176. Stage 4 Cancer to Advocacy: Rodrigo and Liz's Journey of Healing, Resilience, and Holistic Wellness

In this heartfelt episode, Colette Brown speaks with Liz Nieves and her husband Rodrigo Rodriguez about their transformative journey through cancer, healing, and lifestyle change. 

Rodrigo’s courageous battle with Stage 4 cancer supporting all along the way by his wife Liz who educated herself and became certified as a a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner to help her husband battle cancer.

Rodrigo's battle became a catalyst for purpose, shifting his career to advocate for water purification systems. Liz, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, emphasizes the importance of spiritual grounding and empowering families to embrace healthier habits.

Episode Highlights:

00:30 Meet Liz and Rodrigo: A Journey of Love and Resilience

02:09 Rodrigo's Childhood Memories and Immigration Story

02:52 Liz's Harrowing Escape from Cuba

08:18 A Love Story Rekindled: Liz and Rodrigo's Reunion

13:03 The Cancer Diagnosis: A Life-Changing Moment

18:41 Post-Surgery Realizations

19:21 The Diagnosis and Timeline

20:44 Facing the Reality of Stage 4 Cancer

21:42 The Caregiver's Perspective

24:07 Nutritional Journey and Career Shift

24:45 Integrative Care and Lifestyle Changes

32:42 The Importance of Water Purification

35:31 Final Reflections and Messages of Hope

What You’ll Learn:

• How Rodrigo turned his cancer diagnosis into a life-changing opportunity.
• Liz’s four-pillar approach to integrative cancer support: toxicity, deficiencies, nutrition, and emotional wellness.
• Practical tips for adopting a healthier family lifestyle.
• The impact of clean water on health and Rodrigo’s advocacy journey.
• Why spiritual resilience is vital for mental and physical well-being.

Key Quotes:

• "Ownership of your habits is the key to change." – Liz
• "Cancer was a blessing because it transformed our lives." – Rodrigo
• "Spiritual grounding is the anchor in times of hardship." – Liz

• Connect with Liz on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/liznieves08/

Don’t Miss This Inspiring Episode!
Discover how love, resilience, and lifestyle changes can transform challenges into blessings.

______________________________________

Connect with Colette:

Instagram: @wellnessbycolette

Website: love-colette.com

Thank you for listening to the Limitless Healing podcast with Colette Brown! It would mean the world if you would take one minute to follow, leave a 5 star review and share with those you love!

In Health,
Colette

Transcript

[00:00:00] Colette Brown: Today, I'm excited to share a husband wife team, 

[00:00:04] Rodrigo: Liz and Rodrigo. Liz is a nutritional therapy practitioner and speaker specializing in integrative cancer support, developing personalized nutrition and wellness plans to address. The physical and emotional challenges of cancer treatment and recovery. Her unique four pillar system focused on toxicity, deficiencies, nutrition, and emotional wellness empowers clients to rebuild health, boost immunity.

[00:00:31] Colette Brown: And manage the side effects of cancer treatments. This became Liz's world when her husband Rodrigo developed stage four cancer guided by her faith and inspired by her family's journey with cancer. She's committed to providing compassionate individualized care that helps clients regain control over their health.

And we're going to hear from both of them. So welcome Liz and Rodrigo. 

[00:00:57] Liz: Thank you, Collette. Thank you for having us. We appreciate you. 

[00:01:00] Colette Brown: Thank you. It's great to have both of you. So let's dive in. We've got two of you, so time is of the essence because I want to hear from both of you and your journey. So Rodrigo, why don't you start us out and tell us about where you grew up and maybe a favorite childhood memory that you have that's affected you until today.

[00:01:22] Rodrigo: I'm Venezuelan. I was born in Venezuela. I came to United States in 1989. I've been living in Miami, Florida for 30, 35 years already. A childhood memory. It will be the first time I went to a ski. And we went to Northern Italy. My brother took me and it was amazing. I never forget about that.

And now I love skiing. So 

[00:01:48] Colette Brown: me too. I love skiing. That's nice. And Liz, what about you? 

[00:01:53] Liz: Okay, I'll make mine as short as I possibly can. So I am Cuban. I am an immigrant. I came here in 1984. And obviously we had a, I'm one of those stories of a lot of hardship to get here. We actually, my mom was able to pay off some people, get A visa because Cubans can't exit the country unless they were allowed by the government.

So we were able to pay off people in the government, get visas to be, to go to Panama. And it was my cousin, my mom and I, so I was eight, my cousin was 12. And then we were in Panama living in, we were staying with a lady that it was, Like this disgusting house that was full of roaches and we would wake up with roaches underneath us They would crawl on us or we would sleep.

I mean we got lice It was very intense. We barely had food, but gratefully we were there for three months. And the idea was that my uncles who were here in the United States, they had come in 1980, were raising money. They were working and they needed 10, 000, which is what it was costing at the time to smuggle us out of Panama.

So there was a guy smuggling people in a small prop plane. From Panama to Bimini in the Bahamas and that's what happened. So one night I, it was the time that we were scheduled to leave because it was safe that day specifically. So we were running, I remember running like at four o'clock in the morning.

Through the Amazon jungle to get into a prop plane and land in Bimini, which we did, thank God, and then my uncle came in a boat and picked us up and we came into the, into Miami, like at nine o'clock at night, I'll never forget it. And and back then Reagan was, President. So we had a meet we were able to come in legally.

