Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Learn to see your body through a different lens.
There comes a point where you begin to sense that what you are experiencing cannot be fully explained by symptoms alone. Patterns repeat, progress feels incomplete, and something deeper is asking to be understood. I’m Dr. Rue, a naturopathic physician focused on chronic illness and integrative oncology, where the work is not about chasing conditions, but about observing the terrain in which they arise.
In this space, we explore how the body adapts, how systems communicate, and how environment, metabolism, and lived experience shape what you feel day to day. The body is not random, and it is not working against you. It responds in ways that reflect its internal and external worlds. As you begin to understand those responses, your relationship with your health begins to change.
These are quiet, intentional conversations designed to bring clarity without removing complexity. If you have ever felt that your experience does not fit into a simple explanation, you are not alone. This is a place to listen more closely, to reconnect, and to begin seeing what may have been there all along.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Grieving Before It Happened | Ep. 080
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Cancer is complex, and we understand that it develops through many interconnected biological processes. This story is not about simplifying cancer. It is about understanding the person who is living through it.
When this patient began treatment, they described feeling completely empty. Not angry. Not afraid. Simply disconnected from life itself. As our conversation unfolded, I realized we were talking about something far deeper than a diagnosis. We were talking about the quiet weight that can shape the way someone experiences every step of their healing journey.
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
Decoding Disease with Dr. Rue
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She walked into my office, shoulders slumped, eyes gazing downwards, looking like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. I remember thinking, okay, fine, that happens. Some patients are quieter, some partners are louder. I brushed it off. Then I actually saw her, and every instinct in me said this is something else entirely. When I started asking questions, she would answer in one word, sometimes barely a whisper. So quiet I had to lean in to catch it. Her husband filled in the rest. Every question I directed at her she turned to him instead. He knows best, he can answer for you. That's when I realized this wasn't just a quiet personality. There was something more underneath it. I made a decision that appointment. I looked at her and asked if she'd be willing to step outside with me, just the two of us for a short walk. Is that okay? Her husband made it a point to be present for every single appointment up till that day, and I understood why once I got to know her better. She was someone who had never quite felt safe with anyone, not fully, not even with the people who loved her the most. His presence was a kind of armor for her. But I kept showing up anyway, appointment after appointment, encouraging her gently, listening, really listening without rushing her to feel the silence, without trying to pull the answers out of her until she was ready to give them. And if you remember, earlier I said I had asked her if we could go for a walk. The reason I had done this was because I realized that she needed to be in a space that didn't feel so sterile. So we actually started doing our appointments outside. We would sit out on the bench outside, and sometimes we would go for walks. As unconventional as that sounds, I realized that this is something that she really needed, and it went a long way in helping her open up. And furthermore, I didn't push. I just kept being there consistently the same way every single time. And slowly something started to shift. Taking that time, giving her that space without demanding anything back started to matter. The walls she'd built brick by brick over what I'd eventually learned was most of her life began very slowly to calm down. She started to feel safe again. Eventually she didn't need her husband in the room anymore. I remember the day it happened, how he looked at her and then at me with this expression of pure relief and gratitude, and said, Okay, I'll leave you two to it. That's when the real conversation started. Because once those walls were down, I finally got to see what had been sitting behind them the whole time. Fear, loss. A sadness so old it had quietly shaped the entire person she'd become long before cancer had entered the picture. She told me more than once in the same flat certain voice, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. And underneath that certainty was a story she'd never fully told anyone. Almost a decade earlier, she'd lost her brother, carbon monoxide poisoning in his sleep along with his wife and their children. The kind of loss that doesn't have a category. The family had seen him the night before. There had been plans for the next day, ordinary plans, the kind you don't think twice about because you assume there'll be a next day. There wasn't. She told me about that loss like it had happened the week before, not ten years earlier. The grief hadn't moved, it hadn't softened with time the way we sometimes assume grief is supposed to. It had just been sitting there, unprocessed, untouched for almost a decade, quietly shaping how she moved through the world, how much of herself she let anyone see, how safe she let herself feel with people who loved her. I need to say something clearly here, because I've thought carefully about how to tell this story. I'm not telling you that her grief caused her cancer. I'm not telling you that her outlook is what killed her. We understand the biochemistry of this disease. We understand the mechanics of how cancer develops and progresses, and none of that is a mystery that's solved simply by mindset. That is not what the story is about, and I won't let it be misread in that way. What I'm telling you is something different, and I think it's just as important. She walked into cancer treatment already grieving, not only because of her new diagnosis, she was grieving her own death in advance, before anything had even been decided about her prognosis. She had a husband who adored her, present, loving, steady, willing to speak for her in every room until she was ready to speak for herself. And still, underneath all of that life surrounding her, there was a wound so old and so deep that it had already quietly convinced her that this particular story was going to end in a certain way. I tried everything I knew how to try, especially once the walls were down. We worked through as much of it as we could together in the time that we had. And sadly, eventually she passed. I think about her often, not with a sense that I failed her, and not with any sense that she failed herself. What I saw in her was a weakness, not even close. It was exhaustion, the specific bone deep exhaustion that comes from carrying something unresolved for far too long and then having something as heavy as cancer set down on top of it. This is exactly why I cannot separate mind-body medicine from anything I do in clinic, cancer or chronic illness. From the very first intake, I want to know where the patient is emotionally, not as an afterthought, but as part of an actual medical picture, because it tells me how they're going to carry this road. And sometimes, like with her, it takes more than an intake form. It takes time. It takes showing up consistently enough that someone finally feels safe putting the walls down. I tell every single patient the same thing from day one. This is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be ups and there'll be real downs. I need you to tell me when it becomes too much, because I never ever want you to reach that point where you quietly throw in the towel without telling me. Once someone is truly done, all the way done, not even the best doctor in the world can bring them back from that. I have one more story like hers, and it taught me something I still carry with me every single day that I walk into clinic. See you next time.