Well, I broke down and posted my blog on Facebook, and the response has been waaaay bigger than I ever imagined. Which is more than a little mind-boggling. Anyway, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why I’m going this route and whatever possessed me to think I could actually win a battle with big, bad CANCER, and why am I giving up without a fight, and so on and so forth . . . and I realized that because I’d been telling so many people orally, I had failed to cover a lot of it in the blog. So for all you newcomers, here you go:
I am a massage therapist by trade, working in an office with
two chiropractors. Between the three of us, we deal with the fall-out from
surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation on an almost-daily basis. For instance, take the person who had hip
replacement surgery and ended up with one leg ½” longer than the other, giving
him back problems for the rest of his life. I’m not saying hip replacement surgery is bad
– just that all surgeries seem to have unforeseen consequences. Like scar
tissue that continues to grow inside the body of some people after abdominal
surgery, adhering to the intestines and causing blockages, not to mention pain (which was the reason they had the
surgery in the first place). It doesn’t
happen to everybody, but how do you know whether you will be one of the lucky
ones?
I have worked with several people during and following
chemotherapy treatment, and have gotten to see up close and personal the toll
it takes on them. They’re miserably sick (to the point of wanting to die), and
the poisons stay in their tissues for many years after they’re through with
treatment (probably the rest of their lives).
They will actually have recurrence of the sickness they experienced
during chemo (sort of a flashback), following a deep tissue massage because it
releases some of the crap back into their blood stream again. And the really
rotten part of it is that most of them have ended up dying of cancer anyway. (Or
the treatment thereof, but that’s another story.)
Then there’s the person who had radiation for throat cancer
eight or nine years ago and had to talk through a hole in his throat. Over the
years, the radiation apparently continued to disintegrate his cervical
vertebrae because he had to begin wearing a neck brace in order to hold his
head up. He recently passed away as well.
And have you ever seen the burn
scars left behind from radiation?
As an aside, what would you guess is the ten-year survival
rate of all cancer victims? 50%? 25%? Would you believe 2.6%? Apparently published statistics are based on five-years
of survival, but if you look at the ten-year numbers, they plummet. Why? Because
the cancer comes back. The underlying cause and environment that allowed it to grow in the first place are still there. And the second time around, the immune system is shot
from all the prior rounds of chemotherapy, so it can’t fight, leaving the only
options stronger and stronger chemo cocktails, and/or more
radiation/surgery. Think about all the
people you’ve known whose cancer was in remission for a few years but came back
and got them. Sad isn’t it? It’s because they treated only the cancer itself -- not the underlying cause. And they wrecked the body in the process.
I kind of wish I had kept a list of all the reading I did in
the first month because it would be nice to be able to cite it here, but I was
trying to get as much information into my head as I could and wasn’t thinking
about things like blogs. Anyway, at
least one research study found that surgery actually increases the chance of metastasis (spreading to other areas of the
body), for two reasons:
-
- Any time you cut into the body, it grows new
blood vessels to the area to help heal the wound. This provides a new freeway
system for any stray cancer cells to emigrate to a new home; and
-
- Anesthesia suppresses the immune system for –
not days, but -- several weeks after
surgery, so any cancer cells left behind have a chance to get re-established.
I don’t know what ranking this next reason gets, but from a
strictly practical standpoint, I suppose it’d be pretty close to the top: I
can’t afford to go the traditional
treatment route. In the first place, it costs the price of a rather large
house; and secondly, I can’t afford to be sick and unable to work. The nice
lady at the hospital assured me I could get on Medicaid, but I don’t understand
why the taxpayers should have to foot the bill for my cancer. It’s a moot point
anyway, because I am so completely repulsed by the whole concept.
Which brings up another thing. There’s a very interesting
book by Norman Cousins called “Anatomy of an Illness.” It spends a whole
chapter talking about the placebo effect – how strong it is and how, rather
than poking fun at it, we should embrace and use it to our benefit. In a
nutshell, whatever a person believes will
work, will work. People who thought they were receiving a drug (but who
were in fact given a placebo) had the
same chemical changes in their bodies as those who were given the drug! Pretty intriguing, yes? The opposite holds true, too. So my point is, because I
don’t believe in the benefits of
conventional treatment, it won’t help me as much as it might someone else. And
because I do believe in the medicines
God made for man, they will benefit
me.
Which brings up another thing. When God created Earth, he
also created everything that Man would need to live on it -- including medicine. He created herbs, plants and foods that would
nourish, heal, soothe, calm, and even stimulate. In the past 50 or 60 years, Western medicine
has come up with “better” medicines. But are they really? Every one of them has
side effects. And most (if not all) just cover the symptoms like a Band-Aid but
do nothing to aid in healing. Even
antibiotics have a dark side. Anyway, over the years, I have come to trust God
for absolutely everything and in every situation, so why would I not trust His
creation over man’s improvisation?
Which brings up yet another thing. (Okay, the connection is probably only in my
mind, but let’s go with it.) Why is our society so dead-set against dying? It’s part of living, right? Nobody survives life. So what is with this thing of keeping people alive waaay past their expiration date, no matter
how much it costs or how much misery they have to endure? Well, it’s malarkey, that’s
what. So I will live my chunk of life the best I can – putting God first, and
attaining as many of the characteristics of Christ as I can – and when my time
is up, I will die with satisfaction, contentment and dignity. That is
the natural order of things.
So no, I don’t
have a death wish. I’m not suicidal.
I’m not taking the easy way out. (You try eating this way, then tell me it's the easy way out.) I’m
treating myself with the medicines God made, and I’m leaving the outcome in His
hands.
There’s more.
Our bodies were created with the innate intelligence to heal
themselves. Did you know this? It’s true. It may retain a scar or the stump of
a limb, but it will heal and go on functioning – if it has everything it needs
to work with. Take a set of Legos, for
instance. If you have all the pieces, you can make about anything you want to.
And if you’re missing a few pieces, you can usually make do. But if you’re
missing too many pieces, or missing key pieces, then your project is
doomed. Think of the Lego blocks as
nutrients. When we run short of nutrients for a short time, our body makes do.
But if we continue to run short for years and years, the body can’t function
like it should be able to. The heart, the brain, the digestive tract, the liver – all of these systems are vital to the body. If they don’t
work, the body dies. So when things start to go wrong, something less vital has
to be dispensable. And that something is the immune system.
When functioning optimally, our immune systems recognize and
destroy viruses, evil bacteria, and sick or dead or mutated cells (think
“cancer”). When it can’t function well
due to lack of “Legos”, mutant cells slink by the radar and set up housekeeping. Which brings me to my main point:
It seems completely illogical and absurd to carve up the body, leaving it
scarred and defaced; flood it with
poison; and then drop an A-bomb on it – all in an effort to kill a few billion
cancer cells that the immune system could
take care of while leaving the body unscathed.
Does it not make more sense to build up the body’s immune
system so it will identify and annihilate the buggers like it’s meant to
do? I think so, too.
So that's why I've chosen this way of treating my health. I feel very certain that I will lick this thing, and that I will come out the other side of this experience healthier than ever before in mind, body, and spirit. If not, if it licks me instead, then I will consider that 50+ years is the extent of my lifetime, and call it good.
So that's why I've chosen this way of treating my health. I feel very certain that I will lick this thing, and that I will come out the other side of this experience healthier than ever before in mind, body, and spirit. If not, if it licks me instead, then I will consider that 50+ years is the extent of my lifetime, and call it good.
