Preface
As I finished the final edits to this book, the
New York Times featured an in-depth article about the failure of conventional medicine to cure more cancers.
According to the
New York Times, adjusting for the size and age of the population, cancer death rates dropped only 5 percent from 1950 to 2005.
What other technology has performed so miserably over this fifty-five year period? Would you accept a medical therapy that has not improved much since 1950?
In contrast, the death rate from heart disease dropped 64 percent in that time, and for flu and pneumonia it fell 58 percent.
The
New York Times was especially critical of expensive conventional treatments that subject patients to much mutilation and suffering, yet yield survival improvements of only a few months.
Clearly, as the
Times states, "we are not winning the war against cancer."
This book is written to show another side of cancer treatment and what you can do now to prevent getting this dreaded disease.
As a reader, you must know there are no guarantees. Cancer kills and continues to kill. Yet there are some who beat it. Some beat it with traditional methods, and some with alternative methods. No one can tell you what will work for sure. You need to gather as much information as you can and make your own decisions.
But there is hope, and this book offers new choices. It is important you know that there are more methods than traditional chemotherapy and radiation available, and these are what this book attempts to bring to you, my faithful readers. Although I have always leaned toward alternative medicine, the testimonials of the "cured" patients made a believer out of me.
It is a very brave choice to go against traditional medicine and embrace the alternative route. It's easier to try the traditional route and then, if it fails, go to the alternatives, but often it can be too late. My friend Farrah—would she have made it if she had gone alternative first? There is no way of knowing.
When you receive a cancer diagnosis, you're more vulnerable than at any other time in your life. I've personally had the experience twice, as you will read in this book, and my only hope for survival was alternatives. But that was my decision, what I thought best for me.
I cannot make up your mind for you. I can only offer you these incredible professionals who have chosen to go another way. Some are completely alternative, while some are more integrated, but all are having success, great success.
Does everyone survive, though? The sad answer is no. Having cancer is a lonely experience. It is the one time in your life that you cannot ask those closest to you, "What should I do?" It's too heavy a burden to place on another person. This is your life, your decision, and cancer kills.
Read this book carefully. See and feel if the information resonates. I know that for myself, after having interviewed all of these incredible doctors, scientists, professionals, and patients, my choice overwhelmingly would be to use only alternative treatments regardless of what kind of cancer I contracted.
I am not a doctor or a scientist, but merely a passionate layperson, a filter, a messenger. I spoke with so many patients who are living normal, happy, fulfilled lives, and their enthusiasm and great quality of life convinced me that indeed you can live with cancer. You can manage cancer. You don't have to be degraded by humiliating treatments and protocols. And in some cases, you can be cured of cancer.
It is with great humility I ask you to read these pages and then listen to your heart and choose what is best for you. Writing this book has taken away my fear of cancer. I hope reading it does the same for you.
Chapter 1
A CANCER STORY—MINE
November 2008, 4:00 a.m. I wake up. I can’t breathe. I am choking, being
strangled to death; it feels like there are two hands around my neck
squeezing tighter and tighter. My body is covered head to toe with welts
and a horrible rash: the itching and burning is unbearable. The rash is in
my ears, in my nose, in my vagina, on the bottoms of my feet, everywhere—
under my arms, my scalp, the back of my neck. Every single inch
of my body is covered with welts except my face. I don’t know why. I
struggle to the telephone and call one of the doctors I trust. I start to tell
him what is happening, and he stops me: “You are in danger. Go to the hospital
right now.” I knew it. I could feel that my breath was running out.
No time to wait for an ambulance. We race to the emergency room. I
am gasping, begging for yet one more breath. I am suffocating. I am running
out of time. I don’t have time to think or be frightened; I can only
concentrate on getting one last breath. I am dizzy . . . the world is spinning.
Breathing is all I can think about.
We arrive. My husband has called the hospital in advance. They are
waiting for me. The emergency room workers—nurses, doctors, and other
professionals—are wonderful people. They have dealt with this before.
They are reassuring: “Okay, we’ll take care of her.”
As soon as I am in the emergency room they inject me with Decadron, a
powerful steroid. “Why can’t you breathe?” the ER doc seems to be
yelling in my ear, but I can’t answer. I am unable to get words out. They
inject me with Benadryl for the welts and the rash. Now I’m inside the
ER, but I still can’t breathe. I can’t even sit up. I am bent over trying to
find oxygen anywhere . . .
They put me on oxygen and albuterol to get me breathing, and slowly,
slowly, life returns. I am still grabbing for each breath, and there
are spasms in my lungs, like someone is turning a knob that pulls my
lungs inside out, but unlike before, the breath is there . . . labored but
there.
“We have to do a CAT scan,” he says. I already know that there are
large amounts of radiation inherent in CAT scans, and it bothers me to
think of doing that to my body. This is the first time I have had any pharmaceutical
drugs in me in eight years.
I always say, “I am not anti-pharmaceutical, but they should be saved as
the last tool in the practitioner’s back pocket.” My life was just saved by
pharmaceuticals. Maybe this is one of those times that radiation is justified
to find out what is wrong? Because something is seriously wrong. I
am healthy. I don’t know anyone who does more for her health than I do
on a daily basis. CAT scan . . . I don’t know.
I say to the doctor, “It seems to me that I’ve either been poisoned or am
having some kind of serious allergic reaction to something. I mean,
doesn’t that make sense? The rash, the strangling, the asphyxiation.
Sounds classic, doesn’t it?”
“We don’t know. A CAT scan will tell us. I really recommend you do
this,” the doctor says. “Next time you might not be so lucky—you might
not get here in time. You were almost out.”
I know that. I could feel the life going out of me in the car ride over.
“Okay,” I answer meekly. I am concerned and wary. My husband is with
me, holding my hands, rubbing them. His face is twisted with fear, concern.
Nothing is making sense.
A week ago, I was the picture of health. I hosted a beautiful evening at
my home for all the wonderful doctors who had participated in my bestseller
Breakthrough. It was a beautiful, warm evening, and together we all
celebrated health and wellness. The stars were out that night in full force,
and while the air was filled with the sounds of live musicians playing my
soft jazz favorites, the forty people at the table were enthusiastically conversing
about the possibilities of aging without illness; aging with bones,
brain, and health intact; dying healthy at a very old age. We were all
turned on. We had all realized it was attainable, and we were excited to
know that we had jumped on this incredible bandwagon in time.
This was an amazing group of people. These doctors were the courageous
ones who stepped out of the Western “standard of care” box to declare
that the present template of medicine is not working. Drugs are not
the answer. Drugs and chemicals are degrading the brains of our elders
and sneaking up on the unsuspecting young ones.
I looked around at this group of healthy-looking, vibrant people and
was excited to bring them all together. We were all living this new approach
to wellness. And before our delicious organic meal was served,
everyone pulled out their little bags of supplements. We all got a laugh
over that one.
It was so exciting to talk about true health enthusiastically instead of in
the hushed tones that accompany talk of a loved one in a diseased state. I
felt there always seemed to be a hopelessness that accompanied so many
of today’s approaches to health. Even when they worked, there seemed
to be an undesired reaction in the body. Somehow you weren’t the same
person anymore; you became slowed down, aging faster, fragile.
Socially, in most groups I tempered my conversations on my approach
to health because those who entrusted their lives to allopathic, “standard
of care” Western doctors might not want to entertain the idea that they
might have made the wrong choice or that their way wasn’t the best way.
I respected that. Life and health are about choices. There is the old way
and the new way, and each of us has to do what makes us most comfortable.
I chose the new way and I have never felt better, happier, more energetic,
more hormonally b...
