he said until she wakes up we're actually not gonna know if she can walk or talk so we'll just have to see I woke up I was fine and and it was it was like okay I did brain surgery we go up I'm 17 I call this brain surgery that's that's gotta be it please no more for what was left of that tumor the pathology came back and they ended up being diffused astrocytomas so they were kind of a really slow growing more benign type of tumor that they were doing extreme damage because of their position but they weren't necessarily malignant at that point so but the doctor said you know she you could live with this tumor just sitting there as long as it doesn't grow and and totally be fine you'll be fine the rest of your life you're not gonna retain the vision back that's that's gone those nerves are dead but it shouldn't get any worse from here so it was like four weeks after the surgery I went back for another MRI so let's see what's going on and in those four weeks the tumor was growing back so quickly and almost grown back even like past the point of what they had already removed and so it had gone from diffuse astrocytoma to an anaplastic astrocytoma which is officially cancer it's malignant and this is growing fast we need to act quickly on this and so I had radiation February March April I went through radiation five days a week and it was it was quite the journey I mean it's a whole other video and story to just go through all the details of the really amazing things that happened during that time people say and wellness have been such a scary awful time and there was parts of it that were unnerving and uncertain but we just had such strong faith and our family was so strong that we ended up making it into a really great time where we could actually like help others and be there for others and our family could grow closer together at the end of the treatment a lot of my hair fell out I ended up wearing a hairpiece and headbands and it was tiring anyone who has had radiation will know it's incredibly taxing but we just believe for the best scenario so they said at that point the best outcome possibly possible with this kind of tumor is that it wouldn't grow any further there's no way that this kind of tumor will will leave will start to disappear will start to shrink but they just wanted to stop it from growing so I actually had a 71 percent chance that it would stop growing and it was three months after my treatment was finished we went back and they were amazed it started to shrink 25% in all directions another three months passed another 25% a year after it was gone it was it was amazing it was a miracle that the doctors didn't know what to say he was amazed it was an incredible outcome we're so grateful for and they also had I know I knew my vision was getting better so I had the field new test to test what vision came back and the doctor was just was blown away he actually thought when so that went out of the office for two minutes came back looked at the test again and it was like it's bad your nerves are back I saw those nerves they were they were dead they were destroyed it was awful and your vision is fine it's a hundred percent back and it really was it really was a miracle story yeah well art I know that your your faith in Jesus was so central to how you face the adversity of having brain cancer and like we had a great family that was praying for us well I'm praying for you I didn't know you had but praying for you and we had a you had a great church family that surrounded you with prayer and helps in many ways like brought meals and was so supportive so we know it was a miracle we know it was a healing because I think you told me before that your neurosurgeon said that in 20 years of doing this and seeing these types of tumors and dealing with this type of cancer that he had never actually seen your type of tumors shrink they were only able to stop it so for your tumors to actually disappear in your sight to be restored was medically medically unexplainable no exactly yeah so at that point I thought okay that's great like I beat this I've got my miracle this is amazing we're gonna afford I started into my pharmacology program and university and start with pharmacy and then we'll see I would love to be a doctor and go overseas and be this doctor missionary and I'm gonna go save the world now and I was just pumped so kind of in that time is when the outsider came into my life yeah I ended up hearing about this this girl who was was going to be coming to my town that I was that I was living in to give like a conference on her experience with brain cancer and her recovery her healing and so through hearing about her we were kind of connected with each other because I was so interested in hearing her story and so before you actually went to the conference we Mette it's important to talk which is like the most Canadian love story in history but we actually met at a Tim Horton's so this is not a sponsored video we met at Tim Hortons and so that was really cool so we talked and we talked for like three hours at Tim Hortons yeah and we just kept talking and talking we had such a connection and I had misunderstood when I met you because I actually thought that you were still fighting brain cancer okay so when I was sitting across from mrs. outsider I was thinking to myself she's an amazing person she's the girl of my dreams but am I willing to go through the pain with her of dealing with this brain cancer and in a moment I just said yes I'm willing to to walk this journey with her and so from that moment on our relationship grew we got married and and we started our life together you did learn that I was I was clear was yeah and obviously obviously that like even our conversation it was like oh great you don't even you're not even struggling with this anymore so that was that was really good so that was like a huge relief to me but I'm glad I had that moment in my mind where I had to decide am I willing to walk this journey with you and I totally was because I was so in love with you and I still AM so actually more so today I know it's amazing like we really have so we've been married eight years now eight years so and it's been a lifetime but also like a minute yeah it's been feels like we've always been together but at the same time feels like we just met so it's so anyway anyone who is married or has kids or anything like that you'll understand what we're saying and so we started our life together you took on a pharmacy technician job not the local hospital yeah I was a pastor I'm still I'm a pastor and I was a part-time school bus