So the next day, we just showed up at the social security office and we got our parole and our, residency and stuff like that. So yeah. 

[00:03:38] Colette Brown: Wow. Yeah. 

[00:03:41] Liz: Favorite childhood memory. Let me think. Not that one.

I'm going to be honest with you. And you know how this is like one of these things that we look back on. We're very poor and my mom used to make 8, 000 a year and we lived you as a typical story We lived like 15 to a three bedroom two bedroom house kind of thing And it was like my uncles my aunts their kids me my mom my grandparents We lived in a small house and I can honestly tell you that every time I look back.

We were so happy It was just, I don't remember missing anything, 

[00:04:10] Colette Brown: if that 

[00:04:10] Liz: makes sense, I feel that's something that gets lost today and I don't know if it's, we're just so caught in the overwhelm, but I don't remember, even though we were so poor, and I look back now and I'm like, how did we survive?

[00:04:22] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:04:23] Liz: But I don't remember ever being unhappy. We were always happy and our family used to play dominoes and every night was like, it was chaos, but it was like such great chaos, if that makes any sense. So we're very united. My mom and her siblings are very close. 

[00:04:37] Colette Brown: Wow. Yeah. So you came to the States and so her siblings were already here.

[00:04:41] Liz: So we, her siblings left in the Maria boatlift. One uncle came in 1960 when Fidel first took over. He was the first one out. He was the oldest brother. And because of him, they were, he's the one that. Got a boat here, went in the Mariel Boat Lift and picked everybody up. We were scheduled to leave the next day, but they closed the Mariel Boat Lift, so that's why my mom, myself, and my cousin never got out.

[00:05:04] Colette Brown: I see. 

[00:05:05] Liz: They were supposed to come back for us, because the boat was already full. Because the way that it worked back then was like, Fidel allowed you to leave, but you had to take on your boat. So anybody he wanted, remember he emptied the jails and he emptied the psych wards. So you had to bring people on your boat that he wanted on and then the rest would be filled by whoever you wanted.

So most people don't know any of that. 

[00:05:27] Colette Brown: Wow. 

[00:05:28] Liz: I know. It's crazy. It's really it's like a It's a movie. I swear. 

[00:05:31] Colette Brown: It's a movie. And then they were just released in Miami. 

[00:05:34] Liz: Yeah, so we came here. They were because it was during that time they were legal to come because we had asylum and that's why so many Cubans settled here, in 

[00:05:45] Colette Brown: Miami.

[00:05:45] Liz: Yeah, Miami Beach and 8th Street and that's why you can come when you come to Miami. These places are very cultural. Specifically to the Cuban people and so you can go and experience like a very Cuban Ethnic that's 

[00:05:58] Rodrigo: why we say Miami is close to United States 

[00:06:00] Colette Brown: Yeah I was there last year and I was in shock that everyone, like everywhere you went, it was Spanish speaking.

Like you really need to speak Spanish if you want to go to Miami. 

[00:06:11] Rodrigo: Yeah, we have signs that says we speak English. 

[00:06:14] Colette Brown: No, there's people in 

[00:06:15] Liz: restaurants wear a thing that says I speak English. I kid you not. It's the funniest thing in the world. 

[00:06:20] Colette Brown: It's true. It's true. I just, it had been, I think over 20 years since I had been to Miami when I went.

Last year. And I was in shock. Yeah. Yeah. It's a 

[00:06:29] Liz: melting pot. It's a melting 

[00:06:31] Colette Brown: pot for the 

[00:06:32] Liz: Americas. Yeah. 

[00:06:33] Colette Brown: That's right. And that's what we're about. So what a beautiful story. So you come to the States, you grow up [00:06:40] and, Rodrigo, when did you come to the States? 

[00:06:43] Rodrigo: 1989. 

[00:06:44] Colette Brown: And did you was there a story behind it?

Was it? No, I just got into a plane and 

[00:06:51] Rodrigo: got here. 

[00:06:51] Liz: No, you 

[00:06:52] Colette Brown: can't 

[00:06:52] Liz: come to 

[00:06:53] Rodrigo: school. He was on a 

[00:06:53] Liz: student visa. Oh yeah. 

[00:06:55] Rodrigo: I was in Venezuela there was already like political disagreements and stuff. Yeah. So it was a riot that like 2, 000 people died in one day. So my mom was like, you're going to United States.

So we applied for a student visa back then was easier. So I got a student visa. I studied two years of high school. So I came with an F1, it's called a student visa F1. So that's how I came. Wow. 

[00:07:19] Colette Brown: Okay. So the two of you land in the States and then what brings you guys together? 

[00:07:25] Rodrigo: Oh, biology. 

[00:07:27] Liz: That sounds weird.

We were cave people. No. 

[00:07:31] Rodrigo: We met in a biology class. 

[00:07:33] Liz: We met in a biology lab and our story is actually very funny. I'm going to say it quicker because of my English, but all right, we're going to fast forward this. We meet in a bio lab. This was what? 

[00:07:44] Rodrigo: 1997. 

[00:07:45] Liz: 1997. March 

[00:07:46] Rodrigo: 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

He's 

[00:07:47] Liz: really good with dates. I don't remember. He remembers what I was wearing. It's crazy. Anyways, moving on. He we saw each other from across the room and he was like, we were hooked from the very beginning. Wait, 

[00:07:57] Colette Brown: what were you thinking Rodrigo when you saw her?

