Episode 28-
Mike Milligan
Oral Cancer Awareness Month: Dr. Mike Milligan
Close to 54,000 Americans will hear the words “You have oral or throat cancer” in 2024. Shockingly, only about half of them will survive beyond 5 years. April is Oral Cancer Awareness Month, and we want to take some time to spotlight the extraordinary dentists and practitioners who have taken on this little-understood cancer and survived.
Today's guest is Dr. Mike Milligan, a dentist who has served the community of Bloomington Illinois for over 45 years. He's also the Founder and President of www.OralSystemicLink.net, an online resource that helps patients and dentists understand how oral health fits into their overall well-being.
"Help people live better" is Mike's life mission. In this conversation, you're going to hear how, after he was diagnosed with stage 4 head and neck cancer in 2020, Mike made sure to document the entire experience, knowing that his efforts would benefit other survivors.
Resources
Follow your curiosity, connect, and join our ever-growing community of extraordinary minds.
Dr. Kim Kutsch on LinkedIn
Eastland Dental Center Website
Oral Cancer Resources
Head & Neck Cancer - Insights from Dr. Mike Milligan
The Oral Cancer Foundation Website
Head and Neck Cancer Alliance Website
The American Cancer Society - Seeking a Second Opinion
CariFree Anti-Cavity Fluoride Tooth Gel
What's In This Episode
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How Mike was first diagnosed.
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Why it's important to be your own health advocate.
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How faith helped Mike through his cancer.
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Why Mike decided to create a resource document for other survivors.
Transcript
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Be your own health advocate 'cause it's so important not only as you're going through it, but preventatively, the better health you are in prior to a catastrophic health event, the better you're going to be able to deal with that. And I knew that all along. Be as healthy as you can be, and then as you go through any problem, learn as much as you can about that and make the best decisions you can through your treatment.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
On Contrary to Ordinary, we explore the motivations lives and characters of the innovators who see limitless potential around them, the people behind some of the largest paradigm shifts in the practice of dentistry and beyond. My name is Dr. Kim Kutsch and I spent over 25 years in dentistry before founding CariFree over 20 years ago. We offer a range of dental products to industry and the public that promote the health and wellness of people suffering from the disease of dental caries or known as tooth decay.
Close to 54,000 Americans will hear the words "you have oral or throat cancer" this year. And shockingly, only about half will survive beyond five years. During Oral Cancer Awareness Month. We want to take some time to spotlight the extraordinary dentist and practitioners who have taken on this little understood cancer and survived. Today's guest is Dr. Mike Milligan, a dentist who has served the community of Bloomington, Illinois for over 45 years. He's also the founder and president of a website, oralsystemiclink.net. That's oralsystemiclink.net, an online resource that helps patients and dentists understand how oral health fits into their overall wellbeing.
Help people live better is Mike's life mission. In this conversation, you're going to hear how after he was diagnosed with stage four head and neck cancer in 2020, Mike made sure to document the entire experience knowing that his efforts would benefit other survivors. I want to start our conversation by talking a little bit about this passion Mike has for helping others.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
I stated that about 40 years ago, and I think that's a great mission. I do think that's why we're here is to help others. I had a lot of students come into my office. Illinois State University is right here in my hometown who are in the pre-med or pre-dental program. And I say, "You can get into school, and you can become a dentist or a physician or a healthcare provider, and you have the opportunity to help so many people in such a wonderful way, or you have the opportunity to not be very good at what you do and really hurt them."
And I said, "It's up to you, but I highly suggest that you will be able to sleep much better and at the end of your career, you're going to feel a whole lot better about it if you work very hard and become very good at what you do." And hopefully, I've helped a lot of kids get on the right track with that because it is so important to be good at what you do. You have the opportunity in whatever business you're in or profession you're in to really make a difference in people's lives and help them. But it's up to you. If you're not very good at what you do, you'll hurt them.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Right. Yeah. I don't know anybody that sets their goals to be mediocre.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
There are a lot of people who set their goals to be mediocre.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah. Or happy with settling for being average.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Yeah.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
So, tell me about your cancer diagnosis. When did you first find out about your cancer?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Let's see. It was the summer before COVID, so that was, 2019, July 2019. I had a really bad nosebleed, my first one ever. And I had to go to the hospital. It took him about an hour and a half to get that under control. And they said, "Go see your ENT for a follow-up." And I did. And he said, "Well, yeah, okay, if it happens again, come back and see me." And so, a year later, we had to close our dental office 2020 for COVID. Well, that's a highly stressful situation, having to close my dental office, let my employees go for two months and start it up again. In mid-May, and then I had a couple nosebleeds, and then I went upstairs in my dental offices' right above that is in the second floor of the building is an ENT. So, they cauterized it. And then the third time it happened, he said, "We better do a biopsy."
