Get Booked – Callie Blackwell, The Boy In 7 Billion 050621

Hello, I'm Hazel Butterfield, and this is Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Here on Get Booked, we love talking to authors about their new releases, going into detail about the topics covered, their inspiration, and the mental health and wellbeing elements, and giving you an extra special insight into a different book and the author each week, opening discussions and offering support via the incredible writing community out there. Now, today we have Kelly Blackwell discussing the book The Boy in 7 Billion. When Kelly's eldest son was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia— I think I got it right— in 2010, and then with a rarer, more aggressive cancer, Langerhans cell sarcoma, only 18 months later, she embarked on a long a steep learning curve. Since then, an 8-year journey through the complexities of pediatric chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and bone marrow transplants to diet, nutrition, herbal, and holistic medicine has brought her to realize that the body has the ability to heal itself if given the right nutrition and care. This book is such a thoughtful, in-depth, endearing, and human look at the whole experience Kelly and her son Darren and the whole family went through. Um, I've been on quite a ride. I've had to stop at various parts to kind of compose myself. Kali, hi, thanks for joining us. Hi, thank you for having me. Well, I did kind of try and pronounce some of those kind of types of leukemia and cancer, but I thought if I overthought it, I'd get it even worse because, I mean, you now can probably pronounce so many different medical procedures and terminologies like no one's business, but I'm quite happy that I haven't had to. Yeah, it's good. It's not a bad thing that you can't quite get your tongue around these things, you know. It did become very run-of-the-mill. My day-to-day conversations were, you know, a lot of medical terminology, which is why I guess it's now kind of primed me for what I do now, is that I do have a level of understanding. So yeah, it has its perks. Yeah, I mean, I was reading towards the end of the book a few days ago, where even the doctors got to a stage where they were like, "So, what do you think we should do?" Yeah, yeah. Bonkers. Let's start at the beginning. So it's quite a long journey, up and down roller coaster. You kind of think like the book must be coming to an end at one point, and things are kind of getting better, or they've got to an end, and it just keeps on going. How's that been? Ah, well, you know, for me, at the time when you're going through something like that, you just, you're in autopilot and you just get on with it and you take everything. It's really what taught me to take every moment as it came, not every month as it came, every day, but every moment as it came, because I realized, you know, you look too far ahead and I was just thrown around on this roller coaster and I've likened it many times over the years to, you know, I got on a roller coaster ride that I didn't buy a ticket for and I couldn't get off. And it just kept throwing us around and, you know, putting curveballs at us where we just weren't expecting them. And it was only really when I looked back, it was only after it had all kind of finished and died down a little bit that I, well, I had a nervous breakdown and I decided to write a book. And the book was actually very, very cathartic for me because as I wrote each chapter, I was able to almost, you know, turn the page and leave it closed and put it to one side. And it didn't, it was a way of me dealing with everything as as well. So, yeah, and actually even writing it, I had to take a break as well a couple of times because it just got too much for me because I was reliving everything again, and I felt that when I wrote the book, I really, really wanted everybody to fully feel immersed in what I felt. So I had to re-remember all of those feelings that I had because I wanted to be able to put them across in the book so that you felt you were actually there. You know, I needed everybody to fully understand why I did what I did. And unless they had gone on that journey with me, I don't think they would have fully understood what I did. You know, so, yeah, it was something that, yeah, it was a roller coaster of the truest, truest form. So, I mean, yeah, I 100% agree. I definitely felt like I was doing it with you. I had to stop reading the book at certain points because I was getting a little bit kind of, I mean, it's upsetting because you just kind of think, I mean, at one point I was going, is she gonna have a breakdown or what? Because you kind of, if you hadn't have had a breakdown, if you haven't have struggled, I was like, that just doesn't seem right. I mean, it felt like a natural progression. This is the sort of thing that you expect for people to be seeing somebody about in terms of PTSD, because it was, it was horrific. And I was reading what The parts when like Darren was just constantly like upbeat and just quite pragmatic about everything. And that actually upset me. Because you just kind of think, wow, it's just, I mean, it took it out of me reading. Because I want, you know, you are, it is quite an endearing read and you're very honest and you do feel like you're there because of the amount of detail. And I was just like, oh, it's just horrible. And I did actually at one point, I decided, I had to come away from reading the book because it was at nighttime, because I needed to put myself into a state where I felt comfortable to sleep. Yeah. And I then started googling, I started googling Darren, and then I came across Russell Howard. Oh yeah. Which, you know, I mean, I'd actually come across and watched the thing on YouTube before you'd actually talked about it. Brilliant. 'Which is a better way to do it?' And like later in the book I'm like, 'Oh yeah, he's in front of 7,000 people.' I'm like, 'Oh honey, it's got 2.1 million views on YouTube at the moment.' But I kind of had to step away from it because, I mean, horrific for you, but if even me as a reader is just going, it just was breaking my heart. Yeah, it's, even my own brother actually, not very long ago, he was doing something and I said to him, I said, 'Do you know, have you read my book?' And he looked at me and I said, "You haven't, have you?" And he said, "I can't, it's just too upsetting." I said, "Are you serious?" I was like, "That was my life. Do you understand?" You know? But I think as well, what I know, so obviously that was a 4-year period as well. It was a 4-year period. And so, I had the time to kind of digest and go through everything, and it was very natural progression of everything, like you say. Whereas when you read it in a book, I mean, I've had people message me and say, "I read that in 7 hours. I couldn't put it down." You know? And I just think, 'Wow, going through that roller coaster that I did in 4 years in 7 hours.' Like, that's, that's a way to, like, really, you know, hit home with, with everything that went on. And, and so, yeah, it's, it's interesting how a lot of people have said that to me, and I've had to put it down because it's just too upsetting. And I say, 'Well, you know, it is a happy ending. At least I can give you that. I can, I can tell you that.' So, um, but I also, for a lot of people they presume that the ending is what most of the book is about. Well, actually, the very, very, you know, the plot twist at the end is very much only maybe 20 pages, if that, and the rest of it is really about the journey of navigating, you know, paediatric oncology and what goes on in our healthcare system. And I, you know, again, I absolutely adore the NHS and what it stands for and the people that work