134: When God Carries You Through | Kitsi Tribble

Kitsi Tribble had fully vaccinated her first two children without question — but when her youngest, Grayson, was born with Down syndrome, she felt an unsettled conviction to slow down and research before proceeding. Under pressure from their pediatrician and unable to find clear answers fast enough, she went against her instincts. What followed was a cascade of medical crises: infant spasms, multiple rounds of high-dose steroids, aspiration, heart failure, and four months in the ICU — including ten minutes when Grayson's heart stopped completely. He wasn't expected to survive. When he did, the seizures were gone — something doctors couldn't explain, but Kitsi knew exactly who to thank.

She came home with a medically fragile baby, a feeding tube, twelve medications to wean, and no pediatrician willing to see an unvaccinated child. What she did have was a plan — built quietly during those long hospital days watching Chris Wark's Square One modules — and a conviction that God had already shown her the way forward. Through whole foods, a naturopathic pediatrician, and stubborn faith, Grayson weaned off every medication, including his thyroid meds, within a year of coming home.

Kitsi's mother's story runs alongside his — a stage four endometrial cancer diagnosis that confounded her oncologist when surgery revealed nothing left behind. Now Kitsi leads a HealingStrong group in Six Mile, South Carolina, walking alongside others who know what it means to be told there's nothing more medicine can do.

HealingStrong's mission is to educate, equip and empower our group leaders and group participants through their journey with cancer or other chronic illnesses, and know there is HOPE. We bring this hope through educational materials, webinars, guest speakers, conferences, community small group support and more.

Please take advantage of our FREE resources below to help you along your health and healing journey:

Support Group Directory

Holistic Curriculum - Participant Guide

Support Our Mission - Donate

Additional Health Resources

Listen to Previous Episodes

Website: healingstrong.org

Transcript

Kitsi: You can't just go Google. Should you vaccinate a child with Down syndrome? Everything that comes up is gonna say yes, definitely. Even more. You know, they're immune compromised. They need it, they need it, they need it. You're a terrible mom if you don't. So that was the messages I was getting, but I didn't have peace about it, and that would be my lesson that I've taken from all this is, and I've heard it talked about just.

In these groups and these programs of people that can relate with a cancer diagnosis, you know, don't jump into a decision and don't mm-hmm. You know, you have time, but I felt like I didn't have time. I had to stick to their timeline and do it their way, and I caved and just said, okay, you know best, and I don't know why I'm having all these reservations, but apparently I, I have no basis to argue.

I didn't wanna step out on my own and take on that responsibility, and then something happened to him. So I kind of did it against, you know, looking back what God probably would've had us do. 

Announcer: You are listening to the I Am Healing Strong Podcast, a part of the Healing Strong Organization, the number one network of holistic cancer support groups in the world.

Each week, we bring you stories of hope, real stories that will encourage you as you navigate your way on your own journey to help. Now, here's your host, stage four Cancer Thriver. Jim Mann, 

Jim: You're the only kitie that I know. Kitie. Crile. How are you? 

Kitsi: I'm good. How are you? 

Jim: I am just great. You came to my meeting a couple months ago, sometime last year.

Changed my life, of course. Uh, just can't catch the date you came, 'cause you wanted to start a group and you wanted to see how we did it. You probably went away disappointed. I'm sorry. 

Kitsi: Not at all. 

Jim: We got, we've got new leaders. 

Kitsi: Oh, go ahead. 

Jim: Finally stepped up after six years of me fumbling through it, proving that anybody can do it.

Kitsi: So they're taking your place or they're starting new groups? 

Jim: No, they're taking my place. I'm still gonna be there 'cause I have the key to the building. So there's something, yeah, they, they're stepping up and I couldn't be more excited about that. 

Kitsi: Good. 

Jim: So you came and you brought your mother who, uh, she is battling cancer, right?

Or she was. 

Kitsi: She was, yes. Well, she's had breast cancer twice, and that was about 20 years ago. And then she had endometrial cancer that she found out about last year, and it was a very aggressive stage four. But when they went in and took her uterus out, it ended up that they got all the cancer. So she technically was cancer free.

Excellent. Which made her a good candidate for this program. 

Jim: Right? 