[00:07:59] Liz: Oh God, please say the most appropriate thing for the video. 

[00:08:02] Rodrigo: Hey, I wasn't thinking too much. No, when she came in, I'm like, wow. 

[00:08:06] Colette Brown: Who's that? 

[00:08:07] Rodrigo: Yeah. So I, we were in different tables. So I quickly went to her table. 

[00:08:12] Liz: Yeah. 

[00:08:13] Rodrigo: Secured your place. Yes. Yes. He was making 

[00:08:16] Liz: crickets dance. I was 

[00:08:17] Rodrigo: doing my marking my territory.

So yeah, and I was you can call it love at the first sight. 

[00:08:22] Colette Brown: There you go. You just knew that this is the one. Yeah. 

[00:08:26] Liz: But, we ended up dating for one year, but I grew up without my dad, and I have to say this because this I think is very important so I grew up without my dad and I always had like major issues with self confidence and worth.

And all this stuff that some of us girls really go through. And so I always was like, and then on top of, I was raised by a mom who was like, you don't need any man. My mom was very progressive, very like forward thinking, even though she was like from a really old, my mom's 85 now, so imagine, but she was always like, you don't need a man.

Marriage is slavery. She was like, and I grew up thinking, all men are bad kind of thing, and they're not really going to stay kind of thing. And so I break up with him. And he was like, please don't. I love you. You're the love of my life. I'm going to marry you one day, even if we're 60 years old.

I was like, no, but he loves anybody like that. That's not true. You're going to break my heart. Eventually. I just, I'm going to end it now before it's before I get more hurt kind of thing. 

[00:09:21] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:09:21] Liz: Fast forward two years later, I find out he got married. So I decide, you know what? I'm never going to do that to myself.

If somebody loves me like that, again, I'm going to get married. So I did pass forward years go by. Yeah, a little bit less than 12. So we, I 12 years ago. 

[00:09:38] Colette Brown: Bye. 

[00:09:39] Liz: Yeah. I think it was like eight, eight, eight go by. I get divorced. I didn't know where he was. Nothing. I get divorced. March 9th at 1030 in the morning, 2005.

I start looking for him. It took me four and a half years to find him, which is why it's 12 years. Because immediately I started looking for him. We find each other again through Facebook, through friends, kind of thing, whatever. He was engaged to get married again. That didn't work out, clearly. So he did.

He had four months to the wedding. He ended up calling the whole wedding off. Because he's look, she's a wonderful girl. She's great, but she's not you. Anyways. So he breaks that off. We get together when we go to, he goes to move in with me and I look at his divorce papers. He got divorced March 8th at two 30 in the afternoon, 2005.

[00:10:26] Colette Brown: Wow. Less 

[00:10:27] Liz: than 24 hours from one another. 

[00:10:29] Colette Brown: Wow. 

[00:10:30] Liz: It's amazing because there's so many things that I'm like, how on earth, what are the odds? That's why it's technically, even though we went out in college, this is our second 

[00:10:39] Colette Brown: marriage. 

[00:10:39] Liz: Yeah. And then we had two kids together.

[00:10:41] Colette Brown: Amazing. And what would you tell people that meet some, they meet someone and they're like, this is my person, but then they get really scared and they retract like you did. What would you say to them? 

[00:10:51] Liz: We talk, we've talked about this. I wasn't mature enough. Emotionally to handle that love, which means I jaded myself of that love.

And so gratefully, I think one of my best attributes in life is that I am a forever student and I'm always leveling up no matter what. And I think that because of that, I've been able to overcome so much hardship and so much failure and so much heartache because I refused to be. To let life beat me up kind of thing, even though it's definitely tried.

And so I tell people never give up on love and always work on developing yourself to the level of what you're trying to attract. Does that make sense? So become the person that you want to be. For that person to be with you, you have to be that first, because that's how you identify. That's how you find them, that energy, that, that synchronicity.

So that's, I think, that's definitely what I would say. 

[00:11:43] Colette Brown: Yeah. And if you've attracted them, then most likely you're vibrating that energy out. 

[00:11:48] Rodrigo: Either that or crazy.

[00:11:49] Liz: I loved her and for four years, she sells a stalker at And if 

[00:11:54] Colette Brown: I was to guess that humor is a foundation of the relationship, what I'd be wrong. Amazing. So you guys find each other. You have two kids and you're going along with life and tell me about the situation that's leading up to when you discover that Rodrigo has stage four cancer.

[00:12:17] Liz: We were actually, it was it was the beginning of the year 20, it was in January 2023, we have a cabin up in Georgia, North Georgia, and we had gone to celebrate my birthday up there, which is at the beginning of January as well, and we were on a hike, and I looked at him, and I'm like, man, you look a little green, you look a little your coloring is weird, and your eyes are red.

Are you all right? And he was lagging behind. He's no, I'm fine. I'm just tired. I've been, I'm a little bit constipated. I don't feel that well. I feel a little bit bloated, but we had been traveling. So we were eating out. And so you think, how it is you when you're traveling, everything it gets disrupted. We were actually, and this is one of our miracles. We talk a lot about when we tell the story, we really mentioned the miracles along the way, but we were up there with a friend of his that he went to high school with, which is currently, he is the an oncology surgeon. Okay. Who specializes in his cancer and there's barely any of them throughout the country.