And so, I did that. And then on a Sunday afternoon, he called me, and I looked at my phone. I was here at my computer, I looked at my phone, I said, "Oh, this can't be good on Sunday afternoon for this ENT to be calling me." And he said, "You've got squamous cell carcinoma behind your nose, nasal pharyngeal, squamous cell carcinoma." So, then I started in with all of the PET scans and the diagnostics and found out that I had metastatic nasal pharyngeal cancer, stage four. Ended up, they gave me a 50/50 chance of living, which we're all fragile and we're all going to pass away. But I've always been a positive individual. You can't be a good golfer and win a lot of tournaments if you're not, right? Or be a good dad. Whatever you do. You have to be positive and just say, "Okay. Let's go." And so, I did. But anyway, so that's how I came to be diagnosed with cancer.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Mike thinks that attitude is everything. The positive way he approached his diagnosis gave his family a lot of comfort during a difficult time. In his 2014 book, The MindBody Code, clinical neuropsychologist, Mario Martinez, discusses how our personal and wider societal beliefs have an impact on health outcomes. One of the core concepts of the book is the idea of psychological immunity, which suggests that people who have cultivated a positive mental attitude can influence their body's immune system. It's mind over matter kind of stuff. Not everyone can view their cancer journey positively, and that's natural. It's a huge life event that can be life changing. It's also difficult to stay positive when you're in pain or suffering. One of the frustrating things about head and neck cancer is that it's sometimes incredibly difficult to detect in its early stages.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Well, I do think that you don't really see early signs and symptoms a lot of time. So, I think a professional evaluation is very important, and we have tools that are helpful. Nothing's a 100%, hopefully salivary diagnostics and some of the things that they're in the research will be helpful. But for now, things like a veil scope or similar instrument, the oral cancer exams, and I want the dentist and the dental hygienist to be doing those. And so, many people are aware of it, but don't necessarily do it. But there are ways Joanne Jones and others will teach you how to do a very good oral cancer exam.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
And I'm reading statistics on head and neck cancer and 73% of the time, the first symptom is small lymph nodes in the neck. So, we should obviously be doing head and neck exams as dental professionals looking for that. It's the number one symptom. So, it's like we at least need to screen that, right?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
We do. And a lot of times you will catch it. Now in my case, but if you don't, don't beat yourself up the professional. Because for instance, in my case, I had a golf pulse size and marble sized lymph node enlargement in my neck from the PET scan, but five doctors, physicians, and dentists felt my neck and not one of them, even though they knew it was there, could feel it. So, you can't always feel it, but sometimes you can. And in the oral cancer under the tongue and on the sides of the tongue, sometimes you're going to see it. If you don't and the person is later diagnosed with oral cancer, the professional shouldn't beat themselves up because maybe they couldn't have seen it. But everyone that you can and can catch that early, oh man, you have really done that patient a favor.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah. The five-year survival rate on oral cancer is not great, and it hasn't changed in 50 years. So early diagnosis is really the key to improving our statistics on oral cancer. There's a lot of research being done on cancer, specifically. You talked about the immunotherapy. I think we're going to find ways to treat all cancers with immunotype therapy. So, let's talk just a little bit about your journey through the cancer and coming out on the other side. What things surprised you about the experience?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Oh, my. It's not fun. I joke now and I say, "It's not the best vacation I ever had." But that really doesn't give it justice. The immunotherapy combination immuno and chemotherapy that I had for nine and a half weeks wasn't that bad. I didn't like getting all those infusions and tests and those hour and 40 minute MRIs that I had under that tube that you can't move for an hour and 40 minutes and all that stuff. And oh my gosh, the constipation and the sores and everything. But that immunotherapy and chemo combination reduced my cancer 80%. And then I went into the bad chemotherapy, the rough chemotherapy, 33 radiation treatments, and that was pretty rough. We had to move up to near the University of Chicago there. And 'cause it was daily through the week, five days a week radiation, it can be rough. Many nights after that chemo, I would lay in bed, I'd get maybe an hour of sleep and I'd just be curled up, hurting.
And I got this little thing that I would say, "Jesus help me." And Patrick McCune taught me breathing, okay, there's a lot to breathing and focus on the breath. And so, I'd breathe in, Jesus, help me. Jesus, be with me. Give me peace oh, Lord. And it was breath after breath after breath, minute after minute, hour after hour, all night long. And then you'd be off on the weekends from the chemo and radiation. Sometimes you couldn't even walk right. And so, you kind of had to learn how to walk again, and I'd take these big, huge steps and try to figure out how to walk again and you will quickly forget how to swallow. And it's very hard to learn how to swallow again.