within it, but the system itself is incredibly broken, and that's something else that I learned, and I think something else that comes along in the book is I saw a lot of holes in the system, and I wanted people to understand that they're there, because I think only together we can try and fix it and try and protect it, you know, as the NHS is what it's supposed to stand for. And so it was, yeah, most of my book is about my journey and how I changed as a completely different person from pre-diagnosis to diagnosis and what that can do to a family and a child. And like you say, Darren was very pragmatic about it, which in its own right, you're right. As a 10 to 14-year-old boy, he shouldn't even be thinking about his own funeral, let alone being very pragmatic about it. But it certainly was his strengths that pulled me through a lot of the time. There's just the way that he was. It was like, I have no right to be down in the dumps or 'Woe is me,' when he was just— he was the one that was experiencing all of this pain physically, and I just was in awe of him most of the time. He's an incredible young man, and even still, still now, he's very, very pragmatic about everything, and he has a very different view on the world, which I can totally understand. So, yeah, and I'm glad that it's when people read my book, it also gives them a dose of perspective, which I think a lot of the time we're missing. You know, if our iPhone stops working, it can sometimes be the worst thing in the world, and we can't, you know, and, and, you know, you get a dose of perspective like I had, and all of a sudden those tiny things don't really matter anymore, and you realize what truly matters in the world and, and what is important to fight for, you know. Well, that's the thing, you'd never wish this on absolutely anybody, but then I'm sure there's people listening at the moment and they know full well their kids are spoiled, they don't know they're born, and they would never want anything horrific to happen to them. But because Darren's been through this, he actually appreciates life. He appreciates how much you've got to fight for it. He appreciates, you know, the different sides of humanity that he's had to see and what to actually— I mean, I was watching him on This Morning. I mean, he's ridiculously well-spoken. He's so— I mean, I think on This Morning he was about 14, was he? He was 17 then. Was he? Yeah, he looks very, very young. He still looks very young. He's— chemotherapy has done him a favor of keeping him young looking. Well, there was something that I saw that was only about a year ago where he's actually saying that, actually, I suppose he's an advocate for cannabis. Mm-hmm. And just the way he comes across, I don't know. I know that he was keen on acting. I don't know if he's had any media training, but he just seems to smash it out the park. Oh, that's just— yeah, he's— the funny thing is as well, when it first started, obviously I went on television quite a lot before he did, because even just being the 1 in 7 billion, you know, having the rare cancers that he had, the whole story was looked at by the media anyway, and he was in newspapers before the cannabis, you know. So the cannabis was almost like the cherry on top of the cake. And, and he would say to me, 'Mum, I don't want to— I don't want to go on the TV. I don't want to be filmed.' And I go, 'Okay,' you know. And we kind of do minimum as we could with him. But when we got him on this morning, he just, I mean, he had a little bit of a bumble at the beginning, but he, he, yeah, he came into his own and he, he's very good in front of the camera. And he, yeah, he, I think he loves it, but it's not something I think he'd want to do every day. But yeah, he's, he's certainly, I'm very proud of him. I'm very proud of him for being, I mean, the fact that he didn't go to high school, he spent 7 months in high school. That was it. You know, the last 7 months. And he's so articulate, so intelligent, and I'm so very proud of him, of who he's become and what he stands for and what he wants to fight for and what he wants to do in his life, you know, it's, yeah. Very unique. Yes, yeah, and I do very much feel that our journeys have purposely put us on this path, you know, I would never have got into doing what I'm doing had Darren not taken me on that journey with him and likewise for him, I don't think he would have ever found his passion had it not been for that either, so as much as, you know, I wish it had never happened, I'm glad that it did. You know, looking back in hindsight, I'm glad that it did because the way that it changed our life's trajectory, I wouldn't— I would never want to go back to my pre-cancer life. Deren BC, what we call it. Well, if you think about it, though, if you hadn't have gone through what you and your whole family went through, then you wouldn't have found out what you found out about the procedures, about the benefits of, of cannabis and, and the clean living and the alternative therapies, which means you wouldn't have been able to have helped so many other people. And I think because of the way Darren is, it has attracted more people as well because of his personal attitude and his outlook. And if you— sometimes you've just got to accept that you were dealt a hand, but you were dealt it for a reason, and you really ran with it. Yeah, absolutely. And that's another thing, you know, throughout our journey is that I had to find a meaning. I had to find a reason for things. And although I couldn't find the meaning or the reason at the time, I had to have faith that there was one. Because, you know, I think you can— if you don't fully accept that everything happens for a reason, including the bad, and actually especially the bad, because that's how we can appreciate the good. And it's only when those things happen to you and how you deal with them you know, it allows you to appreciate things a lot more. And yeah, it's very interesting going through all of that with him and seeing, you know, where it took us and the fact that we did both have faith that all of this was for a reason, whatever that was. We just didn't know what that was at the moment, but it would come eventually. And I remember saying to him, you know, it may be on my deathbed that I discover what the reason was, but I will do one day. And I did. You know, when we ended up saving his life and carrying on and then getting thrust into helping other people. And of course, as soon as I went on This Morning, I became a beacon with my bright pink hair. I became an absolute beacon. And, you know, when I started helping people and realised the benefit that his story could bring to people, then it became— it all became worth something. And that's why I continue to do what I do even to this day, 7 years later, is because I want what he went through to be for something good. It had to be. He went through so much pain and suffering that it had to be. I had to turn that into something good. And I'm glad that I did. You know, I think that's kind of true alchemy, is being able to take pain and turn it into something positive. So I'm very proud that I've been able to do that. Well, that's the meaning of life, isn't it? Yeah. Put out there while you're here. Yeah, exactly that. And even fighting, even, you know, it's very easy to get down that woe is me and why is this happening to me and oh my God, this is terrible and this is the worst thing that's ever happened. And but that just lowers your vibration. That makes it— turns everything very negative. It doesn't help anything. And so it was a very conscious effort on my part and of Darren's part to try and see the positive in everything and to try and turn everything around so that at least in ourselves, we didn't feel so down. You