Eating your way to the light

I lost seven pounds within days of my diagnosis. I was so terrified that I had no appetite. But another reason was that I didn't know what to eat. I knew from other people battling major illnesses that nutrition was a critical factor for recovery, and so for the first time in my life I was afraid of food. I did not want to put anything in my mouth that was somehow going to "feed" the cancer.

Interestingly I had always seen myself--and was perceived by others--as being very healthy. I was thin. I could bike and walk for hours without becoming tired. I was rarely sick. I had avoided red meats for many years because I can't digest them well. I ate chicken and other white meats sparingly and for years not at all. I did not eat a whole lot of vegetables, but fruits were my thing. On the other hand, my diet was full of sugar and fats because I ate desserts and sweets constantly throughout the day. I also loved milk, cheese, and yogurt, and refined flour pastas and breads--all things I don't eat anymore.

Most medical doctors will tell you that nutrition does not have a bearing on disease. My own oncologists told me to eat whatever I want "within moderation." My naturopath, on the other hand, put me on a strict diet. He had me follow the blood-type diet and told me to further restrict that diet to eliminate dairy, eggs and meat. I can eat fish once or twice a week but even then only certain types of fish known to be less toxic and more nutritious. My naturopath also wants me to get off wheat (he says it "gums up" your system) so I eat ezekiel and whole-grain spelt tortillas and breads. Both Whole Foods and Trader Joe's carry these. I also buy brown rice pastas and use organic brown basmati rice from the bulk bins at Whole Foods.

I'm off sugar entirely. I use Stevia for teas and lemonade but don't like it for baked goods. I use agave for baked goods but use a lot less than the recipe calls for. My naturopath is not crazy about agave but tolerates it. He enthusiastically endorses Stevia. There are several lines of cookies that are vegan, wheat-free and refined sugar-free. None of these is ideal in terms of ingredients, but for a once a week indulgence I love Nana's wheat-free chocolate chip. I also love Larry & Luna's coconut-based ice creams which are incredible and have three or four ingredients only. Their vanilla ice cream contains coconut, agave and vanilla--that's it. You really can't beat anything that simple. This is clearly not a low-fat food, but it is divine and low glycemic because it only contains agave and no sugar. I can't do a whole lot of soy because (1) my tumor was estrogen positive and soy can mimic estrogen in your body and (2) my naturopath is not crazy about soy.

I have dabbled in raw foods. They have excellent raw restaurants here in Northern California. My favorite is Cafe Gratitude. I try to eat raw twice a day but I'm one of those people who needs a cooked meal at least once a day. Cafe Gratitude in San Francisco has an excellent raw cookbook. Being a dessert girl at heart, I have to tell you that their desserts are insane.

I juice once a day--a combination of carrots, beets, celery, kale, spinach, a lemon and a green apple. I drink about 38 ounces in one sitting. My naturopath prefers me to drink veggie juice at least twice a day but I can never seem to get that second drink in! I now use a Champion 2000+ commercial juicer. It's a "masticating" juicer, which is better than the "centrifugal" Jack LaLanne juicer I bought from Costco. The Champion was the juicer that most of the health foodies suggested and I find that it is a breeze to clean. Mine was about $250, pricey but an investment for me.

I take about a dozen different supplements prescribed by my naturopath three times a day. The program was specifically designed for me after my naturopath did a blood analysis, and he modifies it occasionally based on our conversations and various tests. The supplements are not cheap, but I can definitely tell the difference when I miss taking them. Also my energy level and healing rates from the surgery, chemo and radiation were phenomenal and definitely out of the norm, and I attribute that primarily to my diet and supplements.

I have been doing coffee enemas once a day for a while now, followed by an 8 ounce wheatgrass implant. I always wait until after I have had a bowel movement naturally because I want my body to be able to eliminate on its own as well. I'm using powdered wheatgrass but I hope to be growing it soon.

I vibe once a week (discussed in a previous post) and do acupuncture about once a month. I walk three times a week for about two hours in a hilly area, and once it gets warmer I will also ride my bike about twice a week for a couple of hours.

