Featured Patient Stories

A Mother of Four Recalls Her Cancer Journey

Kelli Ann Rollins of Shawnee, Oklahoma, was a busy mom of four in the early summer of 2022. She was looking forward to a family vacation to Utah and another summer trip to celebrate her 15th wedding anniversary to her husband, Jeb.  The family’s summer plans changed dramatically after Kelli Ann found a lump in her breast. Although her recovery was traumatic, she has found a new way to well with the help of Riordan Clinic and Dr. Kirsten West, ND, LAc, FABNO.

Cancer Survivor Makes Changes for Better Health

As a busy mortgage loan officer, Lori Caldwell loves to work, and in early 2022, low mortgage rates kept her especially busy. So when she found a lump in her right breast, she said it took her a while to get it checked out.

“I didn’t take too much time for my health. I regret that now. It will never happen again. My health comes first,” she said.

Lori, 56, of Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in February 2022. It was her second cancer diagnosis, having survived stage 3 melanoma in 2011.

Cardiology Patient Avoids Bypass Surgery Twice

Frank Miller, of El Dorado, Kansas, was told he had two days until he was scheduled for a triple bypass surgery. Twice.

Frank’s cardiac journey began eight years ago with a vascular blockage in his leg. Although he didn’t have any noticeable symptoms of heart trouble, his doctor told him he suspected that there was probably a blockage somewhere else.

As a result of follow-up testing, Frank ended up having heart catheterization procedures that ultimately showed he had two arteries 70% blocked. After his first catheter, a physician’s assistant told him that he would be scheduled for a triple bypass surgery in two days. However, the surgeon decided he wasn’t a good candidate for a bypass surgery. Frank sought a second opinion. The second cardiologist did another heart cath procedure, after which two stents were placed.

Riordan Clinic Transforms Life for Two-Time Cancer Survivor

Jamie Bernard has found a community with more than 700 co-learners on Instagram after her second breast cancer diagnosis. She created the handle @cansurvivegal on the social media site after sharing some of her experiences on her personal page.

Jamie, 36, of Boston, shares food suggestions, favorite organic products, ideas, her survival story, and the occasional picture of her fiancé, Nick Constantine, and Charlie, her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She said she doesn’t provide any medical advice, but offers resources – often directing those interested to the Riordan Clinic.

She said her experiences at the Riordan Clinic helped her create a treatment protocol that is helping her health today.

“The Riordan Clinic was really a place that changed my life. It was the biggest pivotal thing we did that put me on the path to not only healing but being cured,” she said.

Regenerative Injection Therapy Gives Patient Back Pain Relief

For nine years, Shelly Berry was sidelined from life by debilitating back pain. Unable to do much more than work and sleep, she knew she was missing out on experiences with her family. Today, she celebrates the opportunity to have been on the actual sidelines for her younger son’s last few years of high school, thanks to treatments she received at the Riordan Clinic in Hays.

Shelly, 52, of Scott City, began having back pain in 2010. She was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease throughout her spine, spinal stenosis, and bulging discs in her thoracic spine. Her pain eventually became so bad that she said she would sleep as long as she could before she went to work and come home at lunchtime and sleep instead of eating because she was so exhausted from the pain. After work, she would sleep, wake up for about an hour each night to be with her family, and return to bed.

“That was my life for about three years,” she said.

Professor Grateful and Looks Forward After Breast Cancer Diagnosis

As Meredith Trexler Drees rode with her husband, Jeff, to her family’s farm near Hill City, Kansas on the day of her breast cancer diagnosis, she had no idea she would be walking the campus at the University of Notre Dame a little less than two years later. 

“I remember on the day that I was diagnosed, I told my husband as we were driving back out to the farm I thought I was going home to die,” she said, recalling that her initial perspective was limited because she didn’t know about options beyond conventional care.

Meredith, 38, was diagnosed in February 2021 with a large, cancerous tumor in her left breast, with a spot that had grown into her sternum. She had two weeks to wait before she could get more scans, so she and Jeff headed toward her family in Hill City.

Riordan Clinic Cancer Survivor Looks To Help Others

Amye Williamson’s last day of her extended treatment at the Riordan Clinic in Overland Park helped reinforce her desire to expand access to the clinic for more patients.

