Cancer, donating sperm, and creative writing

In this episode, Freddie reflects on his journey towards self-healing despite the number of illnesses and challenges that he’s been through. Freddie recalls memorable stories from his life and shares his long time passion project. 

This episode is an intimate view of Freddie’s life and how he sees positivity and passion to overcome hurdles and obstacles that life gives.

Episode Highlights

00:58 Freddie reflects on life and how he’s grateful for the various things in life that he has encountered

03:12 Freddie talks about his long term passion project

04:19 Freddie reads out a chapter from his book and shares an intimate yet introspective experience with cancer

16:02 Freddie thanks his listeners and talks about how grateful he is to be where he is right now

UPGRADE YOUR WELLNESS

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CONNECT WITH FREDDIE

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ABOUT FREDDIE

I’m Freddie Kimmel, a Functional Health Coach, Reiki Healer, Certified Personal Trainer, Gut Health Specialist, and a proud cancer survivor. I help men and women eliminate brain fog, bloat and belly fat through gut health.

I’ve been featured in The Wall Street Journal, the Full Plate Podcast, An Excellent Example of Being Human, State of the Arts on LA talk radio and Dance Magazine. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from SUNY Brockport, attended SUNY Fredonia, and graduated from the Institute of Functional Health Coaching.

I can be found in NYC living each day to its fullest and focused on creating more value than what I capture. Please stand back from the awesomeness that’s about to unfold.

CONNECT WITH FREDDIE

Work with Me: https://www.beautifullybroken.world/biological-blueprint

Website and Store: (http://www.beautifullybroken.world) 

Instagram: (https://www.instagram.com/freddie.kimmel

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beautifullybrokenworld 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel (00:03.244)
Welcome to the Beautifully Broken Podcast. I'm your host, Freddie Kimmel, and on this show we explore the survivor's journey, practitioners making a difference, and the therapeutic treatments and transformational technology that allow the body to heal itself. Witness the inspiration we gain by navigating the human experience with grace, humility, and a healthy dose of mistakes. Because part of being human is being beautifully broken.

Freddie Kimmel (00:37.262)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beautifully broken podcast. I am sitting in a stunning home.

Freddie Kimmel (00:50.294)
are all gone from the trees and the sun is just breaking through every branch. It seems too beautiful to be real. I often have that thought, you know, sometimes life is so beautiful. You want to stop and shed a few tears. And I'm having one of those mornings of complete and utter gratitude. A couple things. So there's no guests today. So you can split now if you want, or make the choice to spend some time with me because

If you're listening to this podcast, this one's for you. I, I feel really good. And I've been saying that for a while. I've been announcing it on my phone calls. When I talk to people that it's been a little bit of time between our connection and I've said it on social media and I do, I feel really good. Good. One thing that I've struggled with long-term is chronic joint pain. You know, when I talk about this on the podcast a lot.

Whether it was Lyme disease or mold or the trauma of 9-11 or it was all these treatments that I went through for cancer, who knows? But it's always been there on the undercurrent to a level that I'm just not comfortable sitting. And I've really done a good job. taken it from like a 10 to a three or a four, but it's still there. And I would say the last six weeks, I've had this great drop in pain and it's stuck around. I would always get like a week here or a week there, but

systemically everywhere, still working on the hands a little bit, little finger joints, but that's okay. And I'm just, man, you got to celebrate the wins because life is short. If there's one thing we've learned from 2020 life is short. In 2020 talking about what it means for me is we have to pause and we're looking around and I'm watching time, you know, slow down and speed up. And I'm aware of how quickly life goes by.

And we have all these dreams. have the things we talk about doing, you know, I want to go here and I want to build a tiny home. And then I want to go over to this coast and I want to start a business. And also I have this level of awareness. I'm like halfway done with life. If I'm lucky, depending on maybe we're to make some genetic advancement to live to 500 or a thousand, which I did hear someone say yesterday, I was skeptical, but who knows anything's possible. So as this life unfolds, one thing I'm aware of is.

Freddie Kimmel (03:11.811)
I've been working on a book for almost 10 years. That sounds silly to say out loud, but I have, I've been writing down all these miraculous medical things that I've been through and navigated on my own accord and been really sick at some times and been really healthy at others and done some incredible things in my life. Incredible, incredible things. So there's a collection of stories that I'm working on and I've threatened on one of my Facebook lives.

If we're not Facebook friends, follow me on Facebook. I do the Facebook lives there. I am on Instagram as freddycetgo, but I threatened on one of these live videos to read a chapter of my book. And these chapters are short, you know, it's 1500 words, 2000 words. Some of them are longer, but there are these collection of stories and it's been incredibly cathartic to work on this project. I have so many of my friends in my life that I've shared these with and they said, Freddy, you got to do this. You got to finish it. So my goal for this year.

is to put in time every week and finish this book. And with that, with that, I'm going to read you a chapter. Lord, I got to work on these chapter names called Masturbating in a Cup with My Dad. So here we go. My dad drove me to my first day of chemotherapy. I was terrified. How would my body respond? For two weeks, I had allowed my computer to flood with images.

depicting the body's slow degrade into disease. The pale shell of a powdered white human, muscle wasting, and hairlessness captured in so many photographs and personal accounts sat in my brain. Today's itinerary consisted of five to six hours of hydration IVs and an initial infusion of two chemotherapy agents.