Here are some good links:

For those with a science orientation who need "proof" of what a vegan diet can do for serious disease, I recommend T. Colin Campbell's The China Study. The book describes the findings of a rigorous series of studies that are hard to refute. The New York Times called it the "Grand Prix of epidemiology." I read this book at a time when everything I read seemed to contradict the last thing I was reading. There is a whole lot of information and misinformation out there. There are a lot of folks out there with agendas, and it's hard to differentiate between the good ones and bad ones. This book helped put some of my confusion to rest. http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-Implications/dp/1932100660/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208802159&sr=8-1.

For incredible nutrition and detoxing advice and strategies, I love Kris Carr's blog: http://www.crazysexycancer.blogspot.com/. She seems lovely, she's bright and she "gets it." She is the creator of Crazy Sexy Cancer, a film about her experience with Stage IV cancer. I haven't seen it but it looks good. I can recommend her book of the same name, which is a light read, and it really resonated with me while I was going through my treatments. Here's one of her columns about sugar and why it's detrimental to your healing: http://crazysexycancer.blogspot.com/2008/04/sugar-not-so-sweet-part-1.html. Be sure to read part 2 of this discussion as well. If you're into juicing and doing detox enemas and colonics, you should delve into her blog and take notes! She has access to some of the best clinics and educators in the country, and her advice and experience is great. I find her inspirational.

Here's the link to the chart I use for the blood-type diet. You can click on the right for your particular blood type. Remember that I refine this diet further by avoiding dairy and meat. http://www.sagastevin.com/HealthyLivin/BloodTypeB.html

Here is a great link for best and worst seafood choices: http://www.oceansalive.org/eat.cfm?subnav=bestandworst.

Try Anything!

When you are in a life and death situation, you are willing to try anything that may nudge you toward life. Once I got over the initial shock of the diagnosis, I started looking around for anything that could cement the "right" outcome for me. I had called the naturopath I had heard about for years who had treated some friends' cancer with success. I began taking supplements he had recommended. I called my aunt who had beaten non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to see what she did. Among her first suggestions was to read "The Journey" by Brandon Bays, which I began to do immediately. I began reading Lance Armstrong's book about cancer, a must-read for anyone trying to overcome really bad odds. I made an appointment with an acupuncturist. I searched "I beat cancer" on google and read most things I could find. I began to pray and meditate at a set time everyday. I started doing visualization exercises, picturing the cancer cells being dispatched by my immune system cells and also imagining a white light enveloping my right chest area. I started doing coffee enemas. I asked everyone I knew to pray for me and to focus their thoughts on my right breast! I sat before a VIBE machine. I ordered book after book about beating cancer with nutrition. I began seeing a body worker, essentially a hypnotherapist who also works on your pressure points. I started juicing and drinking tons of veggie juice.

For every one person who swears by a method, there are hundreds (if not more) who swear it's nonsense. There's a website called Quackwatch that--it appears to me but I haven't examined it extremely closely--basically disputes the validity of anything that is not in the realm of traditional medical science. This seems a bit arrogant to me, but I also understand that people have different orientations and that some folks need a handful of double-blind studies before they will accept anything. I don't operate this way anymore (if I ever did) because I've seen and read about way too many intangible things that defy the odds, the studies and the official "findings." Also my experience during this whole ordeal was that quite often, if you believe it, it shall be. If you don't believe it, so it shall be. For example where side effects were concerned during my chemo treatments, if I had no idea about it, quite often it wouldn't happen. I started to make doctors and nurses tell potential side effects to my husband, girlfriend, or mother (who doesn't speak English that well and had no idea what they were saying) instead of me.

