have no fear...

i'm like a garden bed sprouting nightshade, its true. but evidently its what i need to throw off the old and in with the new.

last night i dreamt that i was watching from a vantage above a dog below who was running an obstacle course. round one, he was victorious. round two, he completed the course again to great cheer in my heart. by the third course the dog had morphed from a whippet type to my verook who passed away a few years ago. this time he missed a jump to catastrophic effect. he slid into a barrier and injured his head before tumbling into other mishaps. i raced down to reach him and get aid, calling for an ambulance, shouting out the homeopathics i would need at hand to help me (sic! you see?!!!) him. by the time i found him he had dragged himself under a staircase where only his tail was showing and it was covered in clear mucus and urine. i knew he was going to die.

this dream was a clear warning as dogs generally represent the habit body in my unconscious language (teach a dog something once, they know it or expect it for life). the message is, keep on as you have been michelle, making allowances for old habits of view and practice and thought when it suits you, and you will never make it through round three. round one was the original diagnosis and the restricting of that metastatic spread courtesy 7 months of arduous, disciplined work. round two was the surgery. round three is this relapse.

following on this dream i had another of being selected to address an audience. despite my 'brilliant' talk (the subject was, 'on the importance of drama and narrative in human lives') the audience was not with me but chattering amongst themselves. even more to the point, during my presentation the stage became overcrowded with disinterested teenagers loitering about. when my time was finally up i closed with a favorite hippocrates quote someone brought up only a few days earlier, 'the art is long, life is short.' once off stage i was escorted by the MC to sign the autograph book all the speakers were recorded in. a couple approached us and i thought they were surely coming to tell me what a great lecture i'd given, instead they did nothing of the kind but instead busied themselves with some trinket on the table next to us. all through the dream i kept trying to turn it into a feel good ending, but the dreamer was having none of it! what marvelous persistence!

the speaker, the audience, the MC, the disinterested teenagers and couple are all reflections of my mind body relationship. i've thought all these years that we've been communicating, my body and me, but we are not. a friend pointed out recently that i display a marked degree of emotional detachment when discussing things about which i should have at least some emotion. then two people yesterday made the same comment to me, not that i didn't know it myself, but when something gets repeated for your benefit through the agency of others its a sign to take notice, period.... they both said that no amount of frequency therapy or green juice or IVs or oxygen will save me unless i address the disconnect forged so very long ago to make things endurable, but now, left unchecked, is my death certificate in waiting.

i've started doing EFT and have been amazed at the results. it only takes a couple of taps to unlock a torrent of emotions, mostly rage, frustration, and grief, that i've turned my back on and wished away like a magically-minded child for far too long.

my ingenuity of mind, the treatments, none of it will bear fruit without radical change. so now, being a creature of habit, i'm putting all of my intelligence to bear in catching myself out... the way i lead forward into new moments with old expectations, the way old fears dwelled on bring forward more of the same out of neutral circumstance that could totally go in a more wholesome direction, the way i self-comfort by having fixed routines and extremist consumption styles that no longer serve... all of this has to go and go now. there is no time for considering my options or cherry-picking what changes seem least offensive or difficult.

there is brightness in all this, there always is. the night after my first frequency treatment i dreamt that i was sliding and sliding down a slick snowy incline and no matter how hard i tried to get a foothold, i just kept sliding for what seemed miles. all of a sudden my foot got purchase and i brought myself to a stop. to my left i discovered a thick rope. i took hold of it and had such power that it only took a few hand over hands to pull myself up what took so long for me to fall. at the top on the other side going down was a rickety staircase. i had to pick and choose and there were moments of hesitation and fear, but i rallied and got down the other side onto stable ground and woke up.

yes i'm in hot water and yes i know it. but i have much farther to go before i sleep. and if you think i can't comeback from these dire straits, as PET once said with pirouetting style, just watch me!

update...