Kitsi: So she adopted a lot of the, the healthy eating habits and got rid of a lot of bad eating habits. And 

Jim: what 

Kitsi: husband do very well, 

Jim: who has bad eating habits, that that's unheard of just eating stuff we get from the grocery store, it comes in boxes and now I gotta read labels.

It's so irritating, but. They put so much junk in there. You gotta, you gotta read in self-defense. Right? 

Kitsi: Very true. 

Jim: So what town is your meeting in? Is this down the road from us? 

Kitsi: It's in Six Mile. 

Jim: Alright. 

Kitsi: The 

Jim: big city. 

Kitsi: So very close to Clemson, that area. 

Jim: That's good. 'cause I live in Anderson so it's not too far away.

Kitsi: Not too far at all. I 

Jim: am a big Clemson fan. Since we, uh, live here gonna gonna have to, otherwise we'd be in trouble. But I don't wear orange, so there's that. Did you grow up in Six Mile or? 

Kitsi: I did. I was born in Columbus, Ohio, but I grew up here since I was about five years old. 

Jim: Okay. 

Kitsi: Raised our kids here.

Jim: Okay. Wait a minute. What moved you from Columbus to To Six Mile? 

Kitsi: My mom, she went to college at Clemson and 

Jim: Oh, okay. 

Kitsi: Yeah, we just stayed. 

Jim: That makes sense. 

Kitsi: Yeah. 

Jim: And how'd you get the name Kitie? I love the name Kitie. I'm not making fun of it. I've just never heard of it. Kitie, how'd you get that name? 

Kitsi: She was, I think, miss Columbus, 1979, the year that I was born, and my mom just liked that name and went with it.

Jim: Okay. 

Kitsi: I've heard it short for Catherine. I've never heard anybody else that's had that name, but not in my case. It's just Kidsy. 

Jim: Mine's real unique. Never heard of another gym. Good night. I gotta hope my parents can be a little bit more creative, but what can I say? Alright, so you, you moved here and you've kind of, you stayed around.

Did you go to Clemson? 

Kitsi: I did. 

Jim: Ah, what'd you take there? Football, 

Kitsi: graphic communications. 

Jim: Graphic communications? 

Kitsi: Yeah. 

Jim: Oh, what do you do with graphics? Communications is like 

Kitsi: just, um, it's. It's a printing program, so you can go into the printing side of things. Manufacturing, or you can do, I like the design part.

Jim: Okay, 

Kitsi: so you would design books or booklets and business cards, or you know, you'd work for a printing company doing their layouts and design. 

Jim: Oh, okay. 

Kitsi: Which I only worked for about a year and then got pregnant with my daughter and ended up being a stay at home mom. So didn't do a whole lot with it.

Jim: That's all right. There's still time. Right? Once, once you have that emptiness, which is where I'm at now. So you're an introvert, aren't you? 

Kitsi: Yes, very much. 

Jim: Okay. That's the perfect career for an introvert. 

Kitsi: Yes, I agree. I love it. 

Jim: I have, my oldest daughter just graduated with an art degree this past December.

She's a total extrovert, so it's kinda weird. And then my, did 

Kitsi: you see where she gets that? 

Jim: Yeah. And then my younger daughter, she's a nurse and she's a total introvert. They should swap their careers, I guess, but it's what they both do the best, so I won't argue with them. Alright, so you have three children.

One of them has a, uh, physical situation, right? 

Kitsi: Yes. Our youngest Grayson, so he was born with Down Syndrome Uhhuh. He's seven years old and he had a vaccine injury when he was four months old. And this is kind of how I got involved with this program because the DTA caused. A severe seizure disorder called infant spasms.

Jim: Wow. 

Kitsi: They just progressed to the point where he was having them all throughout the day and they come in clusters, so it was just pretty constant. And the only treatment plan they have for the spasms is to put 'em on high dose steroids. Well, it, it was either between that and there was, I think it was called Keppra, another medication which can cause blindness or you can do the high dose steroids.

So there was really no good choice. Because you do nothing, it's just gonna continue to damage his brain. Or you do the other, it will eventually cause blindness or you can do the steroids. So that kind of felt like the only choice we had. So we did the first round of steroids. Of course that hit his immune system really hard.