Let's just put that there. Okay. 

[00:13:14] Colette Brown: Wow. 

[00:13:14] Liz: They had bought a cabin up there. We had bought a cabin up there. They have small kids. We have small [00:13:20] kids. So we were hanging out with them. We were actually at a barbecue at their cabin and he tells my husband, don't worry. It's probably, you're just constipated when you get back to Miami.

I have 

[00:13:29] Rodrigo: a small pain on the 

[00:13:30] Liz: Very low. So I 

[00:13:30] Rodrigo: thought, Oh, maybe it's appendicitis. 

[00:13:33] Liz: Yeah. 

[00:13:34] Rodrigo: No, you don't have the symptoms of appendicitis. I didn't throw up. I didn't, 

[00:13:37] Liz: no nausea, nothing. 

[00:13:38] Rodrigo: It was it was a little discomfort. So I thought it was maybe a hernia. So we left it like that. So we started driving back to Miami.

It takes 11 hours. So I started more pain. That was a Sunday. Monday, I didn't do anything. Tuesday, I hear a voice. I woke up in the morning and it says go to the hospital. 

[00:13:57] Liz: He hears it while he's in he's getting ready in the morning. I'm getting 

[00:14:00] Rodrigo: ready I feel something inside go to the hospital.

[00:14:02] Liz: Wow. So 

[00:14:03] Rodrigo: I went to urgent care, not even the hospital, and they touch me and the guy says, I'm going to order a CT scan to make sure there is no appendicitis. So when I get to the ER, they come out with a wheelchair, like you have to go to the OR. So I got the surgery, Liz and the kids met me, I was in bed already coming out from surgery.

[00:14:24] Liz: We think that the whole time we're thinking it's a regular appendicitis. 

[00:14:29] Colette Brown: An appendectomy is what they 

[00:14:31] Rodrigo: took. Yes, that's what they had, exactly. So the doctor said, listen, you were away two more hours. that would have burst. It would have burst. So you're lucky that you got here on time. So he's I see you next week in my consult.

I want to, we'll go over everything. 

[00:14:43] Liz: Because they had put a drainage on him. 

[00:14:46] Rodrigo: Yeah. 

[00:14:47] Liz: So he, we had to do specific things for the drainage. So he had the consult and it was going to be for five days. So he had that consult the following Wednesday. 

[00:14:54] Rodrigo: Yeah. So she left to Columbia. I told her, listen, leave, don't worry about it.

I had a planned 

[00:14:59] Liz: scheduled trip. 

[00:15:00] Rodrigo: I'm fine. Don't worry about it. When I get to the office, the guy said to me, everything looks good, but I'm sorry, you have appendix cancer. So he 

[00:15:08] Liz: Appendiceal. 

[00:15:09] Rodrigo: Appendiceal cancer, he told me is very rare. But it's funny because the way he said it, I was calm. I was like, Oh, it's going to be fine, like the way he was describing everything.

So I made immediately I call I sent a test message to my friend. 

[00:15:23] Liz: Oh, the doctor. Oh, yeah, 

[00:15:25] Rodrigo: which I hadn't seen him 30 years. And six months before the cancer, we start hanging around again. 

[00:15:30] Liz: And going to the cabin. 

[00:15:30] Rodrigo: So he calls me right away. He's listen, I'm gonna do the surgery. They needed to do a surgery to look at my lymph nodes to make sure the cancer didn't move to my lymphatic system.

Within the colon. 

[00:15:40] Liz: That's actually what the procedure is. They go to they have to go into the colon and remove some of the lymph nodes in order to test them and see if it's gone anywhere else. Because appendiceal cancer, it's like a mucus. That busy appendix. What it does is that it seeds the colon for you to have with a mucus so that you're able to go to the bathroom easier kind of thing.

But it's one of those organs that they're like if we need to remove it, it's not that big of a deal. However, when it has cancer, it will start with that. It will obviously, Enter the lymphatic system. So that's the main thing. That was the reason that we needed to schedule a second surgery.

[00:16:14] Rodrigo: Yeah. So while the surgery Omar is specializing that cancer. He told me, Oh, I'm going to do surgery because I specialize in that cancer. So when he look at the lymph nodes, he made, he looked something in my small intestine that is weird, looks weird. And he opened me up and then bingo, I had the cancer move to the small intestine.

[00:16:33] Liz: Yeah. So the day before. That's 

[00:16:34] Rodrigo: why it was stage four because he. 

[00:16:36] Liz: Note, the day before he had CT scans, the tumor was sitting on the top, it wasn't like even hidden in between the small intestine, like rivets or anything. It was at the top. And when Omar, I knew something was wrong because the surgery was supposed to be like an hour and a half and it was three hours into it and he hadn't come out.

So the scan, the CT scan missed the point. the metastasized tumor the day before. It never showed up on the CT scan. 

[00:17:01] Rodrigo: And he said, yeah, note on that, the doctor that removed my appendix, he was gonna do the surgery to see my lymph nodes. And Omar told me don't let him do it because he's just a general surgeon.

He's not an oncologist, so he won't. He might not know what to look for. Exactly. So if I would have done the surgery with him, I probably wouldn't be here sitting down talking to you. 