That day, she met a young mother newly diagnosed with breast cancer who was beginning her journey with the Riordan Clinic as Amye was ending hers. Amye and other patients recognized the woman’s fear and shared empathy with her through their own experiences.

“I think we were able to bring a lot of comfort to her. She shed a lot of tears that day, but it was such a safe space for her and us, too,” Amye said. “We all came together and did our best to reassure her that she was on the right path. The one prayer that we all have is that God will light our path and give us the courage to follow that.”

Amye, 52, of McKinney, Texas, was diagnosed with stage 3B colon cancer in November 2021. After having 20 centimeters of her colon and 27 lymph nodes removed on December 14, conventional oncologists recommended a “pretty extreme” chemotherapy regimen, she said. After doing some research on her own, she realized that the treatment plan she was being offered was the same one that would be recommended for someone 20 years older with comorbidities. 

Retired Nurse Finds Healing at Riordan Clinic After Cancer Diagnosis

Denise Ober was settling into an active retirement in early 2020 after a nearly 50-year career in nursing, but she felt that something wasn’t quite right.

The 69-year-old Wrentham, Massachusetts, resident found she was having trouble breathing during her regular bike rides. She had a family history of cancer, with both of her parents having died from lung cancer. Her concern proved to be accurate as she was diagnosed with lung cancer and had surgery on Oct. 1, 2020, at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston. Her diagnosis was a stage 1 lung adenocarcinoma, which fortunately had not spread to her lymph nodes.

While Ober got an “all clear” from her surgeon, she spent her recovery time asking questions. During that time she found a podcast by Dr. Lucas Tims, ND, FABNO, with the Riordan Clinic’s Overland Park clinic.

Steve Spencer Finds Help and Hope After Treatments

Steve Spencer rolled his wheelchair into the Riordan Clinic in Overland Park in 2020 looking for help … and hope. He found both. In the spring of 2022, he finished a 5K and celebrated a family vacation in Hawaii and his younger daughter’s engagement.

Steve, 62, of Liberty, Mo., was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January 2019, and initially followed a traditional treatment path. A week after his diagnosis, he secured an appointment at the University of Kansas Medical Center to receive a whipple procedure, which removes part of the pancreas. Steve said the surgical team was unaware at the time that he was dehydrated, and the surgery was stopped an hour and a half after it started because his blood pressure was dropping. For more than two days, Steve said his condition was so uncertain that his family was encouraged not to leave the hospital.

Patient Advises Others to “Be Curious” After Potentially Fatal Autoimmune Diagnosis

Scleroderma started small for Denise Douty, 49, of Wichita. Her fingers felt funny after scraping her windshield on a frigid January morning in 2019. Not thinking much of it at first, she assumed it would go away. It didn’t.

Not long after, she began experiencing joint pain, which became increasingly debilitating. As the year progressed, so did her pain. Denise had a job teaching a graduate school class at a Wichita-area college that summer. She said the pain was getting so bad she began to doubt if she would be able to walk across campus. She also worked as a licensed counselor and could hardly show up for appointments because of the exhaustion and pain.

Having no primary care physician of her own, she saw her wife, Cindy’s, doctor, who referred her to a rheumatologist. During the four-month wait for her appointment her symptoms continued to worsen.

“By that time, I thought I was just dying,” Denise said. “I was feeling awful and could hardly work.”

IV Vitamin C During Chemo

Food is my Medicine: Rx- Real, Whole Foods

As someone who recovered from an autoimmune disease by drastically changing my diet, the words “Food is Medicine” have taken on a new and very important meaning.  I recovered from severe ulcerative colitis by eliminating the foods that I couldn’t digest and allowing my body to heal. This healing and remission came after 18 months of “standard protocol treatment” that did nothing but make my symptoms worse. During this time, I had countless encounters with providers who insisted that food had nothing to do with my digestive disease. With more drugs and surgery being the only options, I decided to try changing my diet, throwing away the drugs, and giving my body a chance to heal naturally. Within a year…

Stomach upset, reflux, embarrassing gas…oh my!