There were some practices that I never expected to work, but were clearly doing something. The first time I walked into a VIBE session, I had to work very hard not to bust out laughing. I sat in front of what looked like the warp drive from the Starship Enterprise. It went on and I pictured Mr. Spock fixing the broken warp drive in The Wrath of Khan and being overcome by radiation poisoning. I sat there for three minutes and tried to "set my intention" as I had been told by the VIBE folks before I walked in. When I left, I felt nothing but giggly about the absurdity of the whole experience. I reported all this back to my naturopath, who had suggested that I try it because it really seemed to help some of his cancer patients who were going through chemo. But Dr. Abdo, I said, I feel like I'm on the set of a science fiction movie! He laughed for a full minute and said: I understand. You should do it if you want to and it works for you. And don't worry about it if it doesn't. I said: Don't you feel like the whole thing is kind of "out there?" He said: Amanda, I've been out there for a very long time, and that's why I believe in the independent investigation of the truth. We don't take anyone's word for what works and what doesn't. We investigate for ourselves.

I dragged my good friend to the next few VIBE sessions and went with a healthy dose of humor. Each time I was allowed to increase my session by one minute and told to "set my intentions." Another friend, a breast cancer survivor, had told me by then that she had tried "vibing" but stopped when it did nothing for her. I was about to go the same way myself. Around the third or fourth session, I noticed that I was having several bowel movements after each vibe session and that I was sleeping incredibly well the evening after I vibed. I relayed this to my friend who was going with me. She looked surprised and told me this was her experience as well. Clearly something was happening and it was positive. I'm not sure about the larger promises that VIBE machine proponents make. They may well be true. But for me, it was doing something positive and I decided to continue it once a week. I go some weeks, and I miss other weeks. As long as I feel good about it, I will continue to do it, and this is how I approach each and every one of the treatments I've decided to undertake.

Each person must find his or her own path by independently investigating the truth.

Heeding the Signs

In late 2006 I began having premonitions that something bad was about to happen. The last time I had felt something similar was about six months before the 9/11 attacks. My husband and I were living in New York City. We were on vacation in Spain in summer 2001 and both writing in journals during the trip. I have an entry about my increasing apprehension about the coming fall. I wrote: Something is going to happen. I don't know what but it's going to be big and I'm scared. This escalated into a full-blown, paralyzing depression. The day before 9/11, I had an appointment with a new therapist where I tried to explain my increasing agitation and depression.

And so when that sense of dread began to take hold of me again, I was sure that we were in for another terrorist attack. We were still living in New York City but were about to move to the West Coast for my husband's job. By Christmas 2006 I was in a tizzy. There were two things that were taking shape in my mind: that the attack would be some kind of a nuclear one and that it would happen on or around September. I was so sure about the upcoming danger that I bought several packs of potassium iodide, the so-called "anti-radiation pill" over the internet and printed out guides on what to do in case of a nuclear event. As the summer drew nearer, I became more and more agitated and convinced of upcoming danger. Many months later, right before I had my mastectomy in September, I realized that I had been sensing that something was drastically wrong all along, but I had assumed incorrectly it would be another terrorist attack. Later when I was going through radiation, I ran across the anti-radiation pills in one of our moving boxes and had to shake my head at the irony.

If I had to describe myself during the several years before I was diagnosed, I would probably use the words "exhausted" and "depressed" frequently. I thought it was fascinating when I ran across this paragraph in Anatomy of the Spirit recently: "Increasing and continual exhaustion that takes the edge off mental and emotional clarity is an energy symptom that indicates something is wrong in the body. Most people do not consider it a symptom because it is not actually painful ... Depression is another symptom that all is not well. Within the clinical world, depression is generally considered an emotional and mental disorder. but prolonged depression often precedes the development of a physical illness. In energy terms. depression literally is a release of energy--or life-force, if you will--without consciousness ... Without energy you cannot support your health."

Fear Factor!

I was called out recently about my blog description which says "I never asked "why me" or felt like a victim." My friend wrote: "... and while this is mostly true, I do recall your sharing with me one or two times that you had moments of why me and feeling like a victim. They were brief moments, maybe hours, maybe not even half a day. It is important to be accurate on this point because it is SO human to feel this way. What was incredibly inspiring about the way you handled the struggle was that you had those moments but were not about to give into it. If someone has just been diagnosed and they are reading your column, they are very likely freaking out and feeling sorry for themselves, so to hear that you felt that way too will resonate with them and they will want more of the determination that you had/have. They will see that it's not only possible to overcome those feelings, but absolutely necessary."

