Healing Journeys, Wise Choices

Overwhelmed by your cancer diagnosis? Know that you‘re not alone. Here real people offer up their own stories as a way to help you navigate the often confusing and painful terrain of treatment and recovery. Their practical advice can also provide stepping stones of natural and complementary therapies on the path toward healing.

Adapted from Definitive Guide to Cancer: An Integrated Approach to Prevention, Treatment and Healing by Lise Alschuler, ND, and Karolyn A. Gazella (Celestial Arts, 2007)

Kelly M. Fitzpatrick RN, ND
Endometrial Cancer
Throughout my years as a naturopathic physician with a general medical practice, people would ask me, “What would you do if you had cancer?”
After being diagnosed with Stage IIIC endometrial cancer, I experienced how difficult the decisions can be. My diagnosis confused me. The terminology used by the oncologist shocked me. I shrank from the descriptive words: aggressive, reoccurrence, rare, more surgery, highly suspicious, and invasive. How was I to treat this diagnosis—allopathically, alternatively, or with an integrated approach?

Through the tears and the confusion, I sought out alternative practitioners specializing in cancer. I spent many hours researching and discussing options with my oncologist and naturopathic colleagues. I sat in silence to hear my own voice and the voice of a higher power.

I embarked on a path of comprehensive integrated cancer treatment: two naturopaths and a Chinese medical doctor for nutritional recommendations, supplemental therapy, hydrotherapy, homeopathy, acupuncture, and herbal remedies.

Adding these complementary therapies to treatment can be overwhelming and, at times, very challenging. Yet, as I reflect on my surgeries and recovery, I believe the integrated program helped greatly to reduce the side effects and provide me with the energy and desire to pursue interests during those long months.

During a Woman’s Vipassana retreat, the Dharma teacher spoke of dissolving and resurfacing, remembering and forgetting, and noticing the way we relate in every circumstance. I asked her for consolation and guidance during this time ahead. She spoke of the state of confusion I was entering. She encouraged me to greet this confusion, practice unknowing, and cultivate it into spaciousness.

Could I do what she suggested? Even with all of this? I continued to contemplate her advice over the months of therapy. When I was presented with another course of treatment, when I felt another layer of myself removed, when I experienced the vulnerability of selflessness, when I sold my practice and my home and moved in with my sweetie, I asked myself—“This too?”

Finally, after all the allopathic treatment was completed, I continued on an alternative treatment plan of detoxification and immune system restoration. I think the aftercare program is the most important element of reducing reoccurrence and the potential for primary cancer cells to grow. Follow-up care means continuing to care for myself and making the changes necessary to effect healing on all levels: physical, emotional, mental, environmental, and spiritual.

Rick Prill
Spinal Cord Tumor
The surgery the doctor prepared me for was not intended to cure my disease, only to try to stop it from spreading farther and to maintain my quality of life for as long as possible. Even the best outcome would include minor disabilities due to nerve damage caused by the spinal cord tumor or by the surgery. I could also incur the significant disabilities I had been told to expect by my previous doctor—damage to bladder, bowel, sexual function, and legs. Losing the use of both legs was a distinct possibility. I could even die.

I pulled some local resources together—counseling, massage, and relaxation techniques. I started a regimen of supplements before the surgery to help with the recovery, mostly immune builders and homeopathics such as ledum for puncture wounds and arnica for bruising and trauma.

The surgery took 12 hours. They performed a radical laminectomy on six vertebrae in order to expose as much of the spinal cord as they could to eliminate as much of the tumor as possible. Within four hours I was asked to move my limbs and digits, and everything seemed capable of moving. While I was not out of the woods, this was the best news yet.

My surgeon introduced me to a radiation oncologist, though I was against radiation treatment. At the first meeting, he laid out 50 pages of data on mortality rates for my condition with and without radiation. This probably saved my life. Roughly 80 percent of those who hadn’t pursued radiation had had a recurrence and died. Radiation appeared to be the only way to kill any tumor tissue not removed by surgery.

To boost my immune system, I stopped the prescription pharmaceuticals my doctors prescribed. I had regular massages, ate foods high in antioxidants (beets, red cabbage, and green, orange, and yellow vegetables), and drank green tea along with heavy doses of antioxidant vitamins. I took hypericum to repair nerve damage. I used visualization therapy during the actual radiation treatments, imagining cool ocean water lapping over my spinal cord for 30 minutes before, all during the treatment, and for 30 minutes, every day for eight weeks.