So he ended up catching a cold and he ended up in the hospital because he had to be on oxygen. 

Jim: Wow. 

Kitsi: And once he started running the fever from this cold, it brought back the spasms. They come back pretty full force when he gets sick. So he started having spasms again in the hospital, and they started him back on another round of the high dose steroids.

And in order for him to be able to eat, they put a feeding tube in. 

Jim: Hmm. 

Kitsi: During the stay, he had pulled the feeding tube out about this far and they gave him a whole feeding that pretty much went to his lungs. 

Announcer: Wow. 

Kitsi: So we ended up aspirating during that first hospital stay and ended up being rushed to the ICU and we didn't really know how he was gonna do with that because he was having heart failure.

Um, just stewing. Not very well. He was already supposed to be having open heart surgery at four months that we had to push back because of the, the spasms. He ended up coming home. He did get better, and that was a miracle in and of itself. We don't know really how that happened. They sent him home on oxygen.

He continued to get a little better each day until about. Maybe two weeks after being home and then he started doing worse again. So we had to just keep going up and up on, on the oxygen, and we knew things were getting bad, so we took him back to the ER for the second time and the spasms were coming back again.

So they hit him with a third dose of high dose steroids. 

Jim: Wow. 

Kitsi: Which wasn't really doing much at this point, except making him very sick. And I think it was the second day we were there, and this was at Greenville Children's Hospital. He was having constant seizures, pretty much to where he couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep.

I didn't really know what they would do for him. They really couldn't do anything for him. They were just trying to figure out what was going on. He quit breathing and his heart stopped for an entire 10 minutes. While they worked on him, and they did finally get his heart to come back. But once they got his heart to come back, he was anemic.

He was very low on blood. They had to give him blood over the next few days, you know, all his organs were shutting down. His lungs were horrible. And they finally found out through some blood work that he had what's called PJP pneumonia, which is normally what. From what they explained to us. You only see it in oncology.

Patients who are just, their immune system is wrecked. 

Announcer: Mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: So they weren't real sure why they were seeing that in Grayson, but it's also a fungus that grows in the lungs. So we knew it was from his previous stay of the aspiration, they tried very hard to like. Kind of cover that part up that no, it wasn't from that, but it wasn't until we got moved to a different hospital that we realized it was from that anyways, he wasn't expected to live, but thank the Lord he did.

But he spent four months in the ICU one month at Greenville. Then they flighted him to MUSC where we could try to get him stable enough to have his heart surgery, and he was intubated for a couple months. He did get stable enough to have his heart surgery. He had it, and then we came home after that four months, about a month before his first birthday.

And he was on about 10 different medications at the time, that whole stay. He had been on narcotics, you know, trying to get his, uh, just so he didn't feel he was, where he was intubated. He had to be on several different narcotics. So it was a lot to try to wean him off of and just his little body, that first year of life, everything that he had been through and all the antibiotics trying to get rid of the lung fungus, it was just very overwhelming to know where to start when we got home.

Jim: Yeah. 

Kitsi: Um, I was staying with him at MUSC in Charleston. My husband would drive up every weekend and bring the kids, but through the week I was. Alone with him, unless my mom or somebody would come stay with me. But I say it's just the God thing. 'cause it's kind of like Chris work and his program just, I don't, I really don't remember where it came from, but I'm thinking it was Facebook and I run across an ad.

And it just kind of captivated me. He was giving the, what's he called, the modules that he shows every six months for free. 

Jim: Oh, the square one? Yeah. 

Kitsi: Yeah, the program. So I was watching those modules every day and it just, um, gave me so much hope. Just hearing about how the body heals itself and the fact that he was a Christian and bringing Bible verses into it to support what he was saying.

And God just knew I needed that at that time. So I would spend my days just listening to these modules, kind of forming a plan for when we got home and taking notes and bought his book. And it also helped me make some decisions at the hospital because. He was getting daily x-rays and on top of that, they were wanting to do a CT scan of his lungs and certain things, and I had read about how bad the CT scan was, and so it was just, it was a godsend.

And at any point you wanna stop me to ask a question again? I've kind of gotten on a roll here, but 

Jim: No, you're good. That was funny. 