[00:17:19] Liz: He might have missed it, 

[00:17:20] Rodrigo: he would have missed it because he doesn't know how the cancer reacts. 

[00:17:23] Liz: And so he, they removed two feet of colon, two feet of small intestine and all of his omentum.

Wow. Yeah. 

[00:17:31] Rodrigo: They gave 

[00:17:31] Colette Brown: me a tummy tuck. Yes. One way to put it. 

[00:17:34] Liz: Yeah. There were abs underneath there. I want to make sure we say that. There were abs there. They were all hidden. By one big ab, but there were abs there. 

[00:17:42] Colette Brown: Oh, wow. So he finds it and then, you come out of surgery and what was that like finding out after post anesthesia?

Was it a daunting feeling? Was it were you comfortable thinking I'm going to beat this or? 

[00:17:58] Rodrigo: I didn't know. She never told me. Yeah. She told me like two months later. 

[00:18:02] Liz: No, that's not true. Stop it. No. So okay, 

[00:18:05] Rodrigo: I didn't, she didn't tell me she, she probably didn't want me to be like down. 

[00:18:10] Colette Brown: So your friend didn't tell you?

[00:18:12] Liz: No. No, I was, so he was under anesthesia still in the recuperating and he came to me. And not only because obviously he has to tell me the staging, 

[00:18:22] Colette Brown: right? Because 

[00:18:22] Liz: The mind you, I want to make sure we go back and look at timeline a second. So he was diagnosed, with the initial tumor from the appendicitis January 18th, but he apparently somewhere along the way, he developed an autoimmune, which we did not know about, which is called ITP, Immunothrombocytopenia, which is low platelet count.

It's basically where your bone marrow creates the platelets, but your spleen kills them. So it is an autoimmune it's blood related. We never knew he had that. It's due to a high viral infection and he had COVID twice. But we never knew because he never showed up. Anyways, so because of that, they had to postpone the second surgery until March 9th.

He could not have that surgery. So we went from January 18th, living in complete and utter darkness. And not knowing what this was like other than this is a very aggressive, cancer that really there is no, there's not even a chemo for it, the chemo that you receive is colon chemo, and we didn't even know which kind of cancer really we had, because there's also different mutations of it.

So that surgery was postponed, it was supposed to be February 9th. But because of his ITP, they were afraid he could bleed on the table, or bleed out. So then, we had to schedule it, and then they gave us a go ahead, the green light on March 9th. Now, once, he takes an extra hour and a half to come out, I'm like, yeah, something's not right.

So he comes to me, and he tells me, look, it's stage 4. I was by myself. I didn't have anyone there. Our kids did not know. I didn't say anything to anyone. Our parents, like my mom and his mom, are both 85 years old. Not information they need to know. So I was really by [00:20:00] myself. And I was like, I described this.

Because it's the only way I can like a train hit us like a train hit me and I got thrown in the middle like 3, 000 miles away from home, and we had to, I'm like, just waking up and like what's going on and you don't know anything around you. It was, and then he's okay, we got to go and tell him when he wakes up.

I was like, I can't go in there and do. We let it pass. We did not tell him anything we just told him that the surgery went well that everything went good. Until he was more because when you're coming out, you're not coherent anyways. He wasn't very coherent. So we waited till the next day for her to sit down and tell him the severity of things and then what it looked like going forward.

But it was it's funny because his view and my view is very different because obviously he's the patient. I was a caretaker. I got the news first and I filter a lot of things for him because I think it, it just helps. He's always Mr. Happy go lucky and I'm more of the realist kind of thing. So it works out that when one freaks out, the other one doesn't thing.

So it's a good balance to be honest with you. But yeah, so that was very trying and we didn't tell our children. Until, I think it was like two weeks, this is the part I don't remember, I think two weeks after he came home from that second surgery, in which he lost 30 pounds in five days.

[00:21:21] Colette Brown: Wow. And that's, 

[00:21:21] Liz: that is very critical. That's one of the things of why I went into this, into my practice. I'm talking about 30 pounds in five days. He was Five days. green, gray, couldn't move and excruciating pain could barely stand up. This is a six three man who has always been strong, and all of a sudden I had to carry him just to be able to get up from bed.

I had to help him. He could not push and sit up in bed. It was, It's so crazy because you're, I'm looking at this man who's always been so strong and athletic and like I said we've always considered ourselves very healthy. We didn't, we ate out like Uber Eats and eat out at restaurants and we had like our daily lives, but overall we cooked meals at home, we have a healthy relationship.

We have healthy children, like we don't have like toxic friendships or we're just not that kind of people, you deal with the regular stresses of the world, but nothing toxic in our lives. And man, when we were like, where is this coming from? 

[00:22:16] Colette Brown: Yeah. 

[00:22:17] Liz: What? And you go through all the stages like anger For sure.

That was my first angry. I was so pissed. I was like, there's people out there raping children and my husband, who is a kind amazing father, has a stage four cancer that has no cure. I'm sorry, what? 

[00:22:32] Rodrigo: Yeah. But then we find out that is was a blessing. 

[00:22:35] Liz: Yeah, I know. But at that moment it was just not fun. 