driver and we were just making our lives work we were building our lives together then you started getting really sick again yeah I did so what ended up happening um we we knew this during treatment it was explained to us you know where we're gonna be doing the radiation and stuff like and where the tumors have been sitting it's gonna cause endocrine problems which means like anything to do with hormones and chemicals what ended up happening is my pituitary gland and my hypothalamus gland were very heavily damaged during surgery radiation the tumors themselves that really didn't we didn't see the repercussions of that until a few years after and it was after we got married so the first sign was I went into menopause at 22 and so that came with all the joys of that we knew then it was already explained to us the chances of us having a child me being able to carry a child or two to conceive was incredibly low and then going into menopause it was at that point of right off that was the first of it and then it was all of the chemical imbalances everything we were really starting to take in effect and so I needed to to leave the hospital I took a leave of absence which turned into just me quitting altogether and not being able to to work like I did and and earn the income that I did I did end up becoming a registered art therapist which I was I loved and I started my own business and certainly not as lucrative as what the hospital is doing but I get to work primarily with special-needs children and be creative with them and hear their stories and I it's definitely what I love to do but it doesn't put a lot of food on the table for the Soul it's good for the soul it's very good for the school so yeah those problems ended up just kind of progressing and getting and getting worse and worse and it turned into extreme stomach problems which you later found out had celiac which had caused ulcerative colitis because it went undetected and then the most recent diagnosis is Addison's disease and basically what that is is shutting down at the adrenal glands and it was because of the hypothalamus plans not working and just one connection can't get to the next and just start shutting the endocrine system down all of these problems really haven't been treatable for me just because of my case and then different reasons so we've again looked to our God for a healing and for strengthen and just the ability to keep to keep going on and it's not been easy but we've still seen his hand mightily in our life yeah yeah when mrs. outsider had to leave the hospital because she was so sick we really didn't know what was going on we knew that there was lots of issues from the surgery her brain surgery and subsequent radiation near there are a lot of problems that were created from that but we didn't know exactly what systems were being affected it seemed like all of your systems were being affected yeah so just constantly nauseous not having energy not having focus depression was huge because there the chemicals were being produced in your brain yeah and you just hurt all the time and so there there was probably I'd say two or three years at least where you really couldn't get out of bed and I was like just when we got married we were just married and then this sickness really hit and and so unfortunately we lost your sight of in the income for our family and unfortunately you were making like triple or quadruple what I was made yeah it was it was great and so then when you got sick and couldn't get out of bed to do much of anything you were just battling your own battle but at the same time I felt the burden for the for us of what do we do now because we were beginning to have to live on credit cards we were living on loans we couldn't just afford the basic necessities of life because my line of work a little meaningful just didn't pay very well and so that's where this channel comes in really because I've always had a passion for the outdoors I've always loved self-reliance skills wild food foraging building creating all of those things and and so I just thought to myself okay what can I do to support my family in this time because I just wasn't making enough to make ends meet and it was extremely difficult for us and so I said okay well all I have is my two bare hands and I've got a little bit of knowledge and I'm gonna head back to what I know which is the land and so that's when I built a ten-by-ten log cabin and that was in Northern Ontario and I just knew that I had to do something so I built this cabin and it didn't make me any money at the time but any spare moment I had I would go out and work on the cabin and I ended up just posting that video online to show friends and family because they were interested in seeing what I was doing and so I posted it for them to see when I was done building it and that that video ended up going viral yeah and some income started coming in for that video and I realized that there are actually people out there that are just like me that love the outdoors and love working with the raw materials that nature produces in a way that we can benefit from them but at the same time so that the forest can benefit as well there's a sustainable way to do it but I realized that there was an audience for what I was doing and so I was like okay well this is how I can make our bills stretch I can make a bit of money on the side through YouTube and so I started making these videos about what I love to do and I just put videos out video after video after video and other than the cabin video that I first put out I wasn't really making any money in the beginning I was making like 60 cents a month or something so it wasn't all that much but I just kept doing it and I've been grinding on YouTube now for six years and you know my audience has grown which is nice and we have a great community of viewers that watch and support us and what we're doing and it honestly it means more to us than you'll ever know we're beyond grateful I cannot express some words like how do you have touched our family yeah and I've had people ask me over the years if your channel is this big and it's doing this well why don't you just quit your job and go full-time and the first time first thing is I actually believe in what I do I believe in being a pastor and there's a great need for that but the other side of the coin too is that YouTube is like a really unstable platform there is potential to make a good amount of money on YouTube but there's also a huge potential to lose it all and YouTube unfortunately has has gone through seasons where they've made huge changes where