After about six weeks of radiation, I was told to postpone the final two weeks of treatments for a month. My white blood cell production had suffered, and they wanted me to come in once a week to monitor it. I immediately began taking the Chinese herb astragalus. A week later my white blood cell count was normal. The doctors were stunned, but the treatments resumed, and I remained the picture of health at the end of the radiation treatments, while other patients receiving the same doses and length of treatment were compromised.

Physical recovery is not the end of the recovery process. Emotional recovery and the emotional implications of the diagnosis and treatment may not seem critical to physical healing, but by the time the patient has managed through the physical recovery, his journey is just beginning. My process was four years long, and undoubtedly the most fulfilling of my life in terms of self-awareness, life improvement, and personal development.

Al Alschuler
Pancreatic Cancer
The summer before they found the tumor, I had cranked a hand-powered tricycle 624 miles up the hot, humid, hilly East Coast to a family reunion to celebrate my 65th birthday. I was also gathering material for a book I’d write that explored what it means to be an exuberant new senior and prepare to “greet sister death” with a smile and a song. The following February, less than 24 hours after completing the book, my partner Suzanne said, “You look terrible. I’m taking you to the emergency room.” By midnight, the ER doc told me I had a compromised gallbladder and a suspicious growth on my pancreas.
“Suspicious?”
“Probably cancer.”
“And if it is?”
“It’s the worst kind. There’s no protective sheath around the pancreas. It spreads fast. There is no cure. It’s invariably fatal.”
“How much time?”
“A few months. Maybe a bit more.”

It seemed too coincidental to be accidental. My book was a seminar. Now I had a practicum in dying well. It also was a total shock to a professor who knew he’d die someday but, like most of us, acted as if he’d live forever.
My four children gathered immediately from Spain, Costa Rica, Illinois, and Massachusetts. Suddenly there was so little time left to enjoy each other. They helped me find a superb doctor who performed a miraculous 12½-hour operation to remove a 3-inch tumor and nearby cancerous nodes. I felt both pessimistic and liberated. Those things that had been important for my security—my work as a professor, my income, and home—were now irrelevant. Thoreau said, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” Only being with loved ones was important.

At the suggestion of my doctor daughter [Lise Alshculer, ND, coauthor of the Definitive Guide to Cancer], one of the world’s foremost authorities on naturopathic treatments for cancer, I received a special form of chemotherapy at her hospital that included direct showering of the liver—the first and most likely place the cancer might spread. Although the two treatments nearly killed me—I’d lost nearly 70 pounds by that time—I was optimistic.
Lise, my doctor daughter, gave me a regimen of 15 herbal and natural supplements and three liquids to boost my immune system, promote T-cell activity, reduce inflammation, and attack the cancer. I increased my workouts, eventually swimming a mile a day. It felt good to be proactive.

A cocktail of chemotherapy drugs failed. The cancer spread. Officially I became stage IV—completely metastasized. The doctor looked me in the eye and said, “Think weeks or a few months. Not years.” I was shocked again.
Thinking about death 24-7 really sucks, but I made friends with this dark companion. As my youngest daughter pointed out, “This is not just a problem for you, Dad. It’s a problem for all of us.” She was right, of course. I’ve spent time with each of them and asked if there was anything troublesome they were holding that we could discuss and clean up. I didn’t want them to carry unnecessary burdens that would be more difficult to resolve after I died. There were some painful moments and honest confessions. We cried together. I asked for forgiveness and was forgiven.

All of them said that my “eyes wide open” approach to death was helpful. I wanted to give to them what my father had given to me—a model of how dying could be sane, graceful, and loving—to help them get ready to let me go, just as I was preparing to do that myself.

I also consulted with Victor, a spokesperson for a distinguished group of teachers who happen not to have bodies—spiritual beings on “the other side.” At first, his disembodied nature bothered me—a lot. However, after 30 years of inner consultation, perspectives that deepened my understanding of problems, inspiration when I was discouraged, and authorization to do what I could to make this world more like that one, Victor’s lack of physical existence was a trivial matter.