I find that I have a hard time talking about fear. I don't come from a very touchy feely family where people sit around talking about their fears and get a whole lot of nurturing support. In my family you suck it up and move on--and toughen up. I also spent more or less of the past decade in a state of extreme anxiety and fear. I feared the future, my dream of switching careers, my failing relationships and disintegrating friendships, among many other things--feelings that I believe put me in a position that exploited my weaknesses and made up the larger framework of my illness.

Yes, my friend is right. When I was first diagnosed, I was absolutely terrified. I've said before that I had a hard time sleeping or eating that first week. But increasingly I realized that fear is another way of hemorrhaging energy. Energy is critical to healing. Personal power is critical to healing. Self esteem is critical to healing. And somewhere from deep within, I was able to tap into all that power I didn't know I had.

Every once in a while the fear would come back, but I put in place several rules to help me stay strong: (1) I would not troll the internet looking for survival rates or any other scary details about my cancer or any cancer; (2) I would not spend time talking to cancer survivors or friends and family of cancer survivors who would recount for me the horrible details of what it was like to go through surgery/chemo/radiation or the possibly awful side effects of these treatments; and (3) I would not let people look at me with that pitying look and say: "Are you oookaaaay??" or "How are you feeeeeling?"

Something worth pondering about point number (2)--not letting people tell you about the awful side effects of cancer treatments: I found that if I knew about a side effect, I was almost certain to experience it. When I had no idea, I was more likely not to experience that particular symptom.

Another interesting point: You are more likely to breeze through chemo and radiation without side effects (and to recover from surgery faster) if you are taking alternative medicines. However with some notable and brave exceptions, most oncologists will tell you to stop taking any and all herbal, homeopathic, ayurvedic and Chinese medicines and supplements. They tell you that these will potentially interfere with chemo and radiation. The problem is that this is not necessarily true. What they should say is that they don't know for sure whether most of these alternative or complementary treatments interfere with chemo and radiation. You will find loads of literature on both sides of this issue, and there are studies that suggest that alternative treatments increase the tumor kill rate. Some medical centers are more avant garde than others with respect to this issue (San Francisco State for one).

My personal experience was that when I stopped taking the herbal medicines I started falling apart and ceasing to function. As I began to research and add the less controversial ones back into my diet, I began to miraculously function again--and even flourish. At one point, several weeks after I had begun adding my herbal supplements back into my diet, one of my daughter's preschool teachers said to me: "Aren't you supposed to look less healthy when you're going through chemo?" (Can I just tell you how happy this statement made me?) And this feeling of well-being is a virtuous cycle: the better you feel, the better you will feel and so on.

I asked some very well-informed, educated and intelligent cancer survivors, whom I knew to be using alternative methods, what they told their oncologists about the supplements they were taking. Without exception they said: "I lied." "I didn't say." "I didn't think it was necessary to tell." What is wrong with this picture?

I want to share with you the one quote that helped me conquer the fear for good:

"But the principal causes of disease are physical, for the human body is composed of numerous elements, but in the measure of an especial equilibrium. As long as this equilibrium is maintained, man is preserved from disease; but if this essential balance, which is the pivot of the constitution, is disturbed, the constitution is disordered, and disease will supervene ... When by remedies and treatments the equilibrium is reestablished, the disease is banished." The emphasis on the last sentence is mine.

The Case for Spirituality

The first few weeks after my diagnosis were the darkest days and nights of my life. I had been having a spiritual crisis for a good part of the past decade so it wasn't exactly easy for me to turn to God during my darkest hours. But really all I wanted to do was pray and meditate. My beloved father-in-law, who fought in Korea, always says that there are no atheists in foxholes. He says that during the most extreme combat conditions, there is always--without exception--an invocation of God. And so I entered what I thought would be the biggest fight of my life with a "hello again!" to my spiritual foundation and beliefs.

