The Real Cost of Cancer: My Experience

DISCLAIMER: This was a very tough article to write… probably not my best but certainly from the heart.

Cancer is truly… well… a cancer. It doesn’t just make you sick, it attacks you in spiritual, mental, and physical way and more, it attacks your life and those around you. Despite my work in the health freedom space, I had never looked in to cancer. I never thought it would hit home and if it did, well, that only happens to really old people and I figured I’d be lucky to make it that far anyways. Then the unthinkable happened, I didn’t get cancer, my wife did.

On June 11, 2023 - my anniversary - my phone rang while we were on a family excursion. It was a doctor friend of mine that we’d asked to look into a peculiar lump in my wife’s breast. The conversation was both a blur and also one I will never forget. My 43 year old (at the time) wife had breast cancer and, no, it was not an error. The mother of my 10 and 13 year old (at the time) boys, had cancer.

We were at a restaurant with friends at the time in Missouri eating breakfast and I had stepped away to take the call. I will never forget thinking about how I would break it to Annie and my boys. During COVID, I had become very damaged watching so many die while we were trying to rescue them from hospitals. Every conversation with every family member I was unable to help will forever be burned into my soul but this was different. This was the mother of my boys - my wife.

As a man this was almost impossible to reconcile. My work fighting for freedom and against corruption had been very difficult for many years and had taken a tremendous toll on me and, naturally, my marriage and family but I am supposed to protect her and my boys. If a bullet is coming in it is my honor to step in front of it and show my boys what a man should do but there was no bullet. There was no one I could fight for my family’s honor, nothing I could punch or sue… there was nothing - only a vaguely defined disease that killed far too many.

For possibly the first time in my life I did not know what I would do or how I would break it to my family, but, as the man of the house, it was my duty to do the right thing. And so I did. I’ll never forget that day, the park in front of the restaurant where I told them all, the water features there, the looks on their faces, and the difficulty of finding a way to figure out how to protect my family.

Our friends, Holly and Rick - may God bless them for the rest of their lives for this - insisted on spending the day with us and keeping us moving. I’ll never be able to properly thank them for that.

I prayed a lot that day. Since I knew nothing about cancer and knew everything about how corrupt the medical industry had become, I was frankly terrified. God made it clear he had my back - and he has - but I had work to do.

Immediately I became obsessed with cancer. I studied it like I would have studied in law school or for an advanced degree but as though my life depended on it. The amount of time I spent studying everything I could related to my wife’s cancer and cancer in general was obscene but necessary. Unfortunately that time also became one of the biggest issues with the cancer fight because it took so much away from everything else I did.

You see, mainstream medicine treats cancer the same way in all people. The National Cancer Center Network has a guidebook (there are others) that tells oncologists exactly what to do when a person has cancer. The oncologist’s job is to follow that guidebook with exacting precision. Unfortunately, the only way to write such a guidebook is talk about the most appropriate treatment for most people (the bell curve). This is an issue because unless you are “most people” and at the same time best impacted by the “most appropriate treatment” the guidebook will not provide the best course of treatment for YOU. It is designed to provide the best course of treatment of treatment only for the average person who has the average response to standardized treatments.

Before I could even begin to understand all this I had to first learn about cancer, then about Annie’s cancer, then about treatments (mainstream and alternative), then about 50 other things. I had to look at legal implications in case I had to fight people to get her the best treatment, I had to study all things cancer and all things treatment. This is three lifetimes of work and I had to do it fast because Annie had a rare presentation of an aggressive cancer there simply was no time. She was not average and so standard treatment was not appropriate for her but, in hindsight there were things I wish we’d done differently though we could not have known at the time (these things will haunt me for the rest of my life).

I also had to find ways to get her the best help possible. This was made far more difficult because we were not financially in a good spot. I am a well-known attorney and have the opportunity to bill at a very high hourly rate but felt that was wrong during COVID (should I tell someone who’s loved one was dying in the hospital that they have to send me a $20K retainer before I’d try to save them? Should I just let the lockdowns continue as kids were killing themselves and people were losing everything?) As such I gave almost all of my work away and basically funded everything I did off of whatever donations I could get. By the end of COVID things were tight and we still had the Biden/Harris economy, and a desperate need to fight to get Trump elected… another unpaid gig. Now on top of all that - I had cancer to pay for and getting the best help is simply cost prohibitive.