Kitsi: Yeah. I go from having nothing to say, but this is the important part. So 

Jim: yes, 

Kitsi: because this is my baby. 

Jim: Well, first of all, I mean, you sound so calm as you, as you talk about this, and I'm sure you are not calm well, at least on the inside, you might have been calm outside because you're a calm person that had to be just tearing you up.

I mean, it's terrible when your parents get sick or, or somebody who is not depending on you necessarily, but when you're a child, it wasn't even one yet. I'm sure you felt like you had no control over the situation. You had to depend on doctors, and it looked like, you know, it's a life or death situation.

What in world did that do to the family? 

Kitsi: It's just one of those times that you just know God's carrying you. 

Jim: Yeah. 

Kitsi: Because you know, as you're going through it, I was just kind of numb to everything going on. 

Jim: Mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: Grayson was in so much pain and we were at just a loss to. What to do with him while he was having these seizures.

And by the time we got him to the hospital the second time and he couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, he was all bloated up from the steroids and he was just miserable. He was absolutely miserable. 

Announcer: Yeah. So. 

Kitsi: I didn't want anything to happen to him, but I wanted God to heal him and I didn't know if that was on this side or that would be healing him by, you know, removing him from his earthly body.

And I had to accept whatever God was gonna do 

Jim: right. 

Kitsi: And that. Definitely wasn't easy, but it's also not easy watching him being tortured and literally, you know, the nurse walking in and he's having these seizures. I'm like, please do something. And she looks at me and shrugs her shoulders like, 

Jim: wow, 

Kitsi: there's nothing to do.

Yeah. So when you've exhausted all other things. And another miracle is when his heart stopped. He never had another seizure when he came to, 

Jim: Hmm. 

Kitsi: That's the doctors can't explain that. They did about three more brain scans while he was there and there was never any seizure activity. And that was just something that I had prayed specifically.

That whatever brain damage came from the lack of oxygen, that 10 minutes that it be in that part of his brain where he would have what they called the hips arrhythmia from the, the infant spasms. And God answered that prayer because they were gone. Nothing. Nothing else could, could have done that. But yeah, it was hard on the family, of course, because I went from being a stay at home mom and my kids were used to having me there every night at bedtime, getting them ready for school in the morning.

And I had one starting his first year, middle school. August that I wasn't here and my daughter was starting her first year of high school. 

Jim: Wow. 

Kitsi: And she was supposed to play on the volleyball team and couldn't get rides there and back. And so she had to give up her spot on the volleyball team. So yeah, I mean it was, it was a lot.

But you know, we got her baby back and. I do remember being in the hospital and just being like, why am I not in the corner just broken and, you know, how am I handling this? I, I didn't, I mean, I knew how, but it just, it did amaze me that I just asked God, you know, you put, you put me here. Help me be present and learn whatever you want me to learn and take from this experience, whatever you're wanting me to take from it.

He did that, he honored that, and I held it together pretty well, except when my family would come visit and then on Sundays when they would leave. That was pretty hard. But 

Jim: yeah, 

Kitsi: held it together. It wasn't until I got home and I guess that's when God, when you're in your, your safe place and then everything kind of.

I guess the PTSD set in of the four months before, and that's kind of when I felt everything is after being at home. So that worked out good. 

Jim: In the hospital, was that just before COVID or is that during COVID? 

Kitsi: Oh, that was, thank the Lord. That was before COVID because, so we got home October and COVID hit that spring.

Jim: Yeah. Okay. 

Kitsi: And I was kind of defiant with it because I'm like, I finally got my kid home. We're getting him healthy, we're getting out. And then COVID hits and they're trying to put masks on us. And I'm like, we're not doing this. And at first I was scared because, you know, his lungs were bad, his heart was just fixed.

And then you have to worry about this thing going around and, but you know, I kind of quickly realized. If they were to tell me I had to wear a mask in the, in the room and my family couldn't visit, we would've had a problem 

Jim: for sure. Yeah. You would've gotten feisty. 

Kitsi: You might've seen the feisty side of me.

That doesn't come out very often, but, 

Jim: oh, that was a close call. It 

Kitsi: would've been a nice feisty, but I would've been like, no, thank you. I'm not wearing that. 

