Hi, I’m kayla.
As a registered nurse, holistic cancer coach, and stage IV cancer “surthriver”. I guide clients through holistic, evidence-informed practices that support healing, balance, and empowerment. My mission is to offer compassionate consulting rooted in clinical knowledge, personal experience, and a belief in the body’s innate ability to heal.
I ultimately desire to bridge the gap between clinical knowledge and holistic wisdom, creating a safe space where clients feel seen, supported, and empowered to cultivate lasting wellness on their own terms. I help clients find balance and empowerment through personalized lifestyle guidance, education, and mindful living practices.
My Story
In November of 2021, I was living a life I had completely fallen in love with. I was travel nursing in Alaska and felt so free, happy, and energized by the wild Alaska environment; I was enjoying every aspect of what my life had finally become. One night while working, I had an insatiable itch on my scalp. Trying to satisfy the itch, I felt a rather large bump I had never noticed. I had a friend snap a picture, and my heart dropped when I saw it. It checked all the boxes for a concerning mole. It was Asymmetrical, the Border was irregular, it was discolored, the Diameter was greater than 6mm, and it had evolved. It checked the boxes for the ABCDE identification of a concerning mole.
Thankfully, my mom worked for a plastic surgeon, so I promptly sent her the picture to show him immediately. Two weeks later, I was on a flight home for a biopsy, and a week after that, I received the news that the ugly duckling on my head was melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Things moved fast from here. Dr. Smith referred me to Huntsman Cancer in Salt Lake City, UT, where the next chapters of my cancer story unfolded and my life was forever changed. On December 10th, 2021, I had a radical resection of the “primary tumor” (the mole) from my scalp and a lymph node dissection of my left neck. A bolster was sewn into my head, and we were sent home to wait for my results to see if we had clear margins and to get an official diagnosis.
Stage IIIA Malignant Melanoma
From here, I was told I had a 50/50 chance of cancer spreading; I could opt into watchful waiting or begin adjuvant therapy. Without much thought, I made a fear-based decision and opted for adjuvant therapy —> immunotherapy treatment.
Just before finding my ugly duckling, I had met the love of my life. Isn’t this how life goes? You finally stop trying to force your life to work, and you just let it happen, and it all falls into place, perfectly. I wasn’t looking for anything, but this funny, charming, amazing guy came into my life and changed it forever. Little did we know that just a couple of months after meeting, we’d be faced with some of the most difficult decisions.
While our relationship was fresh and new, we knew we were in it for the long haul. So before starting treatment, we went through a very expedited egg freezing process and retrieved 26 eggs; We successfully froze 24 healthy eggs. The day after my egg retrieval, we got engaged. It’s a small miracle we got engaged because if any of you have gone through that process, the hormones and emotions are INSANE. What a guy!
After egg retrieval, I started Pembrolizumab immunotherapy. I made it three cycles and ultimately decided to stop treatment. Side effects were too great, and we were getting married. I was fearful of becoming too sickly before our wedding, and all my CT scans and PET scans showed no evidence of disease. It felt safe to quit treatment that may or may not be doing anything. So I did.
the Recurrence
Fast forward one year. We’ve been married 9 months, and life seems good and normal again. I’m healing from the trauma of cancer and don’t feel so scared all the time. I continue my staging scans every three months, when one day in early May of 2023, a CT of my chest showed a few scattered nodules. Fast forward, six weeks later, to a close follow-up of that CT, there are multiple new scattered nodules in my upper and lower, right and left lungs; They’re everywhere. It’s everywhere—eight little tumors in total.
June 2023, I’m back in the hot seat, having difficult conversations with my oncologist, thoracic surgeon, and comprehensive medical team. Together, we’re trying to reason through what testing, procedures, and imaging are necessary and what feels like it could cause more harm. Being a nurse in this position is confusing. You have a general foundation of medical knowledge, but you’re certainly not an expert in cancer care. But what do you do when something feels off, when you just can’t get on board with what’s being laid out and prescribed for you?
The surrendering
Feeling increasingly overwhelmed, scared, and at a loss for options, I finally relied on my faith; which is what I should have done from the beginning, but sometimes being a human means you default to human ways and forget that you have a gracious, loving God whose way bettter at carrying your burdens and paving the way for you. So I finally got quiet with the Lord and slowly learned what it meant and looked like for me to surrender, to completely surrender it all. This may have been the greatest learning curve for me.