One thing many people fail to realize (I did not know this) is that even with good insurance cancer is incredibly expensive and also that the quality of cancer treatment varies dramatically based on who you know and how much you can afford over insurance. We do have insurance on my wife (which is good because the covered parts of the treatments are [I believe] well over $500K so far. The problem is the uncovered treatments. Insurance does not cover any alternative treatment and certainly does not cover other expenses. For example, I have gone to nearly every appointment with my wife and she has had 109 of them so far this year. Add that to the 10s of thousands of dollars in supplements and alternative add-ins, the 20+ events I did unpaid promoting Trump, and the thousand plus hours of research to ensure my wife was getting proper treatment and you can imagine the financial strain. But for the grace of God, we would have been in bankruptcy; fortunately (because of a few critical donations) we are barely squeaking by.

And it’s not just the financial, it’s also quality of care. I recognize my humble roots and make no claims to greatness but am unashamed to say that I am probably one of the most effective advocates on the planet for my wife’s cancer. Between my knowledge and experience - I’m simply good at it. What about the families that aren’t mine? What about the families that would have faced bankruptcy for terrible care?

I want to thank John Richardson and Ed Group. John Richardson has provided me discounted enzymes and B17 and Ed Group has provided me his vitamins for my wife (you can get Ed’s vitamins - which are the best on the market - at https://go.globalhealingcenter.com/Renz). These guys are not allowed to talk about their supplements in terms of treating or curing disease because of FDA regulations but I am choosing to use them (along with other things) for Annie. But what about the families that are not friends with Ed or John and cannot afford supplements that are important to the health of cancer patients? How are they affording these things while spending so much time with doctors - not working?

Dr. Richard Bartlett, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, Eric Nepute, Henry Ealy, Andrew Serafini and countless others have given me counsel and advice. But what about the families that can’t just call these and other professionals?

And then there is the impact on the family. With the time off my business has suffered because the time would normally have been spent split between things that make money and things that save the world. This year we had an election that would define whether all of our children had a future or not. I had no choice but to do everything possible to assist in ensure Donald Trump won and we beat Annie’s cancer. So that meant my time was split between supporting Trump and fighting cancer with most days averaging 16 or more hours. This has had a very big impact on my wife and kids at a time when I was needed most but left without a choice.

The truth is that in addition to attacking the health, spirit and minds of families - cancer attacks your financial security, your family cohesion, and all of your relationships (it is shocking how many people you think you can count on that disappear when things are difficult and surprising the people that step up). Cancer can easily leave a solid middle class family broken and destitute and worse - it can do so while a person is only getting average treatment that does not work for them.

My boys have been incredibly brave. I’ve watched my sons fulfill the only true dream a father can have - they have become better men than me. When I see my oldest by jump up to carry something for my wife or my baby (he might yell at me for calling him that) run to help mom with this or that I know in my heart I’ve done at least one thing right in all of this. The best part is that despite the fact that they worry about their mom a lot, they have truly grown from this and still trust Dad when he tells them, “Son, I promise I will do everything I can to help mom get better and I promise I will tell you if I think you need to worry.” Sadly, I’ve had to watch them grow from a distance because there’s little time left between the work, the research and the fight.

Annie is going to beat this cancer (it was stage 4… so supposedly unbeatable right…). She has become a stronger and better person for the experience. I know God will take care of this disease and I know he wants my boys to have a mom (she’s an amazing mom). Cancer will not beat the mother of my children but what about other families? What about people that don’t have effective advocacy, don’t know about the failures of mainstream medicine, do not have friends that can provide such expert counsel, and simply not able to access some of the things we have? What about others that deserve better.

I’m left at a loss. We are on the verge of having no known cancer left an Annie’s body which is a huge win (though that definitely does not mean she is cured). I think what we have done has been far more effective than the standard protocols and may have saved Annie. That said, I feel incredibly guilty and bad about the things I could not do and the balls I dropped to get here. I also cannot stop thinking of all the others who I’ve fallen short for as we have fought this. I’m battle weary and beaten from this but will carry on and know that God will carry me if needs be.

So many others are impacted by this terrible disease and rates are skyrocketing and the people profiting off of this industry absolutely sicken me. Worse are the people that are allowing unsafe products on the market that cause cancer because they make money off of them. I do not know the details of what God has in store for me but I do know one thing, eventually, I will get through this battle and catch my breath. At that point I will be seeking justice and change and I will do so on a level I sincerely doubt the evil SOBs making money off this industry will even be able to fathom… and that quest for justice is the core of my inspiration to fight on.

If you’d like to support my work in and around cancer, child trafficking, against corruption, etc. please consider donating to our charity: https://forgodfamilycountry.org. Or if you’d like to support me directly and my lawfare work please consider supporting us at https://www.givesendgo.com/renzlaw. Also if you’d like to get the supplements we are using as a part of Annie’s cancer treatment please check out: https://go.globalhealingcenter.com/Renz.