two days ago

since writing 'relapse, baby,' over a week ago (i had only time to record the draft but not to edit it until tonight) and with the full support of my employer, i've cut back on my manic schedule (surely an expression of trying to distract myself with the semblance of a return to a normal life before i was due for it or sufficiently healed from surgery) and have refocused on second-stage treatment full time (hyperbarics, IVs, frequency therapy etc) with a view to switching to gerson therapy for my diet by march (will be writing more on this soon).

i found another pea-sized tumor next to the first one in the L armpit today and the thoracic nodule has doubled in size, but my pain keeps reducing daily. after my second frequency therapy session i ovulated (it was looking like my menses was going to be suspended this month due to the extremis of my overall stress levels... to be having a regular healthy period during a serious illness is a good sign); i'm taking honeysuckle (bach flower Rx) after the freq machine noted i needed it and continuing to move forward. i've had a lot of fatigue which is particularly demoralizing for me, but i'm handling it much better since therapy resolved my relaxation conflict. speaking of which, though i have much more to report and write of, i must bow to my need for more rest and call it a night.

two weeks ago

relapse, baby...

i've been at the receiving end of my fair share of a tour of liabilities... blindspots in my thinking, details that get overlooked, assumptions that prove disastrous. i consider the attention i'm getting at this threshold of my life a greater gift than the malignancies i'm getting coaching from, and everything i have to report must be read from this context of immense gratitude, commitment to change and learning.

a couple weeks ago i was offered the opportunity to get some structural bodywork done, as detailed below. i felt extremely fortunate since my personal finances are down to a trickle. while i have the prospect to begin earning more income, its predicated on my recovery of health, a catch 22. the lesson i'm about to relate is that diligence of thought and consultation with gut instinct must continue to operate even and especially when you are the object of charity.

i presented myself with a dear friend as translator a couple fridays past for the evaluation. the elder practitioner wearing surgical scrubs met us at the door and kindly ushered us into his treatment room. i noted on his wall canadian diplomas in naturopathy and massage therapy among others. the assessment went well in that he deftly located all my trigger points and areas of congestion. he decided i needed four consecutive treatments, monday to thursday of the week next, a two week break, and then two more treatments.

we arranged for me to have the sessions before work and immediately i began to have reservations about his technique (he rubbed tissues and never engaged the fascia) and about his strategy, for he honed in on the scar, on my remaining breast, and on the lymph nodes throughout the front of my body. i asked him about this, saying that everything i'd read and knew of contraindicated this approach. the literature says to avoid cancerous tumors or direct work on lymphatic nodes if there are of suspicious character or metastatic. he replied that if he did -not- work on these areas now, i would end up in serious trouble later. he was so emphatic i relented and i'm not sure why. perhaps it was because i'd already given my consent to the treatment and was on the table and feeling like a needy child. all last year i had the gumption to say no to authority figures telling me what i should do when my knowledge or instinct guided me otherwise, but somehow because he was a kindly elder and these treatments were a gift, i made a grave error, and it was mine alone to make. it was easy to say no to the oncologists behind their desks when they were, to my mind, talking foul. i also recognized a synchronic rerun, hearing ukrainian again. i struggled to connect to the language i once spoke so fluently, which can only bring to mind mother, an admixture of stage performance joys and personal misery.

a few days earlier i had a dream that i found two large tumors under my L armpit. one of them on closer inspection proved to be a small replica of a breast. i also had a dream a few days before of finding a lump on the side of my head and when i looked at it in a mirror, found it too was depicted as a small breast. during my assessment before the treatments started in earnest, there were no palpable nodes save for the nodule just below the scar i wrote of below.

by the second treatment i noticed i was having a sharp increase in pain while i was at work. not just local but systemic, erupting in multiple locations at once. breast, underarms, heart, lung tips, scar line, groin, bladder, ovaries, lower back, kidneys. i started taking my pain narcotics again and foolishly tried to press on. it wasn't until the third treatment on wednesday that i asked my questions again and on getting the same answers began to move beyond being hard of understanding.

