Shining Brightly – Getting to Know Howard Brown

Howard Brown: 00:00:09

Welcome to the Shining Brightly show. I'm Howard Brown author speaker, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, international peacemaker, and yes to time stage for cancer patients survivor advocate. Each episode will take you from resilience to hope and a whole lot more. Because shining brightly does make the world a better place. Be prepared to be inspired.

Howard Brown: 00:00:37

Hello, it's Howard Brown, Mr. shining brightly. Welcome to Episode One of the shining brightly show. This podcast is going to be great. Each week we will explore, discuss and think about human resolve, and what it takes to keep moving forward in life. We all get knocked down in life in business, and family and in health. The key is to get back up again, again and again. Each week, we will intend to motivate, educate and inspire hearing from my guests real life stories and experiences. Can't wait to share them with you. Now a little bit about me. So I'm Howard Brown. And I always say that I am a son, a brother, a husband, and a dad. And that's what's most important. But I've lived an incredibly resilient life. Let me share that with you. So I was a twin. I have a twin sister. It's amazing. And it becomes important a little later on. We grew up in the suburbs of Boston. I was athletic and outgoing, excelled in basketball. I love basketball even today. My parents are young getting married. My they struggled, my dad worked three jobs, to support the family. And he did. And my mom did volunteer work. She volunteered in the community to help others learning a great lesson and teaching a great lesson to me and my sister CJ. And it's really about generosity, kindness, and healing helping others and that is stuck with me. So after playing basketball, being an all star, graduating high school, I went to college, I went to the wrong college, I went to a liberal arts college. And then I took summer classes at Babson College, the world's number one school for Entrepreneurial Studies in the world, a tiny school out of Boston in the suburbs of Wellesley mass. Anyways, I learned entrepreneurs firsthand, and what that means, and also entrepreneurs and makes economies grow. It offers jobs, it builds and brings innovation. And after college, I went to work for a big computer company. And I learned the ropes. I built my foundation and my fundamentals of learning competitive skills and product skills and negotiation skills and speaking skills. Really important stuff to know to carry forward. I love selling. I love getting in front of people and bringing solutions that they need. Unfortunately, lightning struck for the first time I was being promoted on my way out to Ohio to start a brand new job. And I noticed a pink spine on my cheekbone. Imagine that I'm on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I get out to get gas and I go to a payphone Yes, this is 1989 again on that payphone I called my mom and dad to check in. And I let them know that I have a little pink spot on my cheekbone near my left ear. And they said It's probably nothing, nothing to worry about. And I said you're right. And I continued on to Ohio.

Howard Brown: 00:04:11

I started my work. And I dug right into it. I had a brand new apartment with nothing in it. And my mom came out to help me get important things like dishes and sheets and towels. And I really welcome that visit. But at that time, that little pink spot was growing and I wear glasses and my glasses weren't fitting right. And my mom's like, we got to get that checked out. And I was like, Nah, it's okay. I don't feel all right. But I started making excuses. I got hit at the gym, I hit on the basketball court. I wasn't in any pain, but this little pink spot was growing. Now luck would have it that I had a speaking engagement at the American Bankers Association back in Boston a few weeks later I still hadn't gotten checked it out. And my dad played a trick on me. I flew in on a Friday evening, that Saturday, we're going to get up and go play tennis. And he drove me to a community hospital. And the emergency room, they took me in and said, that's probably a cyst, here's some antibiotic, you should be fine. That Monday, I did my speech. Everything was great, went well, went back to kind of have dinner with my parents before heading off to the airport to my next trip. And my dad said, we're going back and we went back to that emergency room, the same doctor was on call and on duty. And they took a biopsy. And then they took another biopsy. In the My dad took me to the airport, and I went on with my meetings, actually with Philadelphia. Then I get a call when I was in somewhere else, and I said, I got called back to that community hospital a few weeks later. And I flew into Boston, and we drove over to the Community Hospital. This time, there's seven doctors waiting for me. And they told me I had an appointment that afternoon at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in downtown Boston. And I was just caught off guard. But it hadn't hit me yet. I ended up going with my parents to Boston, be pulled into the parking lot at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, one of the most preeminent World Cancer Research Centers in the world. And people greeted us nicely. And I looked at the waiting room, and I'm 23 years old, and a bunch of old people. So I walked down the hall, because they had the Jimmy fund which treats adolescent kids. And I sat there because it was young kids playing. And I didn't know where I fit. So they called my name and they did lots of tests. And then I got called to meet this doctor, George Canalis, who invented chemotherapy for lymphoma. I didn't know that at the time, and I met a young doctor named Eric Rubin and I met a nurse named Kathy Lynch. Little did I know that that was going to become part of my world, immediately walked into Dr. Kanellis office. My parents are sitting to my left. I'm in an Armani suit. Dr. Reuben is standing up to the right side. And Dr. Canalis looks at me and says young man, you have very aggressive stage four T cell non Hodgkins lymphoma, blood of your entire lymphatic system, which helps your body fight off. Cancer.