As we parked in the parking garage at Strong Memorial Hospital, my dad's phone rang with an urgent message from my medical team. It seems that in the midst of removing one testicle, treatment plans, blood tests, and CT scans, we had failed to address my personal need to plan for the future. As they so eloquently phrased it. Change of plans, buddy. Doctor wants us to swing by the sperm bank to make a deposit.

Freddie Kimmel (05:38.339)
They forgot to mention with this amount of chemotherapy, you probably won't be able to have kids, says my dad. Happy Monday. How the hell was this an afterthought? I don't even know if I want kids. In fact, it took my doctors mentioning losing my future offspring to then ignite the sadness and infinite implications walking out of the parking garage.

and towards chemo at 26 years of age. Dead man walking and entirely too much to process. I stare at the concrete and I nod in agreement. I just simply focus on one foot in front of the other and avoid making contact with anyone. It did seem like the smart play. After all, this team of specialists did this for a living. But the timing though.

Could I have planned this special experience around less dramatic circumstances? The weekend? Any day besides 20 minutes before chemo? As me and dad moved towards the clinic, the reality of the situation soon began to materialize. With every step, I grew closer to the sperm bank. With every turn through the hospital corridors, we are getting closer to the sperm bank. And where will my dad be when I'm in this process?

Unpacking this, the walls of the hospital are incredibly thin. They're paper thin. As the son of a mechanical engineer and someone who worked on the architectural drawings on this exact hospital, I know their soundproofing limitations. A single concrete structural wall is often filled in and completed with aluminum panels, which allow for redesigns and repurposing of space as the needs of the medical community change.

My hand drags along the corridor to gauge the thickness of the wall and what sound protection it may provide. It's then, my mind begins to flood with questions. Where would my dad be when I was inside the room? Would he be waiting on the other side of the wall? Would he go get a coffee or just stand there in anticipation and judgment of my time touching myself? this is terrible. The moment overtakes the diagnosis of cancer.

Freddie Kimmel (08:05.357)
and I see three to four years in my young childhood flash before my eyes. From 1993 to 1996, I'd waited and dread for my father to walk into my bedroom substituting a kiss goodnight with a book explaining sex and the dangers that follow. Maybe it would come in the form of a fold-out infographic depicting a man and a woman attempting intercourse or a pamphlet emphasizing the importance of condoms.

I had heard tales of level 10 awkwardness from my best friend Jake Guth as his dad sat him down and explained the mechanical-like process of the penis inserting into the vagina in repetitious fashion. With increased force and speed that resulted in early childhood pregnancy and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, Sherry McNamara's mom hired a professional sexual counselor.

As she arrived home from eighth grade, she found them waiting in the kitchen with cookies and milk, waiting to talk to her through the process with plastic dolls and flashcards, painting the terrible outcomes of premarital sex. She remained a virgin till she was 36. However, my talk with my dad never came. There was never a look or a nudge or a suggestion about safety or condoms or beware of STDs or look out for AIDS, but I was always waiting for it.

And the longer it didn't happen, the fear grew that I would be forced into the same uncomfortable situation my friends were. Until today, we had never brushed the topic of sex or even worse, masturbation. And today on the other side of the thin hospital wall, I knew he was waiting and he knew exactly what I would be doing. Touching my penis. My eyes were stuck to my sneakers as I received my instructions from the nurse. I was escorted into a tiny room with a couch.

in a bright orange plastic chair. In the corner sat an ancient 1980s television set with a dial to change the channels and a VCR. The nurse directed me to a stack of pornographic magazines and informed me of the different selections of videotapes available for my use under the TV cart. Nurse Donna. All right, Mr. Kimmel, we're going to give you about 15 minutes. Here's a collection cup.

Freddie Kimmel (10:22.935)
Try to get as much as you can inside. When you're finished, seal the lid, walk through this door, and hand your sample to Cheryl behind the desk. There are tissues on the counter. Just remember to clean up afterwards. Yes. Yes. Lucky for Donna, I've masturbated a few times in the last 26 years. But tell me, Donna, do you get a lot of people blowing a donation of sperm here into this collection dish and failing to clean up? Do people leave semen on the walls on the couch? Where do people sit? Because I don't want to sit there.