know, no matter what was happening, we kind of— we laughed about everything and you know, Darren has quite a sick sense of humor, as do I. I was brought up by a man that spent 22 years in the army, so, you know, I have a very dark sense of humor, which is, you know, you either laugh or you cry. And so it's better just to laugh at everything, even when things are looking very, very dire. Find something to laugh at in it. Find the light side, you know, always look on the bright side of life, I think, as the song goes. And I think it's so very, very important to keep yourself up there. Well, it's good for your mindset, you know, that the whole positive mental attitude does actually have an effect on, you know, how we care for ourselves and how we can actually live better. Yeah. Now, the book, The Boy in 7 Billion, that actually refers to, as we said in the introduction, he started off with leukemia in 2010 and then developed more aggressive cancer, which was the chances of getting it, 1 in 7 billion. But it wasn't just the leukemia and the Langerhans cell sarcoma. Langerhans cell sarcoma, yep, say that 20 times. But it was everything that happened, everything that failed, the effect of when your immune system's down, you know, the when he went out and he caught himself and caught his hand and that, things just couldn't heal. It was just, it's not a case of you have leukemia, you do the treatment, it's a bit shit. Well, it's horrific. It's everything that happens in between and trying to get bone marrow transplants and whether it actually takes and trying to find it and then finding the right, you know, there's some fantastic people there working for the NHS, but like any industry, sometimes you've got some slightly dud ones. Yeah. It's dealing with everything. And basically every boulder you could have had thrown at you, you pretty much did. And then somehow there'd be like this other little boulder just sitting there, "Ooh, ooh, me, me, I haven't had a go yet." So it's not, it was not a normal path. And I'm sure there aren't particularly normal paths, but it was a completely— yeah, it was messed up. Yeah. Looking at other people, because obviously I saw lots of other people go through leukemia and other, you know, other cancer treatments in the pediatric pediatric oncology ward, you know, and yeah, it was— our journey was incredibly unique, as every journey is, like you say, but yeah, we did just get one thing after another, after another, and the hospital, you know, the doctors even said to us, we've never seen this. How many times they said that to me, we've never seen this before, we don't know what to do, we've never, you know, at the one point where his two bone marrows were— his bone marrow and the donor's bone marrow were fighting it to the death, and You know, that's when they took me to one side and said, what do you think is going to happen? And it was just, you know, we've never seen this before. And even when he was first diagnosed, you know, they had ICU waiting for him. They had a bed up in the intensive care unit. And they said, you know, his liver is going to fail. His kidneys are going to fail because his cancer count was so incredibly high. And as they say, you know, he just weeded it out. And they just looked at him as like— and I remember the doctor, and it's in the book. She said, you know, I think Darren's going to rewrite the medical books here. And that was 3 days in, you know, and it was just like she really did. She either, you know, she predicted that and he really did throw the doctors a lot of curveballs and make them work hard for their money. He really did. And it did, you know, I could have taken it very personally and just thought, why? One thing after another. I mean, we did see other people, you know, comparatively speaking, breeze through their treatment and other people you know, had a tough time, and obviously I saw a lot of children lose their lives, which is horrendous, it's absolutely horrendous to, you know, Darren would get to know these little people on the ward and then they would die, and he was kind of the last man standing at one point, and for him, I can't even imagine what that must have been like for him mentally, you know, watching everybody around him die, thinking, "Well, am I next?" you know, but he never really thought like that, he just thought, "Well, I'm here, and until I'm not," I'm here, and let's just get on with it, and let's, you know, make the best of what we can. But it did eventually take its toll, because he got to a stage where he was moved to a hospice for palliative care, had 3 days— was told it'd last 3 days approximately, and weeks later he's still kind of going. And you just kind of think, you prepare yourself for something to happen, and then you're in limbo, and you kind of think, right, well, I've resigned myself, you know, if planned his funeral, is arranged who's going to be wearing, you know, a penis outfit, who's going to be dressed as the Grim Reaper, who's going to be dressed as the gingerbread man, you know, it's all there and he's kind of— and it's like, well, I'm happy, I'm good to go now, the pain is enough, I am done, I am done with this, and then it just keeps on going, well, actually, no, not yet. It's like one of those really crappy soap operas where there's a really rubbish cliffhanger and you can't— I'm trying, I'm thinking like Dynasty or something. Yeah, it was, it did seem, and that was at the point where he really did start to lose the kind of the cheerful attitude that he'd had all that time, because, yeah, it was like waiting for a bus, you know, and you're at the bus stop. And I think I did liken it to a train at one point, you know, in that his death was, you know, he was at the train station, he was waiting for the next train, and it just took forever to come, you know. And he, that's when he started to really lose faith, I guess, in himself and even me, you know, I said it was a real lesson to me actually of my own intuition because I think fairly early on in the book I'd stated about how I was stood in my kitchen and I was right at the beginning was, oh my God, you know, he's got cancer, he's gonna die. I kind of got into this little rut of feeling very sorry for myself. And immediately the sun came through the window and it hit me and I had this, just this knowing that he wasn't gonna die. And I just knew. In the pit of my stomach, this, this, it's very difficult to understand, to explain to people that haven't felt anything like this. But there's just this true knowing that you know what's going to happen. And so I was maybe throughout the journey also had that. So I was a little bit, not cocky, I wouldn't say, but I was, well, it's all right, he's not going to die. We've just got to get through this bit because I know he's not going to die. But when we were in the hospice, you know, and all the hospice team are telling me his stomach is slowing down, which it was, his organs were shutting down, which they were, we could very much see that in him. And I remember standing in, in the bathroom just bawling my eyes out, saying to myself, how could you let me down like this? How could I have been so wrong? I was so convinced that he wasn't gonna die. Why is this now happening? You know, how could I have— how could that intuition feeling been so wrong? And obviously it wasn't. So it was a, you know, it was, it was a deeper faith that I can trust myself, and we must trust our intuition. And when we get those feelings of knowing, is, is they're not wrong. And yeah, it was— he really got to that point where he had had enough. And I mean, we'd had the conversation of me putting a pillow on his face. We'd had the conversation that he wanted me to take him to Brussels because they just legalized euthanasia for