[00:22:37] Colette Brown: Yeah. In the moment is when it's the most trying and you have to find your way through. And then we can look back hindsight and say, what a gift that was because I have a second chance. I, you really put things into perspective and I'm sure you fine tuned your life. What you thought was fine tuned prior to the cancer was nothing to where it is today.

Correct. Yeah. 

[00:23:02] Liz: Yes. And that I think has become our purpose. 

[00:23:05] Rodrigo: Yeah. That's beautiful. It's important to help people. 

[00:23:07] Liz: Exactly. 

[00:23:08] Colette Brown: Liz, you start diving into getting his body nourished, right? You start researching what is it going to take? Like how do I feed him? So tell us a little bit about your journey of doing, you're doing that today as a profession, but that's not why you started doing it.

[00:23:26] Liz: So first of all, let's preface what I did for 24 years. I was a fashion designer. We did meet in a bio lab because my entire dream, my whole life was to become a speaker. And I figured I would do that through studying medicine. I'm going to be honest with you. So fast forward to, I think God has very interesting way of putting you in.

He's going to ban 

[00:23:44] Colette Brown: at the right time, 

[00:23:45] Liz: right? Exactly. We were very fortunate that we ended up finding integrative care Out of california. So we went out there for integrative care in irvine, california And that was a huge eye opener because they gave us power back when we were like I said We were just like in the darkness Full of dust, not knowing where we were going or coming and but even then conventional treatment and integrative treatment still don't address the day to day of a cancer patient, right?

The things that the actual caretaker handles, right? So I knew when I looked like the parameter of things and what everything we were doing, I said, there's nobody monitoring the nutrition daily. And really plugging in and how can we support now? How can I support his body? And That's when I said, okay, this is where i'm going.

This is my role to play and so I dove in, I was doing so much research, but it was so hodgepodge. I was listening to so many people and then I decided, let me go and get an actual nutritional certificate, not to do a business really strictly for him. Because I wanted to understand the nitty gritty of the why the metabolic impact, all of that.

I wanted to find out a blood sugar regulation, all these things that I know played a huge part. On why he had cancer as well as how he was handling treatment and like he was losing six to eight pounds per chemo treatment. He had 12 of those. Remember, he lost 30 already. He would have lost 100 in six months.

You're talking about 130 pound person, 130 pound less person. Mentally, There's no one that can, you can't strip that much of a person away without it really taking a toll. Forget physically, you know that, but mentally. 

And that was really my first, my main concern. I was like, I need him to stay strong and positive that he could do this, but I need to support his body in order for him to move and have a semblance of life.

Of who he is to then have a fighting chance. This was my psychology, right? So I moved forward. I started it. I became an NTP, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, with the NTA, so to serve for education. I just graduated in September. Woo hoo! 

[00:25:50] Colette Brown: Yay! And, 

[00:25:51] Liz: Just along the way, I realized that I, and I'm telling you now, I have fought.

Like I don't want to do anything with cancer first. It was like, okay, I'm gonna turn this into a business wait No, first it was like I'm not doing this as a business. I'm doing this for him Then I was like, oh man, I really like this. This is amazing. More people need this I'm gonna turn it into a business, but I'm not touching cancer because it's too close to home.

I get too affected I'm emotionally like drained every time and then God keeps on 

[00:26:15] Rodrigo: The thing is that cancer is a lonely disease because unfortunately you don't get the support from the professionals, meaning oncologists. They don't believe it's nutrition. They don't believe, they think that is everything is a heritage, 

Genetics, and that's it.

And you were, you had bad luck. They don't think about the environment. They don't think about nutrition. They don't think about stress, emotional stress. So all those [00:26:40] things combined, that's what I got sick. But then that's what it be. We learned all this. And then we apply to my treatment, and then we had the chemo regular treatment and then integrative, but then in the middle we, we put in together with nutrition meditation, praying, exercising, we did everything.

And then once I got free from cancer, you have to still doing it. It's a life 

[00:27:05] Colette Brown: changing, 

[00:27:06] Rodrigo: It's a, and the problem is that's why 70 percent of the cancers come back because the doctor the last day, oh, congratulations, you're cancer free, do whatever you need to do and do whatever you have to do go back to your old life, don't worry about it.

So of course people go back to their old life. Two years later, and 

[00:27:22] Liz: they're all habits, which are originally, there's an ownership that must be taken. And there's such an opportunity. And I say that with a very, with all the love and kindness, but the ownership that whatever you've been doing is part of the reason why the cancer was able to express itself in your body.

Even if it's just like the three to 5%, that's actually genetic, right? But that's because of something in your environment. /

And I say that like I said, there's no fault in that. but That's where we need to address like what in my life Created this so that I can now start to make the changes there and never go back to that.

So it really is We talk about this. It is a full lifestyle change, like lifestyle altogether. And it's so much better. And 

[00:28:03] Rodrigo: You had to put the effort because she can do everything for me. But if I didn't do what she told me to do, which I always do, somebody asked me, we were in a restaurant one day and we were talking and the guy asked me, if you wife didn't do all this for you, you think you would have done it by yourself?

I said. I probably won't do it because I don't have the discipline. So I had to learn from her the discipline and do it. And I still, after the cancer, I do my treatments and stuff, but I still miss, sometimes I miss taking my vitamins, my water, which I had to be conscious on it because it's my life.