Odds are I'd only need a blacklight in this room to discover this thing resembled a Jason Pollock painting and nowhere is safe. But I digress. It's time to get down to business. I figure the easiest method of attack is a quick glance at the magazines and get it done. The room's cold. The smell of hand sanitizer and sterility fill the air. I couldn't shake that dead man walking feeling all morning as I moved from location to location.

signing waivers and preparing for the absolute worst. In the back of my head, I'm storing this incredible amount of reserve courage for what the powerful chemotherapy agents were going to do to my body. shit. Cancer is a jolting reality to shift your reality. Focus, Freddy. I reach for the first magazine on the pile. Think 1980s playboy, big hair, heavy makeup, pubic hair.

to compliment the times. Nope. The second was a copy of Hustler. my God, hardcore. Strong Memorial Bravo. Yep. As I try to open the special page, the second page, I discover this thing had been glued together. I'll let your imagination run wild to what scenario allowed this to happen. The video it was. Pressing play. A large oiled man in a Fred Flintstone costume pins a female Barney rubble down in a circle of rocks and mud.

Sweat and dirt stream down their toned bodies, and grunts and shouts from the pleasure pain spectrum explode from their mouths. Yes, this really happened. Deep breath. If this was going to work, it was going to be of my own design. My stomach is sore from the surgeries. As I unbutton my pants, my altered scrotum and single testicle stare back at me, kind of like a Picasso. A three inch horizontal scar has begun to heal from my

Freddie Kimmel (12:50.701)
left abdomen where the orchiectomy took place. A unique and different body. And still me. I mentally retreat to my special place and manage to deliver the goods. I rise to the occasion. Everything comes to fruition. Is that too much? Thanks to Donna's sage-like advice, I managed to clean up with efficiency and proceed to the desk. As I left the room towards the reception desk,

My gaze is low and the diagonal patterns of the hospital carpet greet my shame. I see the receptionist between me and the desk is my dad. Awkwardly delivering a half smile, Nurse Cheryl. How'd it go? Me, wonderful. I hand my jar of fresh semen directly past my dad's gaze. Time's slow down.

to a Hollywood film magic fashion as I pass the plastic cup into Cheryl's warm little fingers. Before I can run away from this mini nightmare leading up to chemo, Cheryl pulls out a form for signature. Great, just sign here. We'll send you a bill for the yearly cryo storage of the sperm. And just so you know, we are gonna test this same sexually transmitted disease sample, including a screen for HIV and AIDS.

Don't worry. We'll call if there's a problem. Scene. The thing is, I often replay this story in my head. think about my resiliency. I think about the heaviness of the day. I think about my dad and our sex talk that never happened. I think about how terrified I was as a child of the eighties, that sex was dirty and how the scare the shit out of you government campaigns blasted through media channels had me certain I had STD.

or AIDS before I ever lost my virginity. I think about how each household is so very different in the direct impact that has on our sexual development. Sex was always framed as dangerous and it was something I did not want to talk about, especially with my parents. Even reading this story, I feel silly that I self-imposed the experience of donating sperm before chemo with such shame. Every year in the spring, I get a yearly bill for $233.25 for the storage of my sperm.

Freddie Kimmel (15:16.939)
and every year like clockwork, I consider calling them and pulling the plug. Is it really worth it? Maybe I can have kids on my own. Do I want kids? It sure does seem like the learning, the evolution, the biohacking, the self-development to better understand the human experience could be gifted to a beautiful child who would turn the world into a better place with better opportunities. I'm open. I keep paying the bill. Cancer and its treatments.

and the complications take a lot of space and energy. And I found sometimes growth is accelerated and other aspects of life seem to be on pause. My friends, thank you for listening. That was a chapter. Maybe we'll rename it, but this is a little part of the narrative that I'm passionate about recording and working through for myself. Rereading these chapters will often put me

right back in that room with my dad or 45 minutes before I'm about to start chemo, not knowing what to expect. I am so grateful to be on the other side. And it's 2020. That was 2006 and 2007. I've been gifted a lot of life, a lot of extra things to do, and it's all been magical. And I can't wait for today and tomorrow.

This is me signing off, namaste.

you

Freddie Kimmel (16:55.735)
Ladies and gentlemen, you made it to the end of the podcast and here we are at season two. I think this is the beginning of something really beautiful. So one way to support the podcast is to head over to freddycedco.com and check out Freddy's Faves, where I've linked every five star product and healing modality you hear about on the show. Most offer significant discounts by clicking the link or using the discount code. Please know they don't cost you anything extra and at the same time,

They support the podcast through affiliations. check out Freddie's faves on freddysetgo.com. My heart honestly thanks you for tuning in. And if you've enjoyed today's show, head over to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review. It gives us the virtual thumbs up that we're doing things right. If you want to connect with me directly, I'm on Instagram at freddysetgo or freddysetgo.com through email.

Now, this is a message from my vast legal team of internet lawyers. The information on this podcast is for educational purposes only. By listening, you agree not to use the information found here as medical advice to treat any medical condition in yourself or others. Always consult your physician for any medical issues that you might be having. That's it for today. Our closing, the world is hurting. We need you at your very best. So take the steps today to always be upgrading. Remember, while life is pain, putting the fractured pieces back together is a beautiful process. I love you.