children over 12. And I was, you know, all of these kind of desperate measures because he really was— he just wanted to go now. You know, he's like, Mom, I'm ready. I've been waiting. When is it going to— they told me 3 days. It's been 2 weeks now, you know, I'm getting annoyed. I'm getting annoyed at waiting. And I think that's probably why he then, after he survived, he then went down that, you know, he went down an even deeper hole because he was, he just wanted an end to the prodding and the poking and the tests and the operations and the blood transfusions and the drugs and the pain. He wanted an end to it and he saw his death as a way out, which It is, it's a relief, it's a reprieve for many people who are suffering, you know, there are fates worse than death, you know, and that's something that I've taken on with me as well after this, is that there are levels of suffering where you just don't want to be here anymore, and I can totally understand it. Yeah, the toll it takes mentally as well, I mean, you talk about how, you know, when he actually did recover and he just, he struggled with eating and there was people saying, you know, you should be happy that you've survived. You can't— that's like turning around to somebody— well, he was depressed because he'd gone through something horrific, but that's like saying, 'Buck up, love, just smile.' Yeah, 'Suck it up.' It doesn't work that way. No. I mean, you went through something horrific, and actually trying to engage with that and understand it, I mean, it is everything that, you know, PTSD is kind of made of, isn't it? Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely post-traumatic, you know, and, and the fact that again the team, they had their hands tied, there wasn't the— again the system being so broken that what should have been available to him as part of his entire healthcare wasn't available to him at this point, and which was, you know, they wanted to section him, force-feed him, and sedate him, and, and I, and I said to them then, well hang on a minute, can we not get some mental health care? Because no, he'd had nobody to talk to, at no point throughout any of his treatment had he had a psychologist or Yeah, nothing. And even me, still, I still haven't had anybody. And it's, you know, when they said to me he didn't qualify, I said, what do you mean he doesn't qualify? And they said, well, if he'd have gone through, if he was just a hematology patient like he was pre-bone marrow transplant, he would have qualified. But now that he's gone on to BMT, bone marrow transplant, now he's gone on to that, he doesn't qualify anymore. And I said, that makes no sense. I said, it makes— everybody should have access to health, you know, to mental health care. But if If you have to really, like, put it into a category of who can get it, surely those that have been through the most, like, not those that have been just at the beginning. I was like, I don't understand this. And so he really was left, and it was left, you know, to me to kind of, with the pop psychology of things, of trying to get him to eat and trying to get him to see that there was a life worth living. But of course, at that point, you know, he still felt in himself like, absolute death, his organs, it was gonna, the recovery was insurmountable as far as he could see, you know, the hill he now had to climb was just huge to get out of this, to the depths that he'd gone, you know, so close to death, that turning round and trying to walk back up that hill where he really had nothing left was so, so difficult to him, and he just wanted to leave, he just wanted to tap out, he was done, you know. Yeah. It was difficult to see, you know, even in the newspaper, I remember it was Russell Howard actually that said to me, "Don't ever read the comments in the newspapers. Don't ever read the comments because it's not worth it, honestly." And so I wish I'd listened to him because at one point I did read the comments and it was on an article that had been written about Darren to say that, you know, he didn't die and that he was struggling and actually he was now trying to kill himself through starvation. And the comments, some of the comments were like, 'He's an ungrateful this, that, and the other,' you know, 'and he should be thankful he's been given,' and like you say, and I was like, how could— get yourself into the head of a 14-year-old boy who has just been through all of that and has been told that he's gonna get some reprieve, and now he hasn't, and now you expect him to just turn around and be jovial, you know, you— please put yourself there, because I know that I don't think I could have even got as far as he did with that positive mental attitude that he had all the way through it. He didn't let anything knock him down until right at the very end where he's just like, you know, I'm tired now, I don't have anything left to give. But he, he, he says, you know, and he'll say it to— he'll tell anybody that it was like he was stood on the threshold of a door and through this door with everything he's ever wanted. His BMX was there, his PlayStation, the trees in the fields that he grew up in because he was an incredibly active child before this. And he was always out in the fields of Norfolk, running around in the woods with his friends, you know, and he said all of that was there in front of him, and the door was slammed in his face, and he had to turn around and walk back through hell, and he said, "Mum, can you understand why I didn't want to?" I was like, "Absolutely, absolutely, I can understand why you would rather have died than have turned around," and it took a long time for him to get that spark back in his life, and it took a long time for him to fully realize that he wanted to live and that there was a life worth living and that, you know, that his efforts, this last-ditch effort, you know, would get him out the other side, and it did, and it really did. And even, you know, even— That's the point of the story, isn't it? It's kind of showing how to do this, and I must say, the way that you wrote the book, I 100% got why he was doing what he was doing. You You really got that across to the reader, I'm assuming readers other than myself as well. It wasn't a case of, why are you doing this? You 100% got it. Yeah, you didn't want it to happen, but you know, you really got it. It's like, wow. Yeah, I'm glad. And even, you know, even before I gave him the cannabis, you know, when I asked for that second bone marrow aspirate and I said, look, you need to tell me there's nothing there because I don't understand why he's still alive, and You know, both Darren and I had the conversation where we said we hope there's nothing in there. And for, you know, I think that's what being truly, you know, love is letting go at the right times as well. It's not about holding on. And I could have kept him in that room for years. I could have. I could have kept him in the hospital on blood transfusions and antibiotics for months and months and months. But it becomes, it gets to that point where you have to put your own wants and desires and your own— I won't say selfish needs, but, you know, as a parent, you don't want your child to die. Of course you don't. And even as dog owners, you know, pet owners, we get to that point where we know our animals probably need to be put to sleep. We don't want to do it. And no, but it gets to that point where actually it's selfish to keep them here because they're suffering. And, and so, you know, when we had the conversation of when are you going to take him to the hospice, it's like, oh my Lord, when do we start this 3-day countdown? But it got to, you know, it was at I got to that point where I didn't want him to suffer anymore. And no matter, I knew that