Howard Brown: 00:07:50

I didn't really hear much else. I was a deer in the headlights. I looked back. My mom was in tears. My dad was a statue. I look up at Eric Grogan. I said What is he saying? And then he went into Doctor talk. And I think they took some more information and told me to come back for more tests. And then in two days, we were going to start chemotherapy. Wow. We drove back home to Framingham, but a 35 minute drive into the suburbs. Call my sister had her come over for dinner. And quite frankly, we really were still processing what was going on. My dad went out to the library to get a book on cancer. This is 1989 You know, cell phones. There was no internet. computer use was just starting. And we had to learn and learn quickly about lymphoma about blood cancers in general. And with a lot of waiting time in the waiting room at Dana Farber, you speak to other patients and why they're there and what they're going through. Now, I show up for my first day of chemotherapy. I do tests. Dr. Ruden comes out and says you are not doing chemotherapy today. And I was like up all night. I was nervous. Actually freaked out a little bit. He said your liver function test is too high. Well, what are we going to do? You told me that you know things look bleak, says well, you're gonna go on a field trip, you're gonna go to the cryopreservation center. I said cryo what? Go leave a sperm sample. I said, Well, you told me I don't my chances aren't good to make it. Go do it. What else you're going to do today? So I did I went I left a sperm sample and I kind of forgot about except paying the bills. came back the next day, and I started chemotherapy and things were bad. I was failing the chemo cocktails they were presenting to me. I was sick with side effects. Nausea, migraine headaches, diarrhea show OLS wasn't great. I lost my hair right away, which wasn't really a big deal because I could wear a pap. And I went to my fifth year high school reunion in November around Thanksgiving time. And I heard the whispers guys are brutal, Dead Man Walking for baster. It's not going to make it. But I didn't listen, how to just be diligent to my therapy.

Howard Brown: 00:10:30

But I was losing weight, not feeling well. And I started needing blood and platelet transfusions. So he's spending more and more time in the hospital, my immune system was compromised. Think of COVID. But worse, no immune system. Any type of virus fungus bacteria I had to watch out for. So we were masking up and counting up. And I had overnight stays at the hospital. Got a piece of good news. My twin sister, yes, CJ Brown, generous five minutes older. She was an exact match. That's good news. It needed to get me into some type of remission, and blasted me with chemotherapy. And then may 24. And the week before they blasted me with radiation full body twice a day to eliminate my immune system. That was the protocol. Back in 1990. I was put inside an isolation room. Yes, a jail cell but a hospital bed, I couldn't come. People coming in, had to sterilize and come in, because I had no immune system. And then my sister on May 24, at six in the morning had bone marrow extracted from her hip bones, they cleansed it, they brought it into me five at night, this little purple bag of life. Well, they told me that bag of life could have killed me immediately or over time. But it could also work and hurt those cells could become my immune system and defeat the cancer and the malignancies. And that's what happened. Miracle number one. I did a clinical trial to strengthen my natural killer cells on my immune system. And six months later, I walked out at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and enter into surveillance mode. In survivorship, no one told me what to do. So I went to Florida to get some warm weather I was 135 pounds involved. play golf. Stay with my friend Dave Herman and two of my high school buddies came to kind of babysit me wanting to be in warm weather. Instead of the Boston, New England cold winter. I started to rebuild and repair emotionally, physically and build my confidence back up. I got to go to a trip to Hawaii. A sales trip that I had missed the year before that went to Mexico. And then I had to make a decision of going back to work again. I had a choice to move to Atlanta or LA. I chose la was network products. I thought it was the future. I got out of banking. And I moved to Marina del Rey, California in May of 1991. And good things started to happen.