Jim: Yeah. Alright, well let's get to the good part where he started getting better, right? 

Kitsi: Yeah. So he gets. To come home and he was still on oxygen, still had his feeding tube on about 12 different medications, most of which I was to wean him off of.

Jim: Mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: But the heart medicine, they weren't sure if he'd have to stay on. And thyroid, you know, I'd gone to his. Thyroid doctor and asked, you know, how I could help get him better to get him off the medicine. And he was basically like he has down syndrome. He'll probably always be on that medication. And I didn't really like that answers.

Yeah, because I thought his thyroid was fine before this injury, so I think we can get it back to where it was. But he didn't know how to use a bottle. He was almost a year old, but when all this had happened, he was still on a bottle. So it was kind of a weird transition 'cause they sent me home with him and he had all these, you know, he was very complex medically, but because we wouldn't vaccinate him anymore, we were let go from our pediatrician.

I had taken him there after we got back, knowing I didn't wanna go back to that pediatrician because they didn't help me when mm-hmm. He had the reaction and then I took him back for his next appointment instead of helping me. They tried to give him more. They actually tried to give them the same vaccine that caused the injury two months before.

Announcer: Wow. 

Kitsi: So I was pretty, my eyes were open to how that system works too, and it, it wasn't very friendly towards my child, so our child, but I needed their help. In the moment 'cause I didn't know what to do about the feeding situation. Mm-hmm. So I took him into a different PA doctor at the same practice, but a different doctor and just asked her how am I supposed to get him off the feeding tube.

He was taking a bottle, but now he has to start eating and she's basically couldn't really help me with that. And tried to send us to the fur center in Greenville for medically complex children. So he got that referral, but then when they called me, I just let them know the situation that I'm not gonna vaccinate him.

I just wanna make sure that's not gonna be an issue before we go through the whole process of becoming a patient. And she said, yeah, that, that is gonna be a problem because he is around all these other kids and 

Announcer: Right. 

Kitsi: I was like, well, do you care about my kids' health or just the greater population because it's, it just doesn't make, it's not adding up here and.

She said she couldn't take 'em. So basically I felt like, okay, I'm on my own here. I'll just figure this out on my own. But thankfully, he had all of his specialist where he had his heart surgery, so he had his endocrine doctor and his cardiologist. He had four d. Specialist. So anytime I had a problem I would just take him to that specialist.

So I didn't really need the pediatrician at the time. They're pretty much only good for jabbing him, and that was about it. I did get him started in speech therapy and feeding therapy and they were very helpful in getting him to start eating. So I was kind of working with the blank slate, which was perfect to start implementing.

The program, which is um, I was blending all his foods and just giving him smoothies and oatmeal and had just decided we're gonna start off. No sugar, no dyes, no dairy, no gluten, just all the things that could irritate his gut. I'd also started working with a naturopathic pediatrician who specializes in Down syndrome.

Telepath, she's from Oregon, so she would just order the blood work and see his blood work and the stool test. So she was helping me along the way of tracking his progress and 

Jim: mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: As he, he did wean off all his medication, including his thyroid meds, has been completely med free from, after about a year he got home, he was able to get off all his medications.

Jim: Wow. 

Kitsi: The main thing was just constipation for a while. Right, 

Jim: and 

Kitsi: just getting his gut back to working and moving. And so we just dealt with some toxicity in his body for a few years, trying to get that worked out. But he has made, I would say, I mean, I say a full recovery, but he'll always have challenges as far as speech and, you know, physical challenges.

And I do believe that speech was greatly affected by. Everything you went through, because he was saying a lot of the sounds before all this happened that he is still saying he hasn't progressed a whole lot in that area, but 

Jim: yeah. 

Kitsi: Yeah. He's a very healthy, happy child at this point. 

Jim: Yeah. He looked very happy in the picture I saw.

So, and I know I, I know several, um, kids or even adults who have, uh, down syndrome and they're always so. Fun to be around. They're so happy. They're so optimistic, and, uh, they're just so full of joy. I thought, man, the things we can learn from them, right? 

Kitsi: But he can turn on you too. He is very happy, but he's very extreme in all his emotions, so it can turn from very happy to very angry.