that night the pain went out of control, driving me from bed after hours of restless tossing. as i went downstairs to fetch water and percocets i felt my L arm rubbing up against my body in a peculiar way. after i quenched my thirst and put a couple percs down my throat i investigated my armpit and ribs. i found my rib cage was measurably swollen compared to the R and then to my surreal deja-vued disappointment, i found a new tumor the size of an apricot that hadn't been there a mere six days earlier. faaaak. i knew instantly what i'd done. i don't blame the bodyworker for i see this as something i certainly brought on myself. i of course have no choice but to put my experience in writing for him and ask him to reconsider his convictions, but my followup will be governed by concern for others, not a displaced blame for my own lack of judgement.

i reached out to the hyperbaric clinic owner who has consented to let me get treatment on credit. i told her of my relapse and when i arrived for my first dive since a couple post-op she greeted me with moist eyes in the hallway with a big hug. she said she had a surprise for me. it turns out just a week before she brought on board two new practitioners who work with frequency therapy to heal cancer. she told me she's arranged for me to get some treatment, and that my first session would be that very night after my dive. i was gobsmacked. this was special synchrony as a dear friend in california had only recently sent me a book about frequency as a healing modality which is sitting at my desk at work waiting to be read amid a prodigious pile of library books. i wrote to my friend a couple days later to tell her of this magic turn of events. in yet another synchrony she had just found a cheap copy of a book she wanted to send me which only two days before i signed out from the library, 'Mind-Body Deceptions....' (see my twitter feed) a book which, having just started to read, i will cherish in my office library.

the previous weekend at the medicine buddha retreat where i took the empowerment, i had sincerely asked the universe for some help with this unexpected relapse. i'd been plowing along by my own powers with inconsistent supports and now had made a terrible mistake. i knew this mistake was consistent with the kinds of learning experiences one needs to acquire if the goal is to learn how to manage this ferocious disease, but for the first time i experienced a few days of feeling dark and pessimistic.

after my dive they invited me into a serpentine le corbusier chair and hooked me up to the machine. a band around the head, the wrists and ankles. first the machine reads your imbalances and then it starts inputing new frequencies that will slowly restore you to health. the assistant had never seen so many residuals of trauma... the head injuries, brain hemorrhages, neck and soft tissue injuries, the shoulder, groin and pelvic traumas and repeated joint sprains and strains. on the emotional scale she noted i'd had recent problems with depression, disappointment, anguish. she also noted, and i chuckled, that i have pronounced relaxation conflict... meaning i'm incapable of giving myself proper rest and feel guilty for taking the rest i need. she also told me that its indeed strange that i developed breast cancer... that its certainly an overlay related to psychological distress, not something rooted in a weakness in the body or genetic disposition, something confirmed with the genetic testing i had done.

she said the main weaknesses were the lungs, which she said are in a borderline situation and must be taken care of if i'm to avoid problems there, and also the heart, which is interesting since i started having chest pains and heavy vomiting the week before. she also indicated the bladder is a source of concern, more than reproductive organs, in keeping with a recent history of bladder/kidney infections when i took up booze in earnest a few years ago.

this first part took about an hour, then the reprogramming took another hour. she said the new frequencies would hold as long as my body was able to retain them and the longer it does the better the median level of health. most people in my situation with active cancers can't hold the frequencies at first but the treatments can only be repeated every 3-5 days. they wanted me to sleep at the clinic rather than go home to preserve the frequencies, but i noted a profound feeling of exhaustion. i dragged myself home knowing the clinic would be active again in the morning and i likely wouldn't be.

i slept for 18 hours the next day and into the night. as a result of some intensive IV therapy, a dive and the frequency treatment i've been able to stop taking the hydromorphone and the percocets. onwards!