Howard Brown: 00:13:25

I was building my confidence back up I was hitting the basketball court my happy place, right feel no stress. And I was starting to get involved in the community and the Jewish community. I beat the love of my life Lisa there. Just imagine, after all the hell I've been through. Good things are happening. Now got married in 94. At shutters on the beach, beautiful sunset wedding. Things are going good. Things are going great. And Lisa recommends that I look into volunteering and becoming a big brother, a Jewish Big Brother. So I applied to the program. They do the background checks and all the interviews. And I get matched with a young man named Ian Ellis. 10 year old little boy, I take him to play chess at the beach. He beats me roll the clock forward. In is now a dad and married. We've been matched for 31 years. Mentorship is leadership. People like oh my god, you're such a great person you mentored in but just imagine of all the things I got back to do. I took him to his first concert we talk sports we talk life. That's that's giving back. It's one of the proudest things I've ever done is be a mentor to you and Alice and he is now true family. Because my daughter, little newsbreak we had a daughter falsely amonkar again. And as to his son noble. moving things forward, we moved to Silicon Valley. Things are great. I've left the big company. I'm working at a startup, working and falling back into the trap of being a workaholic. Yes. Bad habits are hard to break, working gazillion hours traveling, trying to build companies. It takes a lot out of you. It's really easy to fall out of balance. We love Silicon Valley. We love San Francisco Bay Area. We love wine country and Monterey. And Lisa sits me down and said, How many times have you been home for dinner this month? And I said, I don't know. She said only about eight. If we want to have a family, and we're talking about having a family need to be home for dinner. Well, that sperm sample that was sitting there 11 years ago, was ready to be called for. And we went through in vitro fertilization, which is costly. And tough, tough on my wife, Lisa. But a miracle happens our miracle girl, Emily, our frozen kids was born in August of 2001. And we become parents, a healthy baby girl miracle number two, in credible. If I don't say at once, I'll say it again. Blessed, grateful and lucky. A bone marrow transplant from my twin sister saves my life. Frozen sperm after 11 years becomes a healthy baby girl. Now that baby girl, graduated high school, graduated college as a reporter for a TV station. Blessed, grateful lucky. Well, the Silicon Valley years are great. We're volunteering in the Jewish community. I'm speaking to folks at the lymphoma and leukemia society. And I'm still a big brother. And I'm playing tons of basketball when I can. I get a call from my twin sister who saved my life and said I'm moving to Michigan. With her kids are between four and six years old, and she has twins girl boy twin and an older girl. And Lisa is from Michigan. And she has a sister that has two boys that are between four and six years old. I was like let's get the band back together. We moved to the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan in 2005 and raised our family there. My two startups in the face space were going well. One is a nonprofit. The other is a for profit business. One in calendaring and connection, the other one in private online communities. Think Facebook for religion was much more privacy a little ahead of my time. But life is good. Life is great.

Howard Brown: 00:17:59

At age 50 I go in and have my colonoscopy like you should. Now the age is 45 Unless you have family history or symptoms, expecting everything to be fine. I woke up and I said doc, is everything okay? I feel great. said no, I found something. And when I find something, it's bad news. And with Lisa and I holding my hand lightning struck again. Stage three colorectal cancer. Within 10 days they removed 13 and a half inches of my colon. Then a chemo port was installed. And then I started chemotherapy. I was back in the cancer battle. And that can chemotherapy was rough. I think my hair thinned out. But the side effects were brutal. The chemo was toxic and that's all trying to help me but I failed that chemotherapy. cancer spread out of my colon and another me collected near colon resection of 10.5 inches and margins and lymph node and then I started a clinical trial. And then in July of 2017 at the US 16 Soccer national championships, which we want. My daughter is a goalie that was the good thing about it. I was told that the cancer had spread to my liver, my stomach lining and my bowel. metastatic stage four colon cancer. You can Dr google it but it's 4% chance of living. Six months 10 months, whatever it is. It's not enough time. Things got dark. Well, I just start chemotherapy again. more side effects lost my hair. Living in the bathroom. Starting on steroids, not able to sleep, sleeping as healing. I ended up getting a piece of good news. This chemotherapy showed regression, whereas George Costanza would sound Seinfeld, a little shrinkage. And that's good. So before that you get more chemotherapy. And then I found help online.