a life without him would be horrendous, but not as horrendous as him suffering anymore. And it was the fair thing to do was, you know, in quote, in quotation marks, you know, put him out of his misery because that's ultimately what it was for him. It was miserable. And it was such a hard decision, like it is with a dog. It's such a hard decision. You don't want to do it. You know, you have to put your own thoughts and feelings aside. It's not about you anymore. It's about, it's about that person and how much they're suffering. And, but it's amazing really, because even this whole journey, I used to have a very different idea about, you know, euthanasia. I used to be totally in favor of euthanasia, and now I'm back on the fence again because doctors aren't always right. And it's not because they, you know, intentionally aren't right, but sometimes science isn't right. Sometimes they just don't know. And so, you know, had euthanasia been a thing for him, could he have gone and you know, ended it for himself unnecessarily, kind of early, or— it's such a— there's so much more we need to understand, you know, and I think this book did throw out so much, so much for people to think about. There's so many different angles there, so many different things that we went through, that I'm glad that it's given people so much to think about, and hopefully just given people a different perspective on lots and lots of different things, you know. But that's what books should do, open people's minds and give them different perspectives and also be a companion because I'm sure there's many people out there who could think, you know, I've got a friend who this book's going to benefit, or maybe they just want to know because they want to actually be more informed as to what's going on. I do want to talk about Clik Sargent and the roles that celebrities play. I know it sounds a little bit fro-fro, but celebrities do quite play quite an important role, don't they, in the recovery and, well, just in the whole process. Yeah, yeah, it was actually my youngest son who decided— he said to Darren, Darren was— it was after his third transplant and he was kind of going through, and when they started mentioning chemotherapy again and he was like, 'I don't want to,' you know, he wasn't happy about that. But he did, and he was— it was a difficult moment for him. And my younger son, who would have been 9 at the time, 8 or 9, actually said to Darren, why don't you make a bucket list? Why don't you make a list of things that you want to happen so that you've got things to look forward to? That might make you feel better. And so he did, you know, he created that. We sat and he created this bucket list, and some of the things on it, I was just like, okay, Darren, you know, you really are kind of going to the depths of your imagination here. But no, this is everything I would have put on my— right, so if people have the book, or maybe just make a note of page 247, everything on his wish list is everything that I hoped I would have had the imagination to put on there. I mean, there's not one thing I wouldn't want to do. Yeah, I think the one— there's— I'm not sure if it's in the book, but one that I'm sure it would be, the one sitting on top of a mountaintop eating pasta in Italy, I think is one. It wasn't one of them I had on there. And, um, yeah, swimming with dolphins, he's done that now. Um, he had He hasn't done the swimming with sharks, but yeah, there's a lot that he's ticked off and a lot of celebrities were involved in that. And so I put, I just put his wishlist up on Twitter, 'cause I was avid on Twitter at the time, and I put his wishlist up on there and on Facebook. I had quite a large following on Facebook, you know, people following his journey and things, and they made it happen. I didn't make it happen. I didn't have the time. I was, all of a sudden I just get a call from Russell Howard saying, is this Darren's mum? I'm like, uh, yeah, you know, and yeah, so the wonderful people of Twitter and Facebook made these things happen for him. And yeah, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost came, and that was fairly early. He just trapped his hand down the side of his bed as well, just before he went on those car journeys with Paul Hollywood, actually. That was incredible. He literally just trapped his fingers, and so he was okay. He really enjoyed that. Driving around in this brand new— I can't even remember what it was, a McLaren something, rather, I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to say it, but this orange car that has— An orange one, I love that. It was beautiful and it was orange and it hadn't even been on the road at this point, it got delivered on a low loader because it hadn't even hit tarmac at this point and Darren got to go out on it and the guy who owned that actually, we never got to meet him, but he signed off and said, yeah, absolutely, let this young lad 'Go in my car, it's absolutely fine.' And we had, yeah, we had 4 different cars down there, it was incredible. He got, you know, he really did get to enjoy himself and it injected some kind of, not normality because it's not normal doing all of those things, it's not your normal run-of-the-mill, but it injected a lot of positivity in and it did really give him things to look forward to. It's distraction as well, isn't it? Oh, absolutely, it was distraction, yeah, and Yeah, it was such a shame when Simon and Nick came, he really wasn't, he was kind of a little bit out of it, he was in a lot of pain, and so he actually says to me, he goes, "Mum, I didn't, you know, it's a shame I didn't really get to kind of enjoy that as much as I would have liked to, but you know, I've got pictures." So, you know, but it's, but for a lot of these celebrities as well, it was, it was an eye-opener for them, because they hadn't really been too involved in going and visiting children with cancer and things like that, you know, I mean, I know a lot of these celebrities, they do go out of their way to try and make people's lives lovely when they're called upon, you know, but Russ was definitely like a deer in headlights when he first came to the hospital. It was, it was very overwhelming for him. And he absolutely fell in love with Darren. And to the point where he got the same sick sense of humor. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. They got on like a house on fire. And, you know, we've met the rest of the family. It was actually Russell Howard's parents' villa that we stayed in in Spain. And we stayed with them for a couple of days and then they left us to it. So it was, yeah, we really did get involved, met his cousins and his uncles and his aunties and all of them, and, you know, Russ became Uncle Russ to the kids, and it really was a beautiful relationship that they kind of sparked up, and Russ would come to the hospice a lot too, and I think it humbled him, it really did humble him, you know, and the life that he lived was very celebrity-driven, he was always off doing amazing things, and I think it just humbled him somewhat, which is amazing, you know, to give other people, again, a different perspective of what's really going on in the world, and there are people far worse off than you, I think, and that's something to remember. That's something certainly that I remembered all the way through Darren's journey was, it could be worse, you know, he's still here, it could be worse, and I tried to keep that in the back of my mind whenever I felt myself going down this going down the line of, you know, this is horrendous. It's like, well, it could be worse. It could be better, obviously, but it makes you realize just, again, that perspective, bringing back to what's important in the world and what's not important, you know, the