Episode 11: Cancer, COVID & Croissants: Part 1
- Kristina Wiltsee
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
What happens when control stops working
On the Executive and the Mystic podcast, we often explore the intersection between leadership and inner life. Between strategy and soul.
But occasionally a story appears that doesn’t just illustrate the idea. It embodies it.
This is one of those stories.
This episode begins a two-part series in which my co-host, Fred LeFranc, shares the journey he has walked over the past five years. He sometimes refers to it with a strange title.
Cancer. COVID. And Croissants.
It sounds almost humorous. But behind the title is a profound story about fear, control, healing, and the unexpected power of surrender.
When the world shuts down
In January of 2020, Fred received news that instantly shifted his life.
He had prostate cancer.
Like many people who receive a diagnosis like this, the first reaction was simple and human.
Fear.
But the timing added another layer of chaos.
Within months of his diagnosis, the world shut down.
COVID swept across the globe, hospitals filled rapidly, and surgeries that were considered “elective” were postponed indefinitely. For Fred, that meant waiting while hospital beds filled with COVID patients.
Eventually he was able to undergo surgery in April of 2020.
What is normally a one-night hospital stay turned into five days. Visitors were not allowed. Nurses were whispering anxiously in the halls. Masks were everywhere. No one really knew what was happening.
The world was uncertain.
The hospital was uncertain.
And his body was uncertain.
But the story didn’t end there.
Because just as he was recovering from surgery, another unexpected challenge arrived.
Enter the croissants
Two weeks before the pandemic began, Fred had joined the board of a bakery company based in Atlanta.
The plan had been simple.
The founder was retiring. The board would hire a new CEO.
But when COVID hit, no one was changing jobs. No one was relocating. The hiring market froze.
So the private equity group asked Fred a question.
Would he step in as CEO temporarily?
The commitment was supposed to last eighteen months.
It lasted three and a half years.
Every week he flew from Charlotte to Atlanta, living out of a small apartment while running a large manufacturing bakery during one of the most chaotic economic periods in modern history.
The bakery operated 24 hours a day.
COVID came in waves.
Supply chains were unstable.
Staffing was difficult.
Stress was constant.
Meanwhile, Fred carried another piece of information quietly in the background.
A genetic test showed a 92% probability that his cancer could return.
For several years he worked while waiting to see if the other shoe would drop.
Eventually, it did.
When the diagnosis returns
In the summer of 2023, Fred’s PSA numbers began rising again.
A new PET scan revealed something far more serious than the original diagnosis.
The cancer had returned.
And this time it had metastasized.
It appeared in three places:
• his prostate bed
• his shoulder
• a rib
For many people, this would be the moment where the story turns toward despair.
Instead, it became the moment where a deeper journey began.
The limits of control
Fred has spent decades as an executive. His career has been built on strategy, logic, and problem solving.
Like many leaders, he approached the world through control.
If something breaks, fix it.
If something fails, solve it.
If a problem appears, engineer a solution.
That mindset works extremely well in business.
But cancer is not a business problem.
Cancer doesn’t negotiate with logic.
And that realization forced a shift.
Around the same time, Fred had encountered the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, who teaches meditation practices rooted in neuroscience and quantum theory. His work suggests that emotional states and neurological patterns can influence physical healing.
To Fred, the ideas were intriguing but abstract.
Until the diagnosis returned.
Now the question became immediate.
What if healing required something beyond intellect?
The battle with fear
When the metastasis diagnosis arrived, Fred did something simple.
He walked outside and gave himself fifteen minutes to feel everything.
Anger. Fear. Shock.
Then he stopped.
Not because the emotions weren’t real, but because he understood something about the human mind.
We often create self-fulfilling futures through the states we live in.
So he made a decision.
He would pursue every form of healing available.
Western medicine.
Radiation.
Hormone therapy.
And something else.
He would also pursue inner transformation.
The first request he made to me when we began working together was direct.
“I want help eliminating fear.”
At the time, neither of us knew how complex that request would become.
Radiation and the White Walkers
Radiation therapy was not something Fred wanted.
But the medical consensus was clear. It was necessary.
Eight weeks of daily radiation treatments followed.
Hormone therapy removed nearly all testosterone from his body. Muscle mass disappeared. Strength declined. He lost fifteen pounds.
Many patients lie still during radiation and simply endure it.
Fred refused to do that.
Instead, he turned the treatment into an active meditation.
Radiation, he realized, is simply another form of light.
So during treatments he visualized the radiation entering his body as a force destroying cancer cells while protecting healthy tissue.
In his mind, the cancer cells became the White Walkers from Game of Thrones.
The radiation became light moving through his body to eliminate them.
It may sound strange.
But it gave him something essential.
Agency.
The paradox of surrender
Yet something deeper was still required.
For someone who had spent decades operating through control, the greatest challenge was not the treatment.
It was surrender.
Fred describes the moment of realization this way.
By surrendering control, he gained control.
Not intellectual control.
But emotional and spiritual control.
The kind that comes from trust.
That shift began to deepen in an unexpected place.
India.
India and the opening of the heart
In early 2024, a friend invited Fred to India.
His first instinct was to say no.
Life was chaotic. He was transitioning out of the bakery. His wife was caring for aging parents. He was preparing for radiation treatment.
But the invitation came with a simple explanation.
“In India we don’t go to temples to pray,” his friend said.
“We go to receive energy.”
So Fred went.
Over two weeks he visited twenty-six temples and an ashram. He participated in ceremonies, meditation, and rituals rooted in ancient traditions.
Barefoot. Wearing traditional clothing. Immersed in a culture that approached healing very differently from the Western world.
Slowly something shifted.
Temple by temple.
Meditation by meditation.
His heart began to open.
By the time he returned home, his wife noticed it immediately.
“You’re different,” she told him.
She was right.
Something fundamental had changed.
The moment everything flipped
The final turning point arrived during a conversation with a friend named Bruce.
Fred explained everything he had been doing.
The treatments. The meditation. The effort to eliminate fear.
Bruce listened quietly.
Then he said something that changed everything.
“You’re focused on the wrong thing.”
Trying to eliminate fear, he explained, actually reinforces fear.
Instead, focus on love.
Love is everywhere.
All you have to do is reach for it.
Fred burst into tears.
Because in that moment, the solution became obvious.
Instead of fighting fear, he began embracing love.
And something remarkable happened.
The fear dissolved.
The unexpected resolution
Within weeks, the chaos that had surrounded him for years began resolving.
Radiation therapy ended.
The home he had struggled to sell finally sold at the price he wanted.
He settled into a new house.
And for the first time in years, life slowed down.
Not because everything became perfect.
But because his internal relationship with life had changed.
Control had given way to trust.
Fear had given way to love.
And the healing journey had truly begun.
Part Two
In the next part of this story, we explore what happened next.
How healing continued.
How leadership changed.
And how the experience reshaped what it means to be both an executive and a mystic.
Because sometimes the deepest business wisdom doesn’t come from strategy.
It comes from facing the moments where strategy no longer works.
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