Howard Brown: 00:20:26

Now remember, this is the digital age. We've got cell phones, and we've got Facebook, and we've got the ability to reach out and find help. And I found that in a group called coal in town.org. And I met people that were going through the same battle of colorectal cancer. Some were surviving and in treatment, others had long term survival, and many died. In this stage for cancer world we live with death, daily, weekly, hourly. They succumb to the disease. It's not that they didn't want to live. It's just that the disease burden data. My wife joins for a caregiver support. She's got to take over running the show. I closed down my two businesses. I have to focus on getting through this and living. I wanted to see my freshman in high school graduate. Would I even make it a couple years? Well, moving it forward, I had this massive surgeries cytoreduction hyper intrapreneurial chemotherapy. What is that? Imagine that they cut you open from your chest to your pelvic bone. And basically like a Bronzino fish, they cut away all the dead and live cancer cells, shave the liver removed, the gallbladder, removed the stomach lining, parts of the bowel and margins 13 and a half hours, and I wake up in the ICU. Yes, I'm alive, but barely, I'm a ghost. And I have to heal from that. And boy, that was a rough recovery. And I took baby steps and backwards steps and side steps. But I needed to get back on the basketball court. I needed to see Emily graduate high school. And that's where the survivorship plan kicks into gear because I was a cancer veteran. I was a Marine on a mission. I knew how to build my mental toughness. I knew how to build back my physical fitness. Now financially, we got torn apart. In some relationships failed. Gotta weed out that negativity. I got assistance with gummies asleep and sleeping is healing. Everyone has their own path to get back up again. And that's what I do. I get back up again. And I try to motivate, educate and inspire others to do the same because it can be done. But sometimes you need help. And I learned a whole bunch of lessons is that a really important one is to be able to accept help, in my time of need. And I did. People started to go fund me. People brought by meals, people brought back milkshakes. I got sent books, I got sent memes. People were praying and cheering for me all over the world and every faith and denomination you can think of and that helps. Just get out of that each day.

Howard Brown: 00:23:44

Now, I am very fortunate to be no evidence of disease at this time. I'm under surveillance. It was quarterly and moving now to semi annually. Those are good steps. Now, as much as I tried to put cancer in the rearview mirror again, I am now a national advocate for awareness and screening. If you do anything for listening to this podcast, go make a call to your doctor. Go get your mammogram, go get your prostate checked, go get your colonoscopy at home or in the hospital or surgery center. Go get your cardio checked, do a stress test EKG. If you don't have your health, you cannot lift yourself up. So take stock of where you're at. Emotionally, physically, financially, in relationships in business, make that list where you're at. If you don't like where you're at, get help. Because once you lift yourself up, get to your happy place and get to some type of balance. You can then lift up others and lifting up others who need help is why we are here on this planet. In it, we are there to share our generosity or kindness and help them grow, heal. And together, we become a force multiplier for good and positive change. And that's how we shine brightly. So I went from cancer to COVID. And this friend of mine, David Crump, from French publishing and read the spirit magazine, online zine, asked me to write a legacy book, he thought I was gonna die. I said, No way. It's daunting to me. I'm not a writer. But I called him back and said, If I can record most influential and important people in my life, I will read a book with you. He said, I'll call you back. We've never done that. And I did, I interviewed 158 people, family, friends, camp counselors, doctors. And those transcripts became drafts, the drafts became chapters. It took three years. But I have a published memoir, called shining brightly hard copy, paperback Kindle ebook. And it launched September 27 2022, for me to tell my story. Now, this isn't a cancer book, there's a cancer chapters in there, and they're tough. This book is a life guide to living a resilient life with hope. And that's important because sharing hope gets you out of that darkness. And darkness breeds anything from depression, malaise. You need to step and use someone else's light or your own light to keep stepping forward. And so there's lessons in the book, it's gonna make you think it's gonna give you homework. There's chapters on family and contacting family you haven't spoken to in a while and think about those silly arguments you had that separated you and can now bring you back together or the amazing traditions that you want to relive. Take out a picture from years ago, and what does it make you feel? There's a chapter on mentorship. This chapter on love is a chapter on interfaith relations, to know the other and learn about the cultures, the food, and make yourself a well rounded person and share your culture, your foods and your experience with others. Or not meant to live alone. My chapter on basketball is about finding my happy place of stress free. But that's the physical part of getting me back together and surviving. But I play with multicultural people of all religions and types. And we don't shoot each other. We shoot baskets. So great lessons in shining brightly. I hope you enjoy it. And that led to this podcast.

Howard Brown: 00:28:11

And this podcast is about sharing that inspiration of how we get back up and how we move forward. How be it's so small, you are climbing a mountain and running a triathlon. We're going to share these amazing stories with you. And people will interact and will help others and it is true. shining brightly a little bit each day does make the world a better place for ourselves and for others. For our communities, our neighborhoods and this world. Come join me Come join me and join the shining brightly movement. I invite you come join me come interact with me at WWE dot shining brightly.com Give me podcast ideas, guests. Let's interact and further. I agree. Thank you.