Did you know that approximately 60% of the adult population will experience some type of gastro esophageal reflux disease (GERD) within a 12 month period and that 20 to 30% will have weekly symptoms? Did you also know that approximately 7 million people in the United States have some symptoms of GERD? GERD is essentially caused by low stomach acid. When you don’t have enough acid in your stomach, it causes the esophageal sphincter to stay open, thus resulting in reflux! Most people, when experiencing these symptoms, reach for their handydandy antacids—however, this only exacerbates the initial problem. One such co-learner was doing this very thing, until they decided to visit Riordan Clinic, in search of a better outcome.

This co-learner visited with a Riordan Clinic doctor and presented symptoms such as reflux, GI burning and stomach upset. They also had a decreased appetite and feeling that they weren’t digesting all their food. They had tried Prilosec, which helped for a little while, but then the symptoms would return. After reviewing the co-learner’s history of symptoms, the doctor ordered a lab to check nutrient levels as well as test samples of their stool. Upon the co-learner’s first follow up appointment, the lab was reviewed with the doctor. It was found that…

Uncovering Infertility Issues as a Team

One of the most defeating things as a man or woman is the continuous letdown, month after month, when trying to conceive a child. When two people’s hearts are set and overflowing with love and desire for a child, the inability to conceive and give that love becomes overbearing and self-defeating.

Medical Weight Loss: A Co-Learner’s Journey

I have struggled with my weight since high school. Then with my first pregnancy, I gained a considerable amount more. I’ve asked so many doctors for help, joined countless programs, read numerous books, taken classes, and none provided long-term hope or change because it was all based on willpower and pure grit. ‘Calories in – calories out’ they’d say, (as if it were that simple when my brain/thoughts tripped me up so much). In the past, doctors had suggested I use the drug phentermine to jump start my weight loss, but they didn’t know how to explain it well, and I didn’t feel comfortable taking something that sounded so extreme.

I met with Mike Shaw for the first time in April 2018 at the Riordan Clinic. He took the time to really listen to what I was dealing with, and explain the steps of the program…

A Co-Learner’s Journey with Lyme Disease and Chronic Pain

I may not be running any races or even walking all that well yet, but what I can say for sure is that my digestion is night-​and-​day better, my pain level is down from 7.5 to maybe 2 on a very good day and I don’t get sick from bronchitis like I used to.

Best of all, my latest blood tests are astonishing even to the regular doctors for how good they look, compared to the imbalances and deficiencies of three years ago, before I started at the Riordan Clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

My diagnosis at that time, having just been released from a nursing home after my second broken leg, were: Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis and any number of other maladies regarding digestion, chronic pain and a history of breast cancer. Regular doctors could think of nothing to do for Lyme disease and only Avonex injections for MS. The breast cancer was treated with a bilateral mastectomy and has not recurred. The rest of it, as they put it — “at my age”– I should just learn to live with.  Fortunately for me, I have a good caregiver who found the Riordan Clinic on the Internet and another who was willing to drive the 600 miles to help me get there.

So the story of exceptional lab testing, beyond what regular doctors do, and supplementation, over and above what anybody else will prescribe, got its start. Recommended treatments began with…

Journey to Healing: Finding new Life with Lyme Disease

“I keep pinching myself… it has been two months since we left Riordan and I STILL feel amazing!” That’s what I said to my husband after coming home from two weeks of intense IV Vitamin C (IVC) and Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (UBI) treatments at the Riordan Clinic in Kansas.

Our journey to healing from Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease (for both my daughter and myself) has taken four years, more than ten doctors, five states, countless blood tests, x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, MRIs, EEGs, EKGs, IVIG, special diets and too many pharmaceutical/herbal treatments to count; none of which permanently cured us…”

Hoyt Lee’s Journey

“There’s something ‘BIG’ behind his left eye,” the pediatric ophthalmologist exclaimed.  “We have to get him to hospital now for an MRI!” February 14th, 2012, we were immediately rushed over to the hospital and  within a few hours, a pediatric doctor was trying to explain, “Your son has a very large tumor that is wrapped around his optic nerve, called a Glioma.” There were so many questions and very few answers. We were told only two options, “Either you can do chemo or not.” The depth of my stomach was churning! I later learned that this feeling was my intuition and I have relied on it to guide me throughout Hoyt’s journey…