I know that God is very controversial right now (and really has been forever!) But our pact at the beginning of all this was to: Assume Nothing. Question Everything. So I suggest you figure out what you believe at your very core and stick with it--whatever that may be.

I was diagnosed in early August, had surgery in September and started chemotherapy right after my birthday in October. During that entire time, I was also being treated by my naturopath. In addition, I had also begun to see an acupuncturist and a body worker. After I had recovered from my surgery, it was time for me to embark upon chemo. While I had gone fearlessly into surgery, something told me to fear chemo. I felt like that was the point of no return. That I would be so damaged after chemotherapy that I could never be the "healthy" person that I had been before. I sometimes even had this fear that my body would be too weak to handle chemo and that I would drop dead in the middle of one of the treatments. Also, the three real live people I knew who had battled cancer and won had all eschewed chemo and radiation (technically my aunt with the non-Hodgkin's lymphoma wasn't given the choice).

My naturopath is an amazing man. He never tells you directly NOT to do something. What he always advises you to do instead is: (1) not make a decision based on fear; and (2) always do independent investigation of the truth.

Despite what people say, it takes an incredible amount of courage to decide against chemo and radiation, and go the alternative route. In your moment of greatest desperation, you do not want to be a trailblazer. You just want the tried, true and tested because there is no consolation prize. People often live or die by these decisions. The medical community for the most part does its best to put the fear of God into you when it comes to trying alternative healthcare. I saw a lot of eye rolling, and heard a lot of exasperated sighs and patronizing explanations of how if it worked, we would all know about it. I do not believe this to be true necessarily. I was never a conspiracy theorist but I have read a lot of factual accounts of how money and greed have thwarted, buried, sidelined ... and ultimately prevailed. (I intend to devote an entire post to the Stevia/Nutrasweet story.)

In the end, my personal decision was to undergo chemotherapy and radiation. I tried my best not to make that decision based on fear. My reasoning was that I was young, healthy and aware. My tumor was large and advanced, and I would need the heavy artillery that chemo and radiation would provide, even at the potential expense of other parts of my body. And because I was being well cared for by my naturopath, I would be in the best position to undo or minimize the damage that was being caused to my body. This choice has served me well.

A quote that resonated with me: "Resort ye, in times of sickness, to competent physicians; We have not set aside the use of material means, rather have We confirmed it through this Pen, which God hath made to be the Dawning-place of His shining and glorious Cause."

Exploiting Your Weaknesses!

I saw a friend last weekend who had last seen me in New York City two winters ago--about a year and half before I was diagnosed. Her remark made me pause and ask her to repeat herself. She said: "When I last saw you, there was way too much going on in your life. I left New York thinking that you were putting yourself in a position that could exploit your weaknesses. And illness is always a show stopper." I have been thinking about this idea for some time now--the idea that physical illness can develop from diet, depression, stress, your psychological or emotional state or past.

Early in my diagnosis, I kept asking my medical doctors whether some aspect of my diet or my psychological state had in some way affected my health. I certainly had absolutely no risk factors (genetics, smoking, alcohol, etc.) Without exception my medical doctors said no. Now these are some very smart people who have been educated in the nation's best schools, are at a teaching hospital at an Ivy League university, and keep up with all the latest research that's out there. So they should know, right? Right?

This issue of causation is pretty controversial. Most medical doctors will tell you that you have no way of knowing "why" or "how" you "got" cancer. Notice the language: it's very passive. As it turns out, traditional medicine requires the patient to be passive in general. All you really have to do is show up and your doctors will "heal" you using a combination of surgery, medicine. I was never convinced that my doctors knew everything there was to know (or even believed the things that I knew were critically important to healing). I wasn't even sure that they knew more than I did on certain subjects!

My problem with the medical establishment's view of causation is very fundamental: If you have no idea how it came about, then how do you prevent it from happening again? This is the most important question in all of this, in my opinion. And saying: "We don't know. We don't know." does not sit well with me. The first person to give me an answer that satisfied me enough to move on was my naturopath, a well-respected man who has been practicing for four decades. He said: Amanda, there are enough people now out there whose illnesses have not followed traditional medicine's trajectory and projections of healing and survival. There are easily thousands. There is no reason for you NOT to be one of those people. I suggest you stop looking at 5-year survival rates and start reading the accounts of people who have had so-called miraculous recoveries.

