Yesterday one of my best friends called to tell me that a biopsy taken from a lump in her breast is malignant. “The doctors are dealing with this with a great sense of urgency,” she said with alarm.
I didn’t say so, but I remember the drill. The doctors admit you right away and begin their ministrations before you can even take any time to think. They deliver the dreaded news, often not well, and then what time you do have to think is smothered in panic and fear.
You then immediately begin a dreadful course of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery—whatever combination, sequence, and severity the doctors can justify with their studies. And through it all, you never have time to think, to question the basic premise underlying all the drugs, treatments, procedures, hospitalizations, and the steady flow of our national wealth into the Nation’s health care and pharmaceutical industries.
But you don’t care about that. You’re scared as hell. You want to live. There is so much unfinished business. You want to see your children grow up. The doctors say you have no chance without their brutal treatments. “We’re getting better results today than we even thought possible just five years ago,” they say.
The dominance of allopathic medicine is so great that you don’t even consider that there may be other alternatives to the door being held open by your doctor.
I told my friend to be sure and find out how fast- or slow-growing the tumor is. This will provide evidence to suggest how much time one has to think and plan and embark on a healing process that is informed, rational, and appropriate and not confounded by panic and fear.
When Holly’s cancer was diagnosed, we took Door No. 1, the one held open by the medical doctors, and immediately passed a point of no return. We thought we were doing the right things, but we really had no idea of what we were doing. We had completely missed Doors No. 2 and 3.
Now I remind you this all happened nineteen years ago, before the Internet had become the information resource that it is today. Alternatives to allopathic medicine were to us a blur of competing claims, hopeful stories, word-of-mouth rumor, and outright quackery. We had no working theory of health with which to evaluate evidence and make sense of the blur.
Today I know that Door No. 2 (had we been able to see it) has a sign on it which says, “Body Heal Thyself.”
Exploration behind this door reveals that the human body can be stimulated to regenerate and heal itself through certain practices. Hyperbaric treatments appear to be one such practice. The ingestion, vaporization, or topical application of hemp oil is another. Ingesting wheatgrass juice is another. These practices, among others, are claimed to be cancer cures. They have produced dramatic and timely effects with a minimum discomfort, negligible risk, and only benign side effects, if any. And, unlike Door No. 1, these practices always afford the opportunity to change your mind and choose another door if you do not see the results you want.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think this should be the first door taken if time permits and a malignancy is not so fast-growing that a month’s delay would make any difference.
If you tell your M.D. why you’re delaying, he or she is not likely to be supportive of your decision to go slow and first try some non-radical alternatives. Your doctor will tell you the tried-and-true way is to knock the cancer down hard and fast with massive, invasive strength that will brutalize your body. Medical shock-and-awe.
I say that your body first may need some coddling and encouragement to do its thing (which it can do) and reject this freakish lump (which you have found in time). I say that your mind needs some time and quiet to center itself, banish all fear, anger, and self-blame and, in the meantime, be creative and see if some comparatively gentle practices can ameliorate the symptoms or even coax a remission.
Here are some web addresses where you can find information about the practices I’ve mentioned which appear to stimulate the body’s self-healing:
Hyperbarics: www.hbot.com and www.hbot-therapy.com
Hemp Oil: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhT9282-Tw
Wheatgrass: http://annwigmore.com/
Become informed. Take your time. Do not be rushed into decisions or make them out of fear. Take control of your own health and tell the doctors what to do.
Remember they are experts only behind Door No. 1, and ignorant and dismissive of other doors. (I continue to be amused by their dismissal of the cause of improvement in my own circulatory health and their inability to explain why my visual acuity has improved fifty percent.)
I wish I had discovered Door No. 2 in time for it to have helped Holly, but that was not to be. Yet it may help you if you will only try it.
And Doors No. 3 and up? I know they must exist, but I haven’t seen them yet and cannot even guess what may lay behind them.