And to tell you the truth, I love my new life. I'm 40 pounds lighter. I go to the gym. I didn't look like this since I was 17. It's perfect. And now I look at life in another way. I was helping people. That's why I say, cancer was a blessing because it changed our life completely. 

[00:28:54] Colette Brown: Yeah, Liz, you just said that you have to look at what caused it to begin with. So Rodrigo, what was it for you that you think was the culprit? 

[00:29:05] Liz: First thing that we always say, 

[00:29:07] Rodrigo: what's the 

[00:29:07] Liz: main thing that you think led to the cancer? 

[00:29:09] Rodrigo: I think it's stress, emotional stress. 

[00:29:11] Liz: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:29:12] Rodrigo: I had my own business and I also I had the emotional stress on my business.

I had a water restoration company. We do more remediation. So there was a lot of chemicals and all that. So the environment is right there. The emotional stress is there and my nutrition wasn't that good. 

[00:29:27] Colette Brown: I 

[00:29:27] Rodrigo: was, I know healthy, but I cheated all the time. Like I will stop in McDonald's or eat a fast food, burgers, and you think, 

[00:29:36] Liz: Windows, Subway, where you think, Oh it's I have it once in a while, 

[00:29:39] Rodrigo: but then now you're in this world is like 99 percent of the people are unhealthy.

Going through like everything, every, we change our cooking pots. We have stainless steel. Now we drink from a glass bottle. I'm I'm always cleaning the AC unit. We have the water purification system. So everything is like that, but it's a new life. And our kids, we don't know, they don't eat fast food.

They don't eat. 

[00:30:00] Liz: They don't drink soda. They don't drink anything. We know. And they 

[00:30:02] Rodrigo: got adjusted. 

[00:30:03] Liz: They've adjusted. 

[00:30:04] Rodrigo: Yep. You get your family. Isn't that 

[00:30:06] Colette Brown: fascinating how they figure it out when that's what's available. 

[00:30:10] Rodrigo: Okay. You're healthy. Your parents are healthy, but you're giving all the kids all the junk food because it's easier Yeah, you have to work that much but then your kids are sick.

And then when they get sick, everybody's crying Oh boy, my kid is sick. Oh, let's go back and see And 

[00:30:25] Liz: honestly, it's what you said they adjust because if you're not buying the stuff It's not there. So they're hungry. They're going to reach instead of for the cookies and the brownies and all the processed oils and seed oil, they'll reach for fruit because obviously our fruit tray is packed to the gills.

So now they're eating bananas and now they're having sugar, but it's natural sugar coming from a fruit, which feeds your digestive system completely different than if I actually have, some processed cookie. And. It takes a while. That was a little bit of especially with our youngest who was like typical, like kid on, chicken nuggets, pizza, pasta kind of thing.

And would have a set amount of protein, but, fights it. And now, our kids eat everything, and they enjoy it. And we do cook. What almost seven days a week here 

[00:31:10] Rodrigo: six days a week 

[00:31:10] Liz: six days a week we pack our lunches kind of thing But it once again, yes, it's at first It's like when you're pushing that ball up like when you're starting a business Anything new is hard at the beginning but once you get that rhythm man, you really start to like you see the benefits your wins all the time and Yeah, and I think that obviously we're empowering them To make better choices as they get older and especially when they're not here when they're not with us, living at home anymore, they've got the tools to make better decisions.

And that's a big focus for me personally. 

[00:31:43] Colette Brown: Yeah. So Rodrigo, the other aspect of this is water. Water is very essential and you've pivoted your career into a different direction. So why don't you tell us what you learned about water and what you're doing today to help people with that? 

[00:31:59] Rodrigo: When we got diagnosed with cancer, and then we went to California their approach, she's an oncologist which does integrative medicine and also do conventional medicine.

Low 

[00:32:10] Liz: dose chemo. 

[00:32:11] Rodrigo: She gave me a questionnaire. Okay, what's your business? What do you do for a living? Do you guys have a filtration system in the house? A purification system in the house? And we're like, no, I do this. He's okay, you need to sell your business. You need to put a purification system in your house.

So I do, I did the blood test. I did nutrition, all that. So when I came back to Miami, I did the research. We installed a reverse osmosis and a purification system for the entire house. I sold my company and then I needed to do something with my life. So I saw perfect opportunity. So I called the company.

Now I represent the company that did the filtration system in my house. And now I'm helping people because water is very essential. Water is life. Because, 70 percent of the planet is water. Unfortunately in cities they do a recycling program which is called from the toilet to the faucet. 

[00:33:06] Liz: Toilet to tap.

[00:33:07] Rodrigo: Toilet to tap. Everything coming out from the toilet is medicine, metals, plastics. Recycle and go back to your house. And it's amazing how 30, 40 percent of the people don't know it. 

[00:33:16] Colette Brown: You ask, 

[00:33:17] Rodrigo: do you know where your water is coming from? She's oh, I don't know. He's you [00:33:20] told him. I'm like, what? And then we do water testing and then breaks out.

[00:33:23] Colette Brown: Yeah. And 

[00:33:24] Rodrigo: then I said, you become the filter. You become the filter to your skin, to your mouth, to everything. And then through 

[00:33:29] Liz: the vegetables that you wash that you're thinking, I'm doing a good thing by washing my vegetables. They actually absorbed all the chemicals in your water. 

[00:33:35] Rodrigo: So I like to educate people to have a better life.