good good channels have been shut down because they've fallen under you know whatever a new policy I've known some self-reliant channels some outdoor channels to completely be shut down because they lost their Adsense and so they put all of their eggs into one basket and they just lost it all and so I didn't want to do that my family I didn't want to just throw everything away start working on YouTube all you to just lose it and to be worse off than we ever were before and as well you have to consider that youtubers don't have coverage they don't have any type of insurance or benefits so if I were to be injured or if I were to be sick I won't be able to make videos for a while until I was able to heal or whatever and there's no safety net to fall back on and so that is obviously a very scary thing especially when I'm the sole breadwinner of the family and I want to provide and so that's why I haven't for the past six years been more than just doing this in my spare time and but it's been working for us but the good news is that starting this year I started part-time on YouTube so I've been able to make some more videos I'm sure some of you have noticed that I've been putting out videos basically every other week now whereas before I was putting on a video maybe once a month on average and I'm hoping that as I head into the summer now now I'm not gonna make any promises because there's lots of behind the scenes work to do that just doesn't make it onto the camera but I'm hoping to put out maybe an episode a week eventually so we'll see I don't know like every other week I do a higher production video right where I show something that it takes me more time to edit more time to shoot and narrate all that stuff but maybe for the gap that I don't show videos for maybe it'll be a simpler video like this where I'm just dealing with a simple topic and it's shorter I don't have to put as much work into it but still you guys are getting more content that you can view if you want and we have big plans for the future we don't own this property my grandfather owns it but someday we hope to own our own property where we can start to build a homestead and so my plan our plan is that this channel is going to continue to evolve I want to always feel like we're moving forward so I don't want to just keep doing the same things over and over again so once we build the cabin then I look at putting in out buildings and building more of a homestead that we can live on and once we buy that property but of course this cabin is priority until we get done and till we're done this and then I can look at the future of where our channel is heading but the idea is that more videos will come soon and you'll see more of our lives and and more of what goes into this channel so we're really excited about that there is another miracle that we need to talk about yeah yeah they're a little girl I'm sure you have a lot of questions about her yes I did I went into menopause at 22 and had no babies for me and so we just started praying God if it's here well that we have a child then we we ask you to make it happen and he did yeah we have a little girl now you have a little girl um yep she is two and a half and she's amazing she is so beautiful she will be our one and only which we are very good with she's three kids in one anyway with the amount of energy and oh my goodness but she just has been the most incredible gift that we could have ever been given and that's another reason why outside her maybe hasn't been here as much after I after I had our little girl the pregnancy of course throws off my already broken endocrine system and hormones and chemicals and so things actually got worse after she was born and that's really when Addison said in one of the biggest problems with it is that I think I actually last summer it was nearly daily sometimes twice a day that I would pass out and if I'm left alone with Wein it's not necessarily that safe so outsider his he's been amazing I mean if we're gonna talk about how what a supportive husband and father he is he's outstanding and you've always been there you're just you're there for us and he's always put his girls first and there's so many days where I started out okay and you come out here to work and I'll have to call you and you need to come back home and you and you do and so my I've maybe taken him away from from you guys which is working no no don't apologize your first this one and you've proven that over and over again and I am I am beyond grateful and you know it's it's been another thing that although it's not a very nice thing to deal with it's brought us closer together and it's just showed us different ways of how we can love each other and be there for each other and that we do just want to keep going on this amazing journey and grow all together and bring you guys along for it yeah thank you're pretty amazing too okay well that's really it for today we just wanted to tell you about the future plans for this channel that I have going part-time that I am looking at expanding things in the future but still preserving our authenticity that's very important to us but for us to tell you that that's why we had to tell you our story where we came from so that you would understand her heart so that being said we're gonna go on a walk and just enjoy the day together it's a nice beautiful spring day yeah I think we're gonna check out the seasoning piles to see if the snow is finally melted from them and which means that cabin building season is right around the corner so I'm really excited for that and I am just dying to get that roof on I want to get that roof on before the snow sure because that will change everything yeah but anyway thank you so much for watching thank you for listening to our story and I'm so glad that you could actually be with me I'm happy to be here little outsider is with senior outsider and Grammy that's why you don't see senior outsider here today is because he is actually home watching our little girls yeah both both our parents have been a huge support system ice to come from like really incredible families yeah I got the best wife ever she's got such a beautiful heart and it's easy to love her yeah okay well anyway that's it for now and we're gonna go on a walk now until next time my friends

Channel: The Outsider

Views: 824,963

Keywords: log cabin, The Outsider, log cabin build, log cabin on a budget, logging, tractor, cabin, off grid, Cancer, brain cancer, tumor, testimony, Mrs. Outsider

Id: s8-iZYzSsig

Length: 39min 34sec (2374 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2019