bickering and the squabbling and the fights and the keeping up with the Joneses and what your neighbors are doing. And it's not important. It's really not important. Yeah, and it's a leveler, isn't it? Yeah, kind of put things into perspective. Perspective. And I loved reading that you'd got help from Clik Sargent. This is a charity that I love working with and doing various bits and pieces with my kids and fundraising. And what they do is, I mean, it's incredible. It's nothing to do necessarily with the treatment, it's to do with how you support the families. Yeah, yeah, Clik Sargent were amazing. They, yeah, financially we didn't get too much help, but that's fine, you know, again, it's not about the financial side of it, it was about the things that they did for us. So initially, I think it was the Christmas of 2011, I believe, that we ended up going to Clik Sargent House up in Scotland, and it was beautiful. I don't think it's— Malcolm Sargent House, I don't think it's there anymore, I'm not sure, but it was a wonderful facility for children, and of course, every child there has got cancer or has been fighting getting cancer. So immediately these children are with other children that just get it. They understand, you know, there is no— there's no conversation that has to be had with a, you know, with a well child and a child with cancer. The well child just cannot get it, but all of these children just knew where they were all coming from. They understood how they all felt and they just got on with it. It was an unsaid bond that they all had and ClickSargent were amazing, and we did used to have a lady come in and kind of come and talk to us and try and support us in ways as well. They are an amazing charity that do an awful lot for children with cancer, and I think there's— I saw a huge gap, that there was a lot there for the really little ones, and there was some Teenage Cancer Trust there for the older ones, but kind of Derren's age group in the middle was a bit— it was a bit lost, but ClickSargent were able to step in with Malcolm Sargent House, and and the other things that they did for us. So yeah, we actually got to go twice. It was lovely. It was really, really lovely up there. It's just great to see when you uncover these services, the good in people and to see what fantastic things people are actually doing out there. I just want to make sure, because I'm worried that we're going to end up chatting away and run out of time, where can people go to find out more about what you do and your campaign? So I'm on Instagram. I do have a page on Facebook as well. And I mean, predominantly now I spend most of my time educating people about holistic alternatives. I say alternatives. They shouldn't be called alternatives. They were around a lot longer than before pharmaceuticals turned up. So pharmaceuticals should be the alternatives, really. But yeah, if you want to go on Facebook or Instagram and I mean, just type in my name, you'll find me. I'm fairly easy. I'm fairly Googleable. So yeah, you can find me, but I'm mainly now, I've kind of stepped back from the cannabis activism as such. I don't put myself out there so much. You know, I've been arrested outside Parliament. I've spoken inside Parliament. I've, you know, I've been on TV. I've spoken a lot. I've been to many, many protests and marches and events and things trying to get it legalized or at least decriminalized into the way that we need it. But I've kind of stepped away from that so much now and I'm just, I'm just trying to help people, the people who are the victims of prohibition, because fighting prohibition is hard. And I honestly do feel that the government are going to give us what they want to give us when they want to give it to us, and they're never going to do it beforehand. And, you know, a lot of it sadly is contrived for money because there is no money in a treatment that actually works. There is no money in that, you know, and it's an awful thing to say, but that's another thing that I really did learn in the pharmaceutical industry are there to make a lot of money from people, and they only make money if you're sick. So I'm more now trying to help the people that are so affected by prohibition, and those people that deserve access to everything that could help them, especially things like cannabis and, and other natural alternatives, you know, like lemon balm, echinacea, olive leaf extract, liposperic vitamin C, all of these normal, very, very normal things, plant medicines basically. They don't do you any harm. You know, everybody should be entitled to access that and they should be given a choice. That's my, that's my thing now is that I push is that I want freedom of choice for people. If they should be right at the very beginning, well, here's your choices. You've got chemotherapy. Here's the chances. You know, these are the statistics behind chemotherapy or you've got these plant medicines, these natural alternatives. Which one do you want to do? But we don't have that at the moment. So while there's victims of the system, I'm just there trying to help those people try and find some relief in their lives. And yeah, that's my day-to-day. Yeah, it was increasing knowledge. I mean, you do actually state in your book, I'm not saying that cannabis is going to cure anything and everything. I'm saying that it needs, you know, you're saying that it just needs to be taken into consideration and it is about knowledge and options. Yeah. I mean, because I'm sure especially holistic therapies got a bad name probably about 20, 30 years ago where people were starting to say, oh, right, so we can cure this just by waving a sage stick or something. And it was very glib and ridiculous. And the research wasn't there. Well, the research still isn't there, as you say, because there's no money being, being angled in that direction. But, you know, we need to be reading books like yours so that we can understand the differences and actually see case studies. And, you know, it is complementary for a reason. You can add it into your life. Yeah, yeah, you can integrate it into your life. And I think, you know, you're absolutely right. 20, 30 years ago, it was really mocked and laughed upon. And I think that was, again, the pharmaceutical industry's doing lots of, you know, lots of drives to kind of push down their opponents, really their competition. And so yeah, it did get a really bad name. And even now, you know, people still— and this is why I'm so very careful about the words that I use, and I don't say it's a cure. I never ever use the word cure because it's not. It's not a cure. What cannabis is, is just one other tool in our toolbox that we can take on a daily that helps with our health and well-being. And it's like anything, you know, it does— I say to people, the amount of people that come to me and say, oh, well, you know, I've looked at this and can I get some cannabis? And I say, well, we need to look at your diet. And they start rolling their eyes at me. And I'm like, well, what you put in your body is so very important. You know, we are what we eat. And if you continue to put McDonald's in your face every day, don't expect cannabis or Manuka honey to do anything for you because it's not going to, because it has to be part of a complete dietary and lifestyle overhaul. You know, we've got sick for a reason. And we need to deal with the reasons why we've got sick. And we can't— cannabis isn't a plaster, it's not a Band-Aid that we can put over the top, and it isn't a cure-all. It's, it's, as I say, it's a vital nutrient. It's just a very small tool in our toolbox of all of these other things. But the most important thing comes with recognizing why we're sick in the first place and our detrimental habits that have got us