I had my lifelong best friend had that happen to him, and he never did before he passed, learn how to swallow again, that's why your product, your CariFree gel or Gennady Sirota's StellaLife product is, oh my gosh, it's a lifesaver because then you can actually continue... Let me eat, have to cut that food up real small and nothing granular 'cause it's just too painful. But you could slide down some spinach with olive oil or something. And then eventually I got to where I couldn't swallow anything but liquids, but I was always able to swallow liquids with those products.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
What would you want other patients that have head and neck cancer and oral cancer? What would you want them to know?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Get the support of your friends and family. I think that's extremely important as you go through this. I think get to a good facility that does a lot of it. Maybe your local facility that doesn't see a lot of this is not the best place to be. Maybe they can facilitate your treatment. And then I think another thing would be that if you're a person of faith, my son and my cancer helped us so much with our faith. It was actually a blessing in disguise. That's crazy to say. It's so tough. It's brutal time and it's totally changed my life forever. But it was a blessing because we grew so much stronger in our faith, and really that's all that's important in this life.
My son passed at 42 from kidney cancer right after his was diagnosed. Nine days after I finished my treatment. I'm still getting worse from the toxicities of my therapies. And he gets diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer. His was a broken arm, so that had metastasized all over his body and he didn't know it. He was healthy, right? Until then. And so, he was with us for 20 months. He lived with Karen and me for 20 months after his diagnosis. And I got to see him pass and go to Jesus. And if you have that and you realize, look the good Lord, he's given us 1,010 a million blessings. I've got my three daughters. I've got nine grandkids. I've got my wife, my patients, and my staff, and if you just... But what we tend to do is focus on one bad thing and get on the good side of Jesus in his life, whether you live for 40 years or 100 years, what is the difference? Or one year, what's the difference for all eternity if you're with Jesus?
So, I guess I would give them that. I go to church every day now, mass and holy communion, and I read the Bible. It is the most important part of my world. Now, grandkids come in a close second. Not really, but they're fabulous too. So, I think those would be the things that I would want these people to know and realizing that, look, you give it your best effort and you go through it and you don't get so down mentally that if you're miserable mentally in this life going through it, well, you just missed out on some time that you could have been happy, right?
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Hey, contrary to ordinary listeners, did you know that head and neck cancer is the seventh most common cancer globally? If you or someone has been affected by any of the issues raised in this podcast, then head over to the Oral Cancer Foundation's website for health and support. You can find a link to that in this episode's, show notes. Mike also mentioned a few of our CariFree products that he recommends. If you're struggling with oral head or neck cancer, you'll also find links to those in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. And now let's get back to our conversation.
One of the things you mentioned earlier, I want to kind of go to now, you meticulously documented your whole cancer experience and put it out there as a free resource to everybody, which I just applaud you for that. I was such an undertaking, Mike, and such a openness and vulnerability and trusting. I can't imagine how you could have helped more people than by doing that. But one of the things that came out of your document is being your own health advocate. Can you explain what that means?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Yeah. I've got an oral surgeon friend who had intestinal cancer or not orthopedic surgeon. And so I went to him when I first got diagnosed and I said, "Can you tell me?" He says, "Well, be your own health advocate." And I said, "Well, what does that mean?" He says, "You'll find out." And so that means, look, you're going to hear a lot of different things from a lot of different people, and you've got to figure it out yourself. Get your trusted advisors if something doesn't sound right for you, get a second opinion, get a number of opinions and try to piece them together. Give you a couple of quick examples. A different orthopedic surgeon told me, if you can get immunotherapy, that'd be a great thing. Try it. Have them try it. If you can just get it.
Well, I went through five physicians and the first four told me, no, it won't be good for you. You don't want to do immunotherapy. We don't have it available for you. And then the last guy I could have asked was up at the University of Chicago, the fellow, he wasn't even the main physician, had already told me, my medical oncologist, no. And so, he left the room, and I was left with this student, a fellow. I said, "Look, is there any way I can get immunotherapy? I really want immunotherapy." He says, "There might be one study that we're doing that you might qualify for." I said, "Find out." And he found out, and then everybody agreed, "Hey, this would be good for you."
