Two-time cancer survivor and reality-TV star winner Ethan Zohn, 46, who will be competing on CBS’s “Survivor: Winners at War” next month — part of the franchise that shot him to fame — has now revealed how his disease is being weaponized by the game’s others players during filming.
“I don't think anyone thought I was going to be here. They probably thought I was dead. … I walked around the corner and they were like, "Holy crap, Ethan is alive?" he told Entertainment Weekly.
Read MoreEthan Zohn’s Cancer Journey
Last month, SurvivorNet spoke with Zohn from his home in New Hampshire. He shared his journey, and how he had dealt with years of anxiety and stress related to his diagnosis. Zohn told SurvivorNet he was grateful to be alive after facing two bouts of a rare form of cancer called CD20-positive Hodgkin's lymphoma. Life, he said, is now “wonderful." He and his wife, Lisa Heywood, "heat our house with wood … we grow our vegetables. My wife is awesome."
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Zohn was only 27 when "Survivor: Africa," the show he won, aired in 2002. Some eight years later, he was training for the New York City Marathon when he experienced, he told SurvivorNet, "debilitatingly itchy skin." He went to his doctor, and soon learned he had an early symptom of Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Zohn went through chemotherapy, radiation and two stem cell transplants. Ultimately, he says, it was an experimental drug that saved his life. But the anxiety of not knowing if and when his cancer will return soon became an ongoing challenge. Anxiety, depression, and loneliness became constants.
Zohn said he eventually tried medical cannabis and that it helped him enormously. "This first helped while I was going through cancer," Zohn shares. "I could eat, I could go to sleep. … And then post-cancer, it really helps me with my anxiety. The cancer stuff is always in the back of mind, and the cannabis kind of helped free me from that so I could start feeling like myself and living without so many fears.
Preparing for ‘Winners at War’
The show, which filmed in Fiji, took a lot of preparation, he told EW. “I was walking barefoot to get calluses on my feet … I was swimming, I was doing balancing drills, I was meditating, I was doing puzzles, I was running, lifting weights, I was untying and tying knots. Taking free-diving classes so I can hold my breath. Everything I could possibly do to get in the mindset to be here,” he said.
Medical Cannabis and Cancer
During a previous conversation with SurvivorNet, Dr. Elizabeth Comen a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said patients considering using marijuana to manage side effects must be sure to “work with a reputable physician or provider who is licensed to provide this, who can go over exactly what it may or may not be helping.”
Dr. Elizabeth Comen advises patients to be open with their physician when considering using medical marijuana..
This is to make sure that “it doesn't interact with any clinical trial drug that they're taking or any standard therapy,” she said.
"Obviously, there needs to be more work done about whether eating it versus smoking it, whether there's a difference there,” she said, “and I'm concerned about patients inhaling anything that may damage their lungs."
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