there, and changing those and having a complete overhaul. And cannabis is just a little tool that we can use alongside many, many, many other things. And that's what I kind of try and teach and educate people with, you know. It's, it's— we've got lots of things there at our disposal, and we need to start using them and implicating, you know, implementing them in our lives in a safe manner. And that's another thing that I do. I talk to people very in-depth about integrating cannabis into their lives in a safe manner, because it does have contraindications with pharmaceutical medications, and it does come with side effects. They're not detrimental, not long-term, but, you know, if you have too much THC, you can get a bit too high, and people don't like that. And, but there are ways to integrate it into your life very safely. And that's what I, that's what I really do push with people now, is that it's something just to add into your daily vitamins, and, um, and it can be done in a very safe manner. And that's the most important thing for me, so that nobody gets hurt, you know, and also so that people can have a long-term relationship with cannabis. If they have too much too soon and, and they get, you know, they get duff information from somewhere, they don't want to continue with it. And I want cannabis to be a long-term loving relationship, so it's done very low and slow and very methodical and knowledge, with knowledge. Yeah. Have you read the book Shine Brighter by Donna Moore? No. Okay, I'll send you the details of it. It's absolutely fantastic. And what I learned from her book, and it's like she She does a lot of clean eating, but she doesn't say you should be a vegan, you should not drink, you should not do this. She's like, you know, just you have the knowledge and be clever about it. Yeah, conscious. Conscious eating. Yeah, conscious eating. It's a fantastic book, so I'll send you the details, and I absolutely loved it, and it was just done in such an obvious way. Silly little things as well, just like explaining to us about, you know, why Nando's and Pizza Hut and McDonald's use red and yellow because of the receptors it sparks in our brain, you know, it's actually just breaking down what we eat and why we eat it. Yeah. And, you know, knowledge is power. And it's interesting because I live in a part of London, southwest London, Twickenham, where rugby is just everywhere. And, you know, I used to hang out with a lot of rugby players. You go out for Sunday lunch and they are having, you know, everyone's getting these great big roast and the rugby players, they're getting the vegan curry. Yeah. Yeah. Because they know. That's it. And that's it. And that is one of the most important things. You're absolutely right. You know, the food industry as well as the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry are a multibillion industry and they have psychologists working for them. And you're absolutely right about the colors and, and even the chemicals in the food. They spark off certain receptors in our brain. They fire off certain chemicals, and so the dopamine and the serotonin and things, they get spiked by certain foods. That's why McDonald's is addictive, because of the chemicals, and it's about, exactly like you say, it's about being conscious, and not just habitually doing what we've always done, not just going into the cupboard and grabbing a packet of crisps and sitting eating them while you're on the computer. It's like, look at what you're eating, watch what you're eating, look at everything that goes in and on your body, you know. Our skin is our biggest organ and what we put on our skin, we should never put anything on our skin that we don't put in our mouth. That's a rule that I kind of try and live by because it's so important. We absorb chemicals all over the place. And so yeah, it's about just becoming more aware and not being an unconscious consumer. Be a conscious consumer and I promise you that once you start really looking at things and what's in food and in all your processed favorites, that things will change, you will look and go, wow, you know, if you can't pronounce it, you probably shouldn't be eating it. And if it's got an E in front of it, you probably shouldn't be having it either. Exactly. There was one page that I was looking at in Donna Moore's book and I was like, whoa, what have I been having crushed beetles in? And there's an email that refers to crushed beetles and you just think— and like some of my friends now, they're like, oh, why do you only eat KFC pigs from Marks Spencer's? I'm like, I'm not having gelatin. And have you seen the E numbers in that, that, and that? If you actually knew what was actually in those Haribos, yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't touch them now, no matter even if I've got a hangover, you know, it's not happening. Yeah, it does not happen. And my friends are like, you know, would it hurt to just have one? It's like, I physically couldn't put that in my mouth. Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't hurt to have one, but one doesn't become one, does it? No, exactly. It's never one, because again, the sugar, and you know, as you know from my book, Sugar Feeds Cancer Quicker Than Anything Else, and sugar is— I discovered yesterday actually that one molecule of sugar requires 54 molecules of magnesium to move out of your body. Most of us have already got a magnesium deficiency, and magnesium is one of the most important building blocks of our bodies. And so, you know, one molecule of sugar taking 54 molecules of magnesium, that's huge. Sugar has such a detrimental effect on our immune system. And this is the— without going off on a tangent, but this is the crazy thing I saw at the beginning of lockdown, is that everybody was so worried about COVID yet they were in the supermarkets buying up all the beer because they were now sat at home, and the junk food and the things. And I'm just looking at people going, you're so scared of a virus, yet you're putting yourself directly in harm by eating and consuming all of these things that are going to completely destroy your immune system. Them, and yet you're worried. But again, it comes with a lack of education, and it comes with— again, there's this huge marketing. They spend billions and billions of pounds advertising these foods to you so that you feel you want to eat them, and they do taste good. I'm not going to say they don't. You know, they do taste very good, all by design. And so, yeah, it's about seeing the bigger picture and seeing these huge corporations as to what they are, which is they want to make money from you, and they don't care how. They don't care about your health. They don't care how they do it. But again, it just, it circles back round to knowledge again. I mean, at the end of the day, we're not saying, okay, just eat mung beans and organic vegan food. It's a case of have the knowledge, and then if you take out some of these things, it means that possibly— make an informed decision. And that's the thing with everything. Everything has to be an informed decision. If you're not getting your— if you don't know what you're eating, what you're putting on your skin, what you're having injected into you, if you don't know exactly what is in there, then get knowledgeable first. You know, look at everything, and then by all means, if you want to continue on and you want to take those things, at least you know what you're doing to yourself. At least you know what you're doing, whereas, you know, a lot of this information is so purposely hidden from us, again, because if we really knew what went on and we really knew what went in these foods, we'd probably eat like the Beatles, we probably wouldn't eat them. And so they spend a lot of