Well hello! This answer resonated with me. I always felt like I did have a level of control. And I intended (and intend) to exercise it to make sure my cancer does not come back. Which brings me back to having put myself in a position that exploited my weaknesses. I had a pretty rough decade back there! On many levels--spiritual, professional, personal, friendships, relationships--I was under an incredible amount of stress. And although I would describe myself as a fundamentally happy and positive person, the last several years were marked by overwhelming negativity and cynicism on my part. Caroline Myss says in Anatomy of the Spirit that your biography becomes your biology. An old ayurvedic saying tells you that if you want to know how you'll feel tomorrow, look at what you're thinking today. I believe that at the very least I put myself in a position that exploited my weaknesses. I don't intend to make that mistake again.

Calling back all energy ...

There are people who thrive on positivity and there are those who are addicted to negativity and drama. Regardless of which group you belong to or whether you even know which you belong to, if you are going to have a shot at healing, you are going to need as much of your energy as you can muster. What that means is that you will need to disengage from anything that is tapping into your energy and sucking it away from you. You will have to "call back" all (or at least most) of the energy you have put out there in your feud with the neighbor and the old drama with your mother and the hurt feelings with your old best friend and the rivalries with your siblings and the power struggle with your boss. None of this matters--at least not right now--because your sole focus should be summoning up as much energy as you need for your healing. This does not mean that you have to call or write every single person with whom you ever exchanged words (although you may want to do that with some). But whatever way works best for you is what you should be doing.

There are a lot of very eloquent books about this subject. One of the first books I read, at the suggestion of the aunt I mentioned who healed herself of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma using only natural methods, was Brandon Bays's The Journey. Much later I read Radical Forgiveness by Colin Tipping (I had some very fundamental issues with a chunk of what this guy said, but most of his work is clearly inspired and very helpful). Later on, when I was past the code red stage, I read Anatomy of the Spirit, by Caroline Myss. It is, in my opinion, the seminal work on energy and how it affects your short- and long-term healing. I finished it and then turned around and started reading it again--this time with a highlighter.

Although I was always pretty clueless at these types of things, I notice that I have become more adept at noticing what types of things and people and circumstances suck out my energy, and so I avoid them! Or get away as quickly as possible. Be very stingy with your energy. Because you will need it to live!

Traditional or alternative? For me? Both of course!

Unless they've been through it themselves, no one can ever fully understand what it's like to get a cancer diagnosis. The thing is that I would have never thought in a million years that I actually had cancer and so I was incredibly cavalier about the whole thing. I should have guessed something was wrong when the biopsy results didn't come back the day they told me they were due--Friday. (Now I realize they probably ran the test again, to make sure.) And so on Monday I called to see if they had heard anything yet. They looked up my file and told me the doctor would call me back. When the doctor actually called me back and said: "it's breast cancer," my whole world literally slowed down. It was like I was having an out of body experience. Like a huge tsunami wave just crashed over me.

The next 72 hours were probably the worst three days of my life. I have a hard time even thinking about it now. I thought I was dying. I knew that the lump was big because I could feel it and I knew it had been there for a long time. All I could think of was: it's spread everywhere and I'm going to die. I probably lost about 10 pounds that week. I could not eat and I could not sleep. All I wanted to do was pray. I was terrified. I was young. I had two babies. I was a healthy person. Where did this come from?

So I got my diagnosis on a Monday. By that Friday I had scheduled an MRI and had appointments with the breast board at Stanford. I also had already spoken to a naturopath I had heard about for years and had in hand a packet of herbs and supplements his office had put together for me and fedexed. Why? A couple of important reasons.