“We all have a destiny, a dharma to fulfill, and there are endless opportunities, people, and circumstances that surface throughout our lives to illuminate our path.”
(Dr. Wayne W. Dyer)

"The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path."
(D’Alembert)

"Oral doses [of vitamin C] act as antioxidants, protecting cells from damage caused by reactive compounds that contain oxygen. But vitamin C given intravenously can have the opposite effect by promoting the formation of one of those compounds: hydrogen peroxide. Cancer cells are particularly susceptible to damage by such reactive oxygen-containing compounds."

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043972_vitamin_C_cancer_treatment_intravenous_injections.html#ixzz2u9nm9xYG

"Let no one persuade you to cure the headache until he has first given you his soul to be cured. For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body." (Hippocrates)

currently on desk...

working at present on a comprehensive review of dietary approaches to the management of cancer. i've been getting up to speed on the swirl of criticisms coming forward against the ketogenic diet, which is fairly easy to dismantle as most people are at a loss as to how to really implement it correctly for best results.

notwithstanding, having listened to the objections of Dr. Nicholas Gonzales, a world-famous physician working out of NYC who uses completely individualized dietary protocols to heal cancer according to the compelling evidence gathered by a rogue dentist, Dr. Kelley (deceased), who in turn based his work on that of a turn-of-the-century Scottish doctor who had great results treating cancer with megadoses of pancreatic enzymes, i acknowledge that there have been many cases of individuals who have been able to use things like daily and large quantities of carrot juice, rich in natural sugars, and diets that included substantial amounts of complex carbohydrates, still bringing their cancers into remission and going on to thrive for many decades in health. this of course flies in the face of the suggested perilous role played by glucose in cancer proliferation.

personally, i'm not convinced these exceptions disprove the ketogenic rule, as Dr. Gonzales has offered, nor do they dismiss any question of evident negative influence from high blood sugar values in cancer cases. what's becoming more apparent to me is that rules are really the exception. yes, its essential to maintain an open, investigatory mind at the ready to incorporate new information as it presents, but within a global, not local, arena. its one of the many flaws of current scientific practice that it compartmentalizes what is actually connected, and dissects what is indivisible.

someone who has systemic candidiasis, or diabetes, for example, could not possibly thrive on a diet rich in natural sugars or carbs, but what's more, isolating dietary success rates on their own and out of context fails to take into account a host of other factors that contribute to healing and recovery which have very little to do with what you put into your mouth. toxic attitudes, reluctance to take personal inventory or make necessary changes in one's life that go beyond diet are actually far more critical to the metamorphosis of active healing and this is something that has been anecdotally demonstrated time and again. as carolyn myss, the medical intuitive, has repeatedly pointed out, if one's approach to personal transformation is hindered by fixed and unresponsive attitudes borne of past experiences as opposed to current circumstances, no amount of dietary intercession is likely to help. yet when a patient puts forward the courage necessary to make changes and to listen to the embodied voice of disease as it efforts to bring us into balance and unity with spirit, we can, as she put it, eat cat food. healing will come, or not, as an extension of attitudes and beliefs.

over the next few days i'll be completing a set of general guidelines based on common sense, individualization, and the great strides in our understanding of the metabolic basis of cancer. no one can be relieved of the obligation to use and consult every day with one's bodily intuitions as to right path, right approach. there is no one size fits all diet for cancer, but much of our collective experiences over the last century in particular can be synthesized into a foundation of understanding that can be of benefit to many who wish to take active responsibility and a participatory role in their own disease management and recovery.

a free lecture...

Breast cancer is a frightening diagnosis for women, particularly in view of the profound secondary effects of standard of care treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation. Despite apparent gains in technology and science, mortality rates for cancer remain relatively unchanged and many who have watched family members and friends succumb to the ravages of chemical and radiation interventions are now seeking alternatives. 