To, 

Jim: yeah. Well, well, there's a part. Yeah. 

Kitsi: But yes, he's very sweet 

Jim: man. When you think your child is not gonna make it, and, and it sounds like you were preparing yourself for, you know, either way of being a follower of, of, of Christ, you know, it's. You have a whole different mindset with that, but still it's, it's never easy.

But you know, so many people when they get a diagnosis for themselves or for their child, they just get angry with God as if he did this. But it, it sounds like you, you had a good mindset. You weren't shaking your fist at the heavens, right? 

Kitsi: No, and I mean, I can't blame God for a decision that we made when it came to the vaccines because.

That was something that I had struggled with trying to figure out what to do with him. You know, we had fully vaccinated our first two kids and never questioned it, but I did start to do some research before he was born and had decided, you know, I'd at least look into each one before we did it and 

Announcer: mm-hmm.

Kitsi: Just be more intentional about it. But then when I had tried to have that conversation with the pediatrician. They just weren't very cooperative with that and accepting of that. And it was, you know, the pressure of, well, you can't come here if you don't. And it was something I prayed about, but I wasn't getting answers.

Jim: Mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: Quick enough. I felt like. Because I wasn't finding any reason not to vaccinate him. You know, you can't just go Google. Should you vaccinate a child with Down syndrome? Everything that comes up is gonna say yes, definitely. Even more. You know, they're immune compromised. They need it. They need it, they need it.

You're a terrible mom if you don't. So you was the messages I was getting, but I didn't have peace about it. And that would be my lesson that I've taken from all this is, and I've heard it talked about just. In these groups and these programs of people that can relate with a cancer diagnosis, you know, don't jump into a decision and don't.

Mm-hmm. You know, you have time, but I felt like I didn't have time. I had to stick to their timeline and do it their way, and I caved and just said, okay, you know, best, and I don't know why I'm having all these reservations, but apparently I, I have no basis to argue and I didn't wanna step out on my own and take on that responsibility, and then something happened to him.

So I kind of did it against, you know. Looking back what God probably would've had us do. Right. And he progressively, you know, were showing signs of injury leading up to the spasms, but I just thought it was colic or, you know, his stomach wasn't settling well with the milk, whatever it was. Yeah. But the hours of crying.

The inflammation, the encephalitis, studying in the brain, and I just wasn't making the connection. Mm. So, yeah, there's definitely a, a big lesson I learned in all this. So I can't go back and blame God because I did find the answers when he had the injury. All this information came flowing in. I'm like, had I waited, I would've known this.

Jim: Yeah, you're talking like crazy Kits just yak, yak, yak. I'm kidding. It's great. This is, this is what we need. Okay. So Ben enters your mom. Obviously she's been around for a while, but I mean, when I first met you, it was at the meeting and you were starting, uh, your own group just down the road from me.

Because of your mom, but give us a little background of that. Of course. She's had the, the cancer, you said 20 years ago? 

Kitsi: Yeah. It was in her forties. She had breast cancer twice and a mastectomy and the radiation and the chemo. She had done everything they recommended. Right. Um, Tamoxifen, I think that's the name of the medicine they want you on for five or 10 years after you have breast cancer.

So she took that and. Then last year she found out she had the endometrial cancer, which was likely caused from the tamoxifen because that's one of the side effects she knew this time around, even though they recommended chemo, they, she got the surgery, had her uterus removed. They couldn't find anything, but they still wanted her to take the chemo because they said there could be some radical cells they didn't see and, and it was so rare.

That was another god thing, because when she found out it could be cancer, she changed her diet. And started implementing a lot of this from the program, but it was only about a month and a half. But I just feel like God honored that because when they went in, they, they took her uterus out. There's still, usually with the type of aggressive cancer she had, there's usually something left behind.

It was all gone like they could find nothing. So the doctor was a little bit stumped and called her a rare bird. And this is a conundrum. We don't really know how to handle this 'cause it doesn't usually happen. But we're gonna recommend that you still, because of the cancer, it was that you get the chemo and they pushed it pretty hard.

But she. I knew she didn't wanna go that route. She was still having some just side effects from the first chemo she had had 20 years ago. So she, 

Jim: wow. 