Victor pointed out that the inevitable uncertainty about death means that our belief about it is a choice and a matter of faith. We must exercise our cherished free will. We can fear it or welcome it. It’s another opportunity to choose our path Home to The Friend. I’d dropped my mother’s body at birth. At “death” I will drop the body that served me well for a lifetime. Victor convinced me that dying is perfectly safe—a second birthday.

My continued existence 15 months after my diagnosis has left conventional doctors without explanations. I’m a collection of feelings: at peace with an early death (most of the time); occasionally sad at the loss of time; deeply grateful for the marvelous choices my children have made to become such superb adults; looking forward to seeing my youngest child graduate from college in a month after a brilliant career there; thankful for the love that reverberates among my four children and me; completely satisfied with my 40-year career as a professor; enjoying the little things every day that are 99 percent of life. As one of my students said when she was approaching her early death from cervical cancer, “It’s all here! It’s all right here all the time.”

From Lise Alschuler
On August 3, 2006, my father passed away from pancreatic cancer, surrounded by his children. His brave, desperate, graceful, and epic fight finally came to an end. My father was not afraid of dying, but rather was so sad to leave living. He loved life. As his health began to fail, his joy in living became more and more focused on joy in loving.

While enveloped in this shroud of love, I had to let him go. It was—and is—the most painful parting that I have ever experienced. In many ways, this book has been one of the outstretched hands that has helped guide me through this transition. As my father said, “I see the importance of sharing with each other, of opening up, of trying to make this a healthy, loving, and liberating experience for all of us. It feels much better to do this together than to struggle alone.”

Help for Chemo Side Effects

Some natural substances may provide us with the answers we are looking for. Here are a few examples of natural substances and therapies and the side effects they can help alleviate:

• Coenzyme Q10 and L-carnitine can protect the heart.

• Vitamin E, L-glutamine, and vitamin B6 can help protect against nerve damage.

• Fish oil can help prevent malnourishment and cachexia (wasting syndrome).

• Vitamin E, L-glutamine, deglycyrrhizinated licorice (DGL; glycyrrhizin in licorice can potentially raise blood pressure, so it’s important to use this type), and honey may help with mouth sores.

• Acupuncture and ginger can help with nausea.

• L-glutamine and probiotics can alleviate diarrhea.

• Melatonin, fish oil, and mushroom extracts can reduce immune impairment.

• Melatonin can help with immune impairment and cancer-related sleep disturbances.

• Zinc may minimize changes in the sense of taste.

• Coenzyme Q10 and a multivitamin can help with fatigue.

For more information on the side effects of various chemotherapy drugs, how supplements can help with those side effects, and when certain supplements are contraindicated, consult your healthcare practitioner or the Definitive Guide to Cancer: An Integrated Approach to Prevention, Treatment and Healing by Lise Alshculer, ND, and Karolyn A. Gazella (Celestial Arts, 2007).

Create a Healing Lifestyle
There’s a diverse world of healthful lifestyle choices to choose from, and because each of us is unique, we must all do some exploring to find which are the best fit. Before making any lifestyle changes, consult your doctor.

Exercise and movement enhances immunity, improves mood, reduces pain, increases energy, improves circulation, and more. Try strength training, yoga, walking, dance, qigong, swimming, or any movement you enjoy.

Bodywork, such as massage, can reduce stress, improve immunity, and help manage pain.

Meditation has been shown to increase relaxation, reduce pain levels and fortify the ability to cope with pain, increase energy, and improve self esteem.
Creative activities, such as art therapy, can reduce pain, anxiety, and depression. Try writing, music, or visualization.

Cultivating positive emotions helps increase your daily experience of love, happiness, and fulfillment. Reach out to loved ones, heal or let go of toxic relationships, and engage in healthy connections with others.

Spirtuality, manifested through prayer, meditation, or spiritual imagery, can help provide you with a greater context for your experience with cancer.

Top 10 Ways to Prevent Cancer and Enhance Health

1. Eat more fruits and vegetables—at least five servings daily.

2. Exercise for a minimum of 30 minutes four times a week and then increase the amount as you are able to.

3. Obtain adequate sleep—for most people that is at least eight hours nightly.

4. Practice some form of stress reduction.

5. Eat organic whenever possible.

6. Drink more water (preferably purified water) and green tea.

7. Avoid or reduce your consumption of alcohol, sodium, and excess fat.

8. Avoid or reduce your exposure to toxins.

9. Love yourself and those around you.

10. Communicate clearly, openly, and honestly.