Since the early 1970s physicians and clinicians working in the field of holistic and integrative medicine have explored and documented many excellent treatment options for cancer patients who wish to preserve the integrity of their constitutional health while managing the disease into long-term remission. Principal among these is intravenous high dose vitamin C. Based on the Nobel-prize winning work of pioneer Dr. Linus Pauling and further developed by such luminaries as Dr. Thomas E. Levy, vitamin C IV therapy, in combination with a complete program of lifestyle modifications like the ketogenic diet, naturopathic supplementation, hyperbaric oxygen, physical exercise, and personal inquiry, have been proven time and again to be an outstanding means by which patients given a morbid prognosis can take control of their own fate and support the body to do what it does best... restore balance and vital health.

While genes have an important role to play, the field of epigenetics now conclusively tells us that context is key... genes are not as determinant as we've been led to imagine by the popular press, but are turned on or left dormant as a result of stress and other mitigating powers at play in our surrounds. This is why taking personal inventory, examining professional, family, and relationship dynamics, and exploring one's psychological and spiritual attunements, is so important. And while we are all keenly aware of pollutants and hazards in the earth, water and air, the issue of susceptibility is key. Even when all conditions are maintained at a constant, we very often observe that one person will fall ill while another does not, highlighting the importance of looking at the overall strength and resilience of the constitution as a cornerstone for survival in these often troubled times.

What's more, as cutting-edge research now tells us, cancer is best understood as a metabolic disease rather than one of mere abnormal cell growth produced by genetic or environmental factors. The research of Dr. Thomas Seyfried in particular, a prominent promoter of the ketogenic diet, has illuminated the mechanisms within the cancer cell that point indisputably towards the impaired cellular energy metabolism which defines the disease, no matter where its point of origin in the body. In effect, healthy cells can switch between both glucose and fats as energy sources while cancer cells cannot. Exploiting this impairment, the ketogenic diet strictly removes all sources of glucose and carbohydrates from the diet, replacing them with high quality plant fats and fatty acids like coconut oil, olive oil, avocado, and macadamia nuts, to name a few. Bringing blood glucose levels down to a minimum, this approach effectively starves cancer while continuing to provide a rich and abundant supply of energy to the body in the form of these superb fats. When dietary modifications like this are combined with intravenous vitamin C, the results are often spectacular. Megadosing with anywhere from 20-100grams of C ensures that this important helper can reach and saturate tumour tissues where its presence is preferentially toxic to cancer cells.

Cancer is a diagnosis that causes tremendous fear yet in truth it's simply a call to bring balance and awareness to our living. Rather than being experienced as a terrible turn of events it can be viewed as an opportunity to be embraced and exploited for the highest and best. If you would like more information on treatment options available for both the prevention and treatment of cancer, please feel free to contact our clinic. Our healing abilities are limitless!

doing a little jig...!

it occurred to me shortly after i discovered the little nodule just south of my scar that this was actually a response my body was giving me to a question i had self-raised... with an obvious tumour outside the body such as i had in the breast it was easy to gauge the success or failure of my efforts, whereas after surgery i'm somewhat in the dark as to the changes taking place inside the lymphatic system or elsewhere and i'm not terribly keen to start exposing myself to radiation every few months for the sake of a CT scan-aided look-see.

it was only a few days after i was thinking about all this that the nodule appeared and each day for a while it was getting every so subtly larger... until this weekend when it started to melt away after i did some emotional cleansing and work on my relationships with friends and loved ones, renewed degenerated vows at the dharma center, got back on my diet and started really ramping up the amount of our homemade lypospheric vitamin C that i was getting into me. then, of course, came the great news that i had many more IV treatments on my tab than i imagined. i had a groovy cocktail bag of C and B17 on friday and spent a fruitful weekend full of activity getting a tonne of deferred things finished. this morning the nodule is half the size of my pinky fingernail, down from the size of a big lemon seed. yeeeeeeeeeeee! :))))

angels!!!

i just got word that contrary to my thinking that i only had a few prepaid IVs left on my tab to get me thru, i actually have ___26____ !!!! the clinic in toronto has been so busy the calculations couldn't be clarified until just now when the assistant was able to send me word. I AM OVER THE MOON!!!