For me, surrendering meant addressing my pride. For a long time, I was proud that I could “thrive” on five hours of sleep and work 4-5 12-hour ER shifts a week and still be ready to rally and be full of energy on my days off. I was great at sacrificing much of myself for others, no matter the mental, physical, or emotional cost. For me, it was learning how not to be the “yes girl” and everyone’s carrier of burdens, secrets, and emotions. It meant learning how not to sacrifice my peace or happiness so that others could always have personal gain. It means learning how to say no, learning how to surrender to the super-human I thought I was, and leaning into relying on strength coming solely from above. I didn’t have superhuman strength, I didn’t have rock-solid emotions, and I couldn’t bear it all.
These were hard lessons to learn, but they were necessary and life-changing. I’m not sure where I would be today if I didn’t learn these lessons.
Round Two of Treatment, but Make it Holistic
When cancer came back, the stakes were higher. I had to take responsibility for what I could because I felt like I was fighting for my life. While I love my oncologist, we have very different views of cancer, its origin, and the body’s ability to heal. She told me we could be hopeful to stop the progression of cancer, but that we may never fully get rid of the cancer in my body. If you look up statistics on stage IV metastatic melanoma, they aren’t hopeful. I refused to accept that my life was a ticking time bomb. I fell quiet before the Lord and began praying and asking for answers. I developed an aggressive desire to learn everything I could from anyone who had ever healed from uncurable or difficult-to-treat cancer. I filled my bookshelves with books and medical journals. I spent every waking minute listening to podcasts, YouTube videos, and online seminars on integrative cancer treatments and methods for healing. I found a cancer coach who was a devout Christian and started each of our sessions with prayer. I learned how she healed from Stage IV melanoma, and I began researching holistic cancer healing centers.
Just one month after my Stage IV cancer diagnosis, I found and was accepted at Omsana Health, a holistic cancer treatment center in Mexico. My childhood best friend started a GoFundMe, and my entire 30-day intensive cancer healing program was fully funded, relieving so much of the financial burden of cancer for Josh and me. I quit my job and dove into committing everything I had to healing from cancer.
Omsana Health
In June of 2023, we crossed the border into Tijuana, Mexico, to begin a journey that completely changed my life for the better. Monday through Saturday from 8 am-4 pm, we’re doing all we can to heal my sick body. Omsana believes in four pillars of health: Mental, Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual. Going into treatment, I was onboard with three of these pillars, but I didn’t pay much attention to the emotional component of healing. Until this experience, I didn’t believe that emotional healing needed to take place to heal my physical body. I quickly learned and realized that I couldn’t heal fully until my emotional and mental health had been addressed and supported. So we got to work on this, too.
We wasted no time in my healing journey. Day one, we did lab work, head-to-toe physical assessment, EKG, nutrition assessment, as well as intake of my mental health, emotions, and energy. I was started on the Gerson Therapy, which consisted of a mostly plant-based diet and 64 oz of fresh green or carrot juice in an 8-hour time frame. This is a comprehensive list of the other therapies we incorporated to support my body’s ability to detox and begin cleaning up the terrain to fight cancer more effectively:
Nutritional approach:
Gerson therapy:
Coffe Enema
Supplements
Gerson diet
Metabolic approach:
High dose of Vitamin C
Laetril (Amigdalin) B17
Ozone IV
Chelation (Heavy metals treatment)
Liposomal Supplements after chelation
Myers cocktail IV
Metmorfin Protocol
Immunologic approach:
Natural extract of Oriental Mushrooms (Maitake and Shiitake).
Coley ́s Vaccine
GC-MAF (Gc protein-derived macrophage-activating fact,)
Hyperthermia (20 to 30 minutes session)
Physiotherapy approach:
Lymphatic massage
Cannabis and Cancer approach: Pharmaceutical grade CBD oil
Emotional approach:
Zyto Balance Scanner (diagnosis of emotions and their relation to the physical functioning of the body through galvanic scanning)
Aromatherapy with essential oils (based on the results of scanning)
Qi Gong – Vital energy management
Meditations
Sound Therapy with Singing Bowls
Sound Healing Therapy with Music (Solfeggio frequencies)
A New Life at home
After my intensive healing at Omsana, I headed home to Colorado and continued my healing journey. When I returned home, I had another PET scan, 6 weeks from the last one, which was before my treatment at Omsana. All tumors had stopped growing. I started immunotherapy soon after I returned home and was handed a slew of new side effects that took me more than a year to figure out how to handle and make manageable. I’ve now completed the full two years of Immunotherapy and have continued many of the integrative healing modalities, which I believe have allowed me to remain tumor-free. Staying cancer-free will remain a life-long commitment and I’m hopeful to help many others achieve the same.