First of all, it was really important for me to be proactive and to DO SOMETHING. The whole sitting around waiting to die thing was not working for me at all. I did not want to feel like a victim. Second, I had been lucky enough to have had several important experiences in my life:

In the 1980s a friend's father had been diagnosed with melanoma--a deadly form of skin cancer. I remember his situation was dire and I recall that he was on a special regimen of juices and coffee enemas, known as the Gerson therapy. He completely recovered and is still living.

About eight years ago, my aunt from the Netherlands was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Like Andre, my friend's father, my aunt had absolutely no medical treatment. She treated herself with a combination of foods, juices, herbs, meditation, visualization, acupuncture, and walks in nature. Within a year, my aunt had absolutely no tumors left. Eight years later, she is still being seen every three months and is healthy and thriving. Her medical doctors are baffled by her (as they should be).

A good friend was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer about 5-6 years ago. He had surgery but refused chemo and radiation. I'm not exactly sure what he did, but I knew he had done a limited amount of herbal therapy and some visualization and power of the mind stuff.

Because these were people that I actually knew firsthand and not some potential nutcases I was reading about on the internet, I was more apt to believe that it was at least within the realm of possibility that I could be okay, even if my cancer was pretty advanced. The reason I contacted a naturopath in Texas (and not in Northern California where I live) is simply because I had heard of this guy. I knew that he was good and I was in no emotional position to go searching for someone at that moment. (Later, when things had calmed down for me I actually met with another naturopath in Palo Alto. She seemed fine, but I was appalled by how outrageously expensive she was. The fee for my first visit was over $300 and had I bought the supplements she recommended I would have dropped over a thousand just on that first visit--not a penny of which is covered by insurance. This is not okay! More about how alternative medicine appears to be the province of the wealthy in a later post.)

And so it was that in August of 2007, I began taking my herbal supplements, had my first MRI, and embarked on what would be the most amazing journey of my life. Let me just say that I was never an easy patient. The reason I am proud of this is because studies show that the more difficult patients have higher survival rates. But certainly neither the traditional or alternative doctors made it easy. The fact is that each is largely dismissive and sometimes downright contemptuous of what the other does. This makes no sense to me since I am sure that everyone has a critical role to play. Or at least they did in my case.

In a later post: Why I refuse to accept "We will never know why you got cancer!"

Independent Investigation of the Truth

On August 3, 2007, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was still in my 30s and in the midst of breastfeeding my second baby. My first child had just turned three. My friends and family were shocked. Before that August, had there been a vote on such things in life, I would likely have been voted the person least likely to get ill. I had always been thin and athletic, virtually a vegetarian for much of my life, and rarely sick. I walked and biked long distances, traveled frequently and refused to take even so much as a Tylenol. I could count the headaches I had had in my entire life on two hands.

There were some warning signs, of course. In the past year or so I had been tired often, and I had had frequent clogged ducts in my breasts, particularly the right one where the tumor was. I attributed these to having two young babies and to the trials of breastfeeding, and nothing more. It took me more than six months after feeling the lump in my breast to finally see a doctor—that is how sure I was that my lump was nothing more than a breastfeeding issue. This was of course a horrible lapse in judgment, because the tumor was so large by then that it automatically catapulted me into a stage III diagnosis. Today the staging of my illness doesn't concern me at all.

I am beginning these pages because as much as there is written about cancer, there seems to be at best a void and at worst a campaign of deliberate misinformation on many issues of huge importance. On the one hand, the amount of literature on cancer is so vast as to be bewildering. On the other, there are vitally critical topics on which traditional medicine is completely silent, dismissive, or hostile. The sources that do talk about these issues may seem irrational, unscientific or downright “quacky.” I am a lawyer. I ask questions. It is what I do. I ask them from many angles. I ask them over and over again until I get an answer that makes sense to me. More often than not, I was unable to get rational answers or even consistent answers from people who were trained for many many years to know these things. Who do you believe?

I believe and have always believed in the independent investigation of truth. That is, I will take nothing for granted and will not automatically assume that the things that are told to me are fact, particularly if they do not make sense. I will use the faculties I have to find the truth. And I will do my best not to operate from a place of fear. Here’s to advancing the public discourse.

Respectfully submitted,

Amanda