update...

now that i have my footing again, must report some ups and downs after surgery...

had to have a CT scan two weeks ago when it appeared i was presenting signs of embolism. luckily this was ruled out but the results, which could be compared to the CT scan prior to surgery, show a prevascular lymph node (located near aorta) which is still quite small (6mm) but larger compared to previous; same goes for a small left axillary node, seen before, but now larger; and a new small left clavicular node, and a right mammary lymph node are also newly affected. these are, as my surgeon put it, the children of rasputin (the name given to my breast tumour because of its persistence and reluctance to die) ... i must be vigilant and strong in body mind spirit to regain an upper hand here.

new playing field is such that there is no funds now for the treatments that spared me the metastatic spread oncologists had predicted would be my lot and doom last year... back then i was gifted with daily IVs and hyperbarics, these are now well out of reach. as substitute we're experimenting with homemade lypospheric vitamin C and next week, even though its not my favorite, i'll have no choice but to resume a gradual program of hydrogen peroxide as a way to get some form of oxygen therapy.

i'm commuting to caledon every day and it's a godsend in terms of providing for a reboot of monkeymind and reversing the wheel of habit that came down like a tonne of bricks on my head post-op. my new friend and employer barbara has become a light in my life that i'm so deeply grateful for. she arranged for me to consult with an elder from the Ukraine two night ago. a former orthopedic surgeon he now works under an RMT in the manner of a structural integrator, but with benefits! during my assessment he discovered that both my carotid arteries are seriously inflamed and blocked, a condition he said he normally only sees in 70 and 80 year olds. when he later took my blood pressure to rule out a serious vascular disorder and found it to be textbook perfect, like an 18 year old, i started to get a sense of the metaphor of a split come to life in me. he located areas in the L breast of thickening and inflammation presaging another tumour, which, as he said and i believed, we are NOT going to let happen. he also found some trouble with my L leg in keeping with an old hip/groin injury and cramps i've been having in the foot arch and calf. there are some obstructions in lymphatic flow thru the ankle channels that he's going to fix shortly. finally i have a knot the size of a lemon in the soft tissue adjacent to the L SI joint which developed over the last two weeks along with some LBP (low back pain). i will be seeing him every morning next week before work to get a jump on these structural issues in order to restore balance, to leech off holding patterns of distress and emotional banking, and to re-establish proper flow of interstitial fluids so that nourishment can get to the cells and toxins can be swept away.

i've been sleeping poorly on account of a return of night sweats and hot flashes (not a good sign) and yesterday i found a nodule that appeared out of nowhere just below the scar line.

i can't deny this has become very serious again. i let my guard down, lapsed into a somewhat mysterious depression, drawn into a sense of impotence and frustration around the necessary changes i need to make in order to get my wounded mind into good harness for the first. to that end i'm spending more and more time at the dharma center on the weekends. working full time to try and effect a bit of a professional rebirth is highly rewarding to me emotionally and psychologically but i do recognize as well that i'm testing the limits of my energy, often finding myself coming home late at night with nothing left to give. finding the right balance will become key if i want to make the most of this clinical opportunity for the long term.

i've had an increase in pain as the numbness and swelling around the mastectomy now disappears and have become to my dismay somewhat reliant on the percocets i was prescribed. they are not the powerful habit-forming extra strength variety, but i totally see what i've read about the opioid narcotics... when i take a couple for pain, usually mid afternoon or before bed, i feel a warmth and well-being i've never experienced on my own, one that is terribly seductive and which i must and will find a way to source by inner means and independent effort.

understanding that as a result of my early life and later addictive excursions i have less receptors for dopamine than the average person, this will be a challenge, but as with all of the challenges of late, i know that expecting success, expecting recovery, expecting well-being and happiness in my life is half the equation. the other half requires personal courage and a willingness to see each and every detail, each and every experience, as key to becoming whole and at one with the true self that lies underneath all noise.

believe me when i say, onwards!

crazy wisdom...