money hiding those facts from us because they want to sell us their products. And so yeah, it's all for me, it's about freedom of choice and an informed choice. It has to be informed. And so, and really the only way we can do that is to teach ourselves because they're not going to teach us and they're not going to teach us the truth. You know, like how I found out that the meat, sugar, and dairy industries were the people that funded the information that the dietitians were worked from. Well, it's never going to be anything but bias, is it? You know, if they're the ones funding the information, they're not going to tell you that red meat is bad for you because they're the ones funding the information. So, of course, it's always going to go in their favor. And so it's— yeah, we can't rely. It's like going to a dodgy car salesman. He's not going to tell you there's something wrong with the car. You know, he wants you to buy the car. So it's exactly the same with these massive corporations, you know, Nestlé and people like that. They're not going to tell you what's bad in their foods because then you won't buy it and then they will go out of business. Ask questions, read more, be informed. Absolutely. Supply yourself with tools. There's 3 things I really want to try and squeeze in in the next 5 minutes. The first thing is something that I ask all my guests is somebody that you just think is absolutely smashing it out of the park in terms of just being a decent human being or somebody just to look up to or look out for and, or maybe they make you giggle, maybe it's a comedian. I mean, you've come across so many people, especially with the Ellen MacArthur Trust and all the celebrities and Clik Sergeant. I mean, it can even be your next door neighbor because every now and again, you know, they just do the right thing. Yeah, it's, it's a difficult one because as I said in our little pre-talk, is like, I, I don't really, you know, I don't have much to do with the media anymore and I don't watch TV and I kind of, my life is just all dealt with just helping people, so I very rarely see anything. But there is, um, somebody who's been kind of shown to me recently. Um, there's a lady called Bev Turner, and she, um, Beverly Turner, she usually has a spot on, um, This Morning, but I think she's been kicked off recently. And actually, um, because she's been quite controversial. But what I really love about her is that she is, um, she's just talking about those things that nobody really wants to talk about. And I think that's why she's been booted off, if I'm honest, because, you know, um, but she, she really is kind of asking questions. She's just asking people to ask questions, you know, about this whole everything that's going on with, with lockdown and, and the vaccines and things like that. She's just, she's pushing for people just to ask questions, and that's why she's being shunned, I think, on, on the normal narrative, because they don't want people to ask questions. I mean, they're there to feed you information they want you to have. So, Beverly Turner, she's someone that I recently started following, and I've been very impressed with her, because she's using her platform, and she's probably likely to lose her job and everything. She's likely to lose everything, because she stepped up and started talking, and I think no matter what the subject is, anybody that's willing to lose what they've got to stand up for what they believe in is an amazing human being, you know, regardless, whatever the subject is. Is, if you're willing to lose everything you've got because you're so firm in your beliefs that, you know, things need to be talked about, then I absolutely take my hat off to you. Well-behaved women never made history. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I knew that when I went on television that I was putting my neck on the line and that I could end up in prison. And even continuing to do what I did, you know, I knew that I could end up in prison. And but it was all worth that for me because the information and the truth needed to be out more than I needed to be worried about my my freedom, you know. So that was on one of my list of things I really wanted to talk about, about the fears as well of just what could happen if your child was made, you know, a ward of the state because you were using illegal drugs and whatnot. And it's just, it was such, I mean, the thing is, the key thing is people have got to get the book, they've got to read it, because we haven't been able to chat about half the things I wanted to do. I do normally ask asked for 3 top tips on wellbeing, and I think we've kind of covered about, um, 83 and a half tips, so I'm gonna leave that one for now because what I do want to do for the last couple of minutes is talk about something, and I wish we'd had a lot longer to talk about this, but being a sibling of an unwell child. I mean, I think that's touched on quite nicely in the book about, um, the efforts you went to and how, how It's something you really have to take on board, and yet it's yet something else to think about, isn't it? And I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that if they're going through this situation and there are siblings, they need to read the book to see how you did it. Yeah, it was something that I was again very conscious of. I was very, very conscious that my son, my youngest son, because he was only 5 when Darren was first diagnosed with cancer, you know, 5 years old, he'd literally just started school. He literally had just got to an age where I was willing to let him out to go to the park on his own with his little friends, you know, just across the road and stuff, and then all that just got whipped away from him, and he spent, he spent as much time in isolation as Darren did, you know, and now, I mean, Dylan is almost 17, and yeah, he's been left very, very affected. Affected by it. He's, he struggles to deal with children his own age because they just can't understand what he's been through and they can't, he can't relate to them. He just has nothing in common with children his own age. So he mainly spends a lot of time on the computer. He has a few friends that he's had for the last 5 years and they're all in their late teens, early 20s. So they're all kind of Darren's age, you know, and that's kind of the age group that he can he can talk to, that kind of understands him. And so, yeah, he— it was difficult. It was very difficult because I know that he suffered a lot. And as much as I really tried that he wouldn't, he still did. You know, it was very difficult to protect him from everything that was going on. And I actually, I didn't want to protect him really in that sense that I didn't want him— I didn't want to hide anything from him. And so I've always been very, very honest with both of my children. And actually, when I was in the hospital, I had some nurses come to me and praise me and just tell me what a wonderful mother I was, and I was like, why? You know, what do you mean? And they said, because your children actually know why they're here. Yeah, it's the honesty. That's what I loved about in the book. And unfortunately, we've run out of time. I'm happy to do another couple of hours. Go and buy The Boy in 7 Billion. Kali, thank you so much for joining us here on Men's and Women's radio station, and best of luck with what you're doing. I think it's Absolutely fantastic. You're amazing. Thank you. Thank you. And if I can give one, one top wellness tip, which is the most important, is breathe. We don't breathe. We don't breathe properly. We don't breathe enough. Take a deep breath. Breathe. I— yeah, absolutely fantastic. Yeah, no, I'm all over that as well. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Get Booked.