Kitsi: She was very open to doing this and I felt like the program would be not just good for me and our family. 

Jim: Mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: Good support, but support for her. 

Jim: And you heard about Healing Strong through Chris work, right?

Kitsi: Mm-hmm. 

Jim: Yeah. That's always the case. And so how is your group going now? 

Kitsi: It's a small group. It's, we have one sweet older couple that have come to every single meeting. They're from Travelers rest and 

Jim: Wow, 

Kitsi: that's really nice to know. I'll at least have my mom at the group and I'll at least have Mandy and Allen at the group.

But other than that, I have a friend who, she comes occasionally and then kind of random people will come and go. 

Jim: That's how mine is. Of course, you were there at one time. I don't know how many people were there then. Probably eight. 

Kitsi: It was a full room that day. 

Jim: Was it? 

Kitsi: Mm-hmm. 

Jim: Yeah, we'll have like up to 20 and then last month one person showed up and I, oh, I had a juicer and I had all kinds of stuff going.

I was ready for, you know, 50 people showing up. And one person showed up like, okay, well I'm going back to Anderson and I had drank a lot of juice, so that was good. But yeah. Yeah, it's, it's very inconsistent as far as that. 'cause people come and they go, uh, there's usually a core that are, uh, they're there all the time, but they're very faithful with, you know, staying with it and supporting it.

So, and I'll, I'll probably have a decent crowd. My next one, which will already have happened by the time this airs. But with Susie coming, I'll probably get, I better get more than one person. Better not just be me and Susie. No, they're all excited about, uh, meeting her and, and picking her brain and hearing her story.

And hopefully you and your mom can come. 

Kitsi: Yeah, I'd like to. 

Jim: No pressure. But we'll talk about you if you don't. So there's always that. Well, is there any, uh, advice that you would give to somebody that's listening right now who just got a diagnosis or even worse, their child was diagnosed? That's probably the worst thing I can think about.

What would you tell them? 

Kitsi: Read the package inserts. 

Jim: Mm-hmm. 

Kitsi: And know that they're not rare. Side effects are not rare. Right? And as far as the healing side of things, God is good and God can heal. And even when they give you no hope, you know, it might not have been a cancer diagnosis. With Grayson. It was, you know, we've exhausted everything we can do.

You know, they sent in palliative care, they were preparing us, and I don't know, I just felt like once. God brought him back. God gave me this peace and I, I felt like he was gonna be okay. I don't know why I felt that. I don't, I had no reason to think that, but I, I know he was leading me down that path of, you know, this is how we're gonna do it.

And so I would say just never give up hope. You know, the doctors, they're limited. They can offer medication and there's gonna be times where what they can offer won't help you, or they're at the end of what they can offer you, but there's always something more God can do. 

Jim: Yeah. And 

Kitsi: don't give up that hoop.

Jim: That's good advice. Can see you're a strong woman. You've been through a lot. I wouldn't wanna mess with you. My youngest daughter is like that. She's calm and quiet and, but I've seen her, when someone crosses her, like, don't everybody step back. She's like, Chuck Norris. 

Kitsi: And so I'm like that with our kids, I guess.

Jim: Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and your, your probably unusual quiet time when you're. Sun is down. 

Kitsi: Yeah. 

Jim: Well, I don't wanna take any more of that time so you can enjoy it, but thank you for all you do and uh, you're welcome to our meeting whenever. 

Kitsi: Thank you. 

Announcer: You've been listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast, part of the Healing Strong Organization.

We hope this episode encouraged you and gave you confidence to take charge of your healing journey. Trusting God to guide your path. Healing Strong is a nonprofit dedicated to connecting, supporting, and educating individuals facing cancer and other diseases through strategies that rebuild the body, renew the soul, and refresh the spirit.

It's free to join a local or online group. Just visit healing strong.org to find one near you or start your own. While you're there, create a free My Healing Strong account to access all of our free resources to help you live healthier and heal strong. Though our groups and resources are free, we invite you to support our mission through a monthly hope givers donation of your choosing.

Your generosity helps us reach more people with hope and encouragement. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a five star rating and review to help us spread the word. We'll see you next week with another story on the I Am Healing Strong Podcast.

I.