"Panoramic awareness is based on a certain amount of trust, or optimism. Basically nothing is regarded as a failure or as dangerous. Rather, whatever arises is experienced as part of a creative and loving relationship toward oneself." [Chogyam Trungpa]

highest good...

"The highest good is like water. Water gives life to ten thousand things and does not strive."
[Tao-te Ching]

book excerpt...

i got some good advice last week about my plans to enter the CBC CanadaWrites contest... it would be bordering on foolish to submit an account of my experiences with managing cancer via natural methods until i'm further down the road and genuinely in the all-clear for at least a calendar year, otherwise i risk being pilloried for leading vulnerable people down a garden path. my account, i had to beg to differ, does nothing of the kind, but i don't have the $25 bucks to spare in any event, and its ultimately sound counsel for the time being. its preferable that i continue writing in preparation for a long format book instead, where my latitudes can be my own and i can draw more liberally on my desire to combine creative non-fiction with technical and academic components suited to both lay people like me but also those working in the field of healing and wellness.

here's a taste of this work in progress... all rights reserved please.


In their defense, doctors have been trained to view disease as catastrophe, not an opportunity our bodies ingeniously gift us. To me, illness and misfortune are clear invitations to reckon with the balance and authenticity lacking in our living, a chance to exercise resistance to not just the masoch whip of self-blame and hopelessness that has gutted society, but the dogmatism of passive expectations of cure that has made perpetual children of us all. Disease, like all challenges, tenderizes best under the salt of taking complete responsibility with an intensely kind and loving attitude. 




"Yes, I understand..." I was quick to reassure him. "I mean, I figured as much when the aspirate was all blood. And listen, I should tell you, I'm intent on doing my own thing with this. I will go down a certain garden path with you to get the information I need, but I will never take chemo or radiation... I'm hoping you can meet me all the way on this."

I could detect the slightest tightening in his voicebox, as if he changed his opinion of me and not much in my favour. Did I want to die? Surely I must if I'm refusing treatment. Was it a case of internet knowledge gone awry in this irrational bravado or was it simple arrogance masking fear and confusion? 

"Michelle, I'm going to arrange for you to be seen at Princess Margaret, they have a fast-track clinic there, I hope you'll consider carefully the treatment options available, a lumpectomy might be all that's required."

The lump in question first presented as a simple cyst, something I'd encountered in my twenties a few times but never again since... soft margins, moveable, sensitive to my menstrual cycle. I wasn't worried enough to have it looked at, it was the need to establish a local GP after a recent move that led me to book a physical in the first. Bringing it up was an afterthought, a diversion to remedy the anticlimax of my visit, not something borne of alarm or the need for drama or negative attention. When he concurred with my self-diagnosis and offered to aspirate, a standard discomfort-relieving procedure where a syringe is used to draw out a cyst's fluid contents, I was almost relieved to give him something to do. I was otherwise in very good health according to my narration and his cursory exam. The truth was a cyst was the least of my worries. I was, literally as it turned out, morbidly unhappy and hiding this from myself and others in a deluge of intoxicants and general lawlessness, frittering away my life force and talents with aimless and harmful excursions away from source and its unblinking call to truth. 

Instead I kept things jocular. I knew from experience that this white coat medical theater was no place to bring forward exquisite report of human stain. This was mechanistic diagnosis at its most impinged, and while my doctor was attentive and textbook conciliatory, I could already sense the gulf that would widen, a gulf that he, more than me, would come to struggle with.  



i'm hoping to have the book completed and self-published by the end of the calendar year. it will detail the perfect storm in my life that produced the cancer call to wakefullness, my hit and miss experiences with managing my own treatment, the body of evidence and research that continues to point away from suppressive and destructive maintstays of conventional cancer care and the exciting successes achieved with total mind body alignment and observance of natural law represented by the holistic approach, as well as the political and social implications of the booming percentage of people like me who have opted out of conventional medicine and who face many penalties for doing so, even while demonstrating the rhyme, reason and sense of their choices by the fact of their recovery and vibrant persistence.

reversing the wheel of samsara...