Because I think to be healthy is it's a chain, so you're missing a link. You're incomplete. To me I introduced the water purification system in the house to, to create the entire chain. Because a lot of people, they eat well, they go to the gym, they watch the festival, but then you're using city water, which is full of chemicals, chlorine, 

So that's what I do right now. 

[00:33:58] Colette Brown: I like that. And Liz, you're working with people, one on one and you also have so much content online to help people and help them through their journey, their loved ones through journey of cancer. And it's, it goes way beyond cancer, right? Because in order to be preventative.

We need to be aware. So whether you have it or you don't, you have to know somebody who's had it. And why not just start being healthy today? One of the questions I love to ask my guests at the end, I'm gonna let each of you answer separately. If this was the last message that you had to broadcast out to the world, what would it be?

Oh, 

[00:34:38] Liz: that's a really good question. Really big question. 

[00:34:41] Rodrigo: I have an answer. 

[00:34:41] Liz: Okay, you go first. He's so much better at these things. I'm too complicated 

[00:34:45] Rodrigo: He is find somebody something bigger than you, you can call it the universe the god But you need that support, spiritual support. Without that, you need to work on yourself. To me, the order is, first is God.

Second is myself, my family. Because if you don't work in those, the two first ones, you cannot help yourself or your family to go forward. So find somebody. Find something bigger than you, something that you can rely on. And then, which she will be agreeing with me, change your lifestyle, but then testing every year, tests.

[00:35:22] Colette Brown: There's 

[00:35:22] Rodrigo: so many tests right now that it will, you'll find out if you're in the right. There's 

[00:35:27] Liz: genetic testing. There's so much testing. 

[00:35:29] Rodrigo: Testing, so that's very important because, okay, you're healthy, you're eating well, but you don't know what's going on in your body inside. And the only way to know is by testing.

By, oh listen, you're deficient in this, deficiency in that, so that's very important. emotional, be there, find something bigger than you, and test every year. 

[00:35:49] Liz: Yeah, data is very important. For me, I think I'm going to agree with him on, I think that the spiritual aspect Of life is the most important out of the mental physical and spiritual is the most important pillar There's a lot of people and this applies to me because when I was younger, I was very rebellious And i'll be honest with you.

I've been a triathlete. I've done a half ironman. i've been you know The physical part, I had it down packed mentally. I worked on it a million times, but my spiritual was really lacking. And without that third pillar, it's really hard because you have nothing to anchor you. You're just blowing in the wind.

So that, especially in times of hardship, leaning in to yourself and that spiritual, journey is truly what's going to give you the strength mentally and physically to overcome what whatever hardships you're going through. So 

[00:36:38] Colette Brown: yes. guys. That's beautiful. You guys are such an inspiration and the I can just see the love and synergy between the two of you.

And that's such an inspiration to everyone. I want both of you to give me the way that people can reach you through website through your social media, so that they can reach out and I will also get that into our show notes. 

[00:36:57] Liz: Okay for me, you can you can DM me and then you can also schedule a call with me through social media, on Instagram, it's liznievez08, 

[00:37:07] Colette Brown: n i e v e s.

[00:37:08] Liz: You can DM me. I think that would probably be the easiest thing. And then my email, which is also on my social media.

[00:37:15] Rodrigo: Okay. Yeah, my social media is Rodri underscore sels 

[00:37:20] Liz: Okay. R O D 

R I. S E L S. 

[00:37:25] Colette Brown: Okay. Okay. 

[00:37:27] Liz: No, not complicated at all. 

[00:37:28] Colette Brown: Perfect. We'll get all that. It for me. We'll get all that information in. And before we wrap up, is there anything else that you're feeling led to share with us today?

[00:37:37] Liz: No, we want to thank you really honestly. We want to thank you for this opportunity. This is something that's very important to us to, we love what you're doing. Because the more information we get out there, the more we empower people. The difference that they can make in their own lives is not just the difference that we're making.

It's the difference that they can make for themselves. And that to me is, man, that's, I think that's what we're here for. So I love the way you're doing and thank you for having us. 

[00:38:01] Rodrigo: Thank you for having us. And /

I want to say that. To anybody going through cancer, there's a cure. Don't believe anything that the media says.

There's a cure, there's always been a cure. It's your immune system and your own body. So keep going, have faith, and that's why we're here, to help each other,/

to help each other, to support. Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:38:22] Colette Brown: You're welcome, and I'm, I need to say that my very first podcast that I did, was with a Dr.

Harvey Reininger who wrote a book called cured. And one of the stories he told was a woman who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and everybody knows it's not, if it's when, and she was given six months to live flash forward two years later, she's walking on a beach in Hawaii with her husband and gets a stomach pain.

And she said, okay, maybe this is my time. She goes in. It's checked. The cancer is completely gone from her body. And so Dr. Redinger was at a conference and he's talking to doctors and he said, how many of you doctors have heard of spontaneous remission like this story? And he's most of the hands go up.

How many of you have documented and submitted it to a journal for review? Very few hands went up. So your message at the end is probably the most powerful of this whole. This whole time together because not giving false hope, but giving hope that there is a cure. There is a way. And you guys need to just keep going and sharing your message because people need to know that there is hope and that they can heal.

So thank you so much for all you're doing. I really appreciate it. And everyone else until next time, be well.