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
But without you pushing and asking that you wouldn't have ever received-
Dr. Mike Milligan:
It would've never received. And it reduced my cancer, the size of my cancer, 80%, the nine and a half weeks I did of immuno and chemotherapy,
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Which probably made a difference for you between life and death.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Very well could have. And then another example, I'm a dentist. Hey, I like my teeth and I take great care of them. But a local oral surgeon, when I got my diagnosis, he says, "You're going to go through radiation treatment, take out all your molars." And I said, "Oh my gosh." And so, I found out about the radiation machine they were using, where I was going to be treated. I talked with some other people, and I made the decision not to take them out because I know how good I take care of my teeth. And part of the thinking was the CariFree product that you have. I can use CariFree. And-
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
We have ways to help you. And the challenge you've got too, Mike, you can't put them back. And when you've got irradiated bone, you're not going to go place implants in there.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
No. No, you can't.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
That's not an option. So, once they're gone, they're gone.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
They're gone. And so, I made the decision to keep them. So, be your own health advocate. I did a lot of research on these things myself. And sometimes online, the patient gets confused, and they decide the wrong thing. But within your capabilities and within your knowledge, try to educate yourself the best you can so that you can be your own health advocate and make the best decisions that you can.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Sometimes in life we're just too ill to be our own health advocate. Mike was lucky that he had the energy and support needed to be his own, but not everyone is so fortunate. Just like writing a will, it's important to have conversations with your family about who should be your spokesperson if you are too unwell to push for high quality care, being your own health advocate might involve seeking out a second opinion. Having a good quality second opinion is part of the reason Mike managed to access the experimental treatment that rapidly reduced his cancer. If you want some more information on being your own or someone else's health advocate, the American Cancer Society has an excellent resource on their website. Again, there's a link to that in the show notes. You can imagine that putting together a document as detailed as Mike's must have been a time-consuming process. It's amazing to think that he still managed to create something like this when he was so ill. To me, it seems like Mike took a difficult experience and turned it into a positive one.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
My mission in my life is to help other people. I collected a lot of information as I was doing it because I thought I would do it at some point, but it took me two and a half years. Of course, my son was with me 20 months. I had to wait through that because I was very busy helping him, and he had it 100 times worse than I did through his cancer. I had it bad, but oh boy, he had it bad, worse. We got through that, and then it took a while to get over that. So, I just finished this last December, this 20-page article.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Did you kind of relive the experience while you were writing about it again?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Well, I didn't want to write that thing 'cause yes, you had to relive the whole thing.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
You had to go back and pick it up and look at all the pieces, and it was a real dark period for you.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
It was. Part of it was avoiding doing it, but I knew I had to because I knew that I had more information about this than anybody really anybody going through this. 'Cause I'm a detailed guy and I write it down and I take pictures, and I do things like that. And so, I knew I had to do it, so I just did it.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Of all the people, Mike, I can't imagine anybody better equipped to do that than you.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Yeah. That's why I had to do it.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Yeah. I think you didn't have a choice, did you? Really?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Uh-uh. Not really.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
What's the response been to that document you've put out?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
It's been excellent. People have thanked me and said it was a... And so, anybody that it can help, it's very humbling to be able to help others. God gave me all these gifts that I have in order to help others, and so it's humbling that I was blessed enough to be able to write that and to help others. Yeah.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Wow. I really appreciate just how vulnerable and open you are 'cause truly, I mean, it's a document that I think everybody can benefit from, right? And learn from your experience, and so I really appreciate you being so open and sharing with that information because truly you're helping a lot of people. So, how are you feeling these days, Mike? You look great. I got to tell you. How are you feeling?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
I'm feeling really good.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
How's your golf game?
Dr. Mike Milligan:
I played 18 yesterday and 18 the day before, and a walk.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh, that just warms my heart, Mike hearing that.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
I know, it's so... When I was in that bed going through cancer. Oh, gosh. And never knew if I'd play again. The first time I went out to the golf course, the next spring, I just cried, and the pro just hugged me. I just cried.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Oh, man.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
'Cause I love that game. So, I played 138 rounds of golf last year, and I walked about 90% of them.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
Mike, you're such a blessing to everybody that knows you and the profession and the public. I just really want to thank you so much for being on this podcast today with me and sharing all of your experience and your knowledge and advice.
Dr. Mike Milligan:
Kim, I appreciate all that you do. You're an amazing individual. You're a role model, and God bless you, my friend, and also to everyone listening to this podcast.
Dr. Kim Kutsch:
It's been amazing to hear Mike's story of triumph. I admire his courage and dedication to the fight against head and neck cancer. Thank you so much, Dr. Mike Milligan, for joining me today. And thank you for going on this inspiring journey with me. Around here, we aim to inspire and create connections. We can't do it without you. If this conversation moved you, made you smile or scratch that little itch of curiosity today, please share it with the extraordinary people in your life. And if you do one thing today, let it be extraordinary and bye for now.