"Usually we feel that there's a large problem and we have to fix it. The instruction is to stop. Do something unfamiliar. Do anything besides rushing off in the same old direction, up to the same old tricks." (Pema Chodron)

inner wisdom tradition...

"If you do not find the Wisdom and Mystery of life within yourself, you surely will never find it without." [The Charge of the Goddess, central premise of the Inner Wisdom tradition]

"The wisdom traditions... lead one to an inner poise that allows vivid awareness and relational insight into all we may observe and experience in and around us. They yield revelation, not on demand but according to the rhythms and creativity of the cosmos." [Charlene Spretnak]

way forward...

It takes but a little investigation to see the great divergence of opinion in the literature as to the actual efficacy of TCAM in hospital settings. This of course has nothing to do with TCAM value and benefit per se and everything to do with the way conventional medicine is practiced and standardized. 

Looking at homeopathy as an example, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trials are suited to rapid-diagnosis-based pharmacology but completely inappropriate for the evaluation of homeopathy's therapeutic potency. So the question becomes, how does one conduct investigations contiguous with the scientific method while allowing for the individualized interventions and widely variant posologies represented by classical homeopathic prescribing? How too can one make sense of ultramolecular and energy medicines in the language and aims of a mechanistic, materialist system, if only just long enough to get one's foot in the door? As it happens, I have some ideas.

aho

"Again and again, when Brahma's day arrives, all living entities come into being, and with the arrival of Brahma's night they are helplessly annihilated."

bibliomancy

p 363

Bhagavad Gita 

(Shaktivedanta Book Trust edition)

key to healing...

Putting my life on track towards my truest and deepest passions appears to me as key to healing, no matter how improbable or unlikely my vision seems. 

I've abandoned what has called me forward many many times in my life. I was intimidated by the obvious and formidable challenges, convinced I lacked the mettle and resolve to succeed much less prevail against inevitable attack from forces representing the status quo. To my surprise, cancer has shown me just how determined I can be. Thusly, whatever my timeline and however deep the friendship with error I court along the way, I wish to continue in this trend of doing what they say can't be done. May it be the guiding theme of all our existences.

pay dividends forward, hoarding is death...

we do ourselves and the mysteries of life a disservice when we look at experiences and circumstances through the limited lens of how they serve the self. it becomes clear when life tends you toward new ways of looking, sharing what you receive is the one way to make abundance a living, self-regenerating reality; grasping at abundance when and where you find it shackles you to the realm of hungry ghosts where there is only want and insatiability.

personality...

"What we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it." 

"Not the world, not what's outside of us, but what we hold inside traps us. We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world." (Gabor Mate)

"For there is nothing lost but may be found, if sought." (Edmund Spenser)

"Be a lamp onto yourselves." (Buddha)

long-term goal...

its my most genuine wish to participate in the slow but inexorable inclusion of holistic medicine, broadly termed TCAM (Traditional Complementary and Alternative Medicine), within institutional settings, particularly in pre- and post-operative care and street-level trench frontlines, arenas where TCAM could be readily mainlined and of particular potential value both to patients and our precious embattled health care system and wider social safety net...

a holistic approach...

"In the health field, a holistic approach may be seen as one of 

reestablishing a state of harmony of body, mind and spirit. 

It is essential to know much more about the patient than merely 

a list of symptoms. Thus, at the start, there must be time for 

the doctor to sit quietly and hear the words, to feel the presenting 

emotions and to sense the radiations of the person 

which will provide intimations of the activity of spirit."

[Evarts G. Loomis, M.D., F.A.C.S., homeopathic physician, surgeon, 

author and visionary, widely regarded as the father of holistic medicine]