Week three of the detox

I feel really good, lots of energy, which kind of goes against conventional wisdom, considering I am eating nothing! I miss meat. Damon made a steak last night and it smelled amazing.I got over the sugar a week ago, but now I am craving meat!

I have to keep repeating my mantra, “Consider the alternative.”
I can’t say for sure, but I think the tumor has shrunk. I can say for sure that I have shrunk. Two inches off my waist since I started three weeks ago. My amazing pilates teacher is noticing how much more pliable I am as a result of getting the toxins out.

Here is a taste of what I’m doing on a daily basis:

THE FOOD PROGRAM (From Dr. Richard Schultze’s Incureables program)

Drink at least one gallon of liquid a day. That's eight 16-ounce servings. Liquids should only be distilled or purified water, D-tox Tea, herbal teas (non-caffeine) and organic fruit and organic vegetable juices.

Second option; consume only 100% organic (Vegan) Vegetarian raw food and organic fruit and vegetable juice. Raw means no cooked food. This includes all vegetables, fruits, raw nuts and seeds, and soaked and sprouted beans and grains. Try to eat fresh organic produce that is grown locally and in season. If you choose to eat raw food you must take at least one day a week and juice fast.

Everybody must consume a combination of at least 8 to 16 ounces of fresh organic carrot, apple and parsley juice daily.

Absolutely NO animal flesh, eggs, milk or milk products (cheese, yogurt, butter). No cooked foods (bread, pasta, baked potatoes, tofu, etc.) NO alcohol, coffee, black tea or sugar.

Reading

In case you were wondering what glamorous plans I had this weekend.

There Are No Incurable Diseases: Dr. Schulze's 30-Day Cleansing & Detoxification Program

Beating Cancer with Nutrition

Alternative Medicine Magazine's Definitive Guide to Cancer: An Integrated Approach to Prevention, Treatment, and Healing

Marijuana Cooking: Good Medicine Made Easy

The New Food Lover's Companion: Comprehensive Definitions of over 3000 Food, Wine, and Culinary Terms (Barron's Cooking Guide)

Feels good to be out of that funk!

Thanks to my family and friends for hanging in there during the last week while I was feeling so dark and moody. I've been doing loads of research on breast cancer, survivors, alternative healing, and something started to really strike home with me.

Many of the women who had undergone the standard radiation and chemotherapy treatments looked a lot like my Aunt & sister did, like the life was being sucked right out of them. Even harder to take was that many of these photos were on tribute pages. On the other hand, just do an internet image search using words like “beat cancer, alternative, natural”, and you will see images of healthy looking people.

Saturday night, Andi Beltramo Shay, in town for a few days took me out to Planet RAW in Santa Monica for dinner and told me the inspiring story of her mother, who took her health into her own hands after her breast cancer returned after the conventional medicine "cure".

I’ve known Andi for a long time, she has inspired me over the years by being a fearless, independent woman who doesn’t give a damn what other people think about her. Andi was the first person to introduce me to Dr. Schultze’s book “There Are No Incurable Diseases”, when she herself found a lump in her breast. Andi did the detox program outlined in the book and her tumor began to shrink, and finally disappeared.

Over our raw, vegan dinner, she told me of her mother being diagnosed for the first time, being treated with chemotherapy, getting sick & losing her hair only to have the cancer come back again. During the second go around she did the radiation therapy, again getting sick and feeling the financial wallop.
She went back for so many surgeries (about 7 or 8) , the second time she had breast (and lymph node) cancer she received radiation treatment and it turned out that the technician was applying it to the wrong area! Andi's Mother tried to correct him by telling him that his was applying
it incorrectly, but he just snapped at her, saying that he knew what he was doing.
After that horror she decided to go the alternative healing route, which was obviously a success as she had been given four months to live.
She began to read everything she got her hands on about manifesting health by changing diet. She changed her diet, put herself on a pretty intense regimen and in time went back to her doctors who thought she’d been treated by another medical facility. Her doctors were astounded when she told them she’d healed herself. Her cancer was gone! That was in the early nineties and she is still alive today.
Choosing to go outside the conventional treatment box may take more courage than blindly following doctors’ orders in that doing so demands faith in your own ability to heal and taking responsibility for your health. I have begun to realize that our culture has us trained to do exactly the opposite of taking responsibility. We look to doctors to cure us, we look to politicians to pass laws to protect us, and we look to lawyers to sue tobacco companies when we get cancer from smoking. I am not in any way advocating blaming the people who are sick, I am advocating we start looking at the ways in which we can empower ourselves to really thrive.
I am not saying we should not use conventional medicine, I am saying we shouldn’t rule out alternative or Eastern medicine just because the industry that makes money off our disease says so.

Throughout my life, I have made a point to listen to my inner voice. The times when I didn’t I was sorry. Last week when I was thinking abut the course of treatment outlined by my doctor, my inner voice was screaming at me not to take the poison treatment. I’m not finished researching and asking questions, but I have already started Dr. Schultze’s program, it can’t hurt, and I feel that is the most positive distinction. Herbal, nutritional and Eastern medicine doesn’t hurt.

Full Moon

My moods have been all over the place this week, but then I am a Moonchild and we are notoriously temperamental. The full Moon never fails to light up my soul, and so after the stressful week of tests and thinking way too much about what amount of slicing and dicing I want to let the doctors do to me, I decided to take The Shadow (also born under the sign of the Moon) for a really long walk.
We walked down our usual streets around our house and then kept walking sunset becoming twilight and then the glorious full Moon rising. We discovered some really cool pockets of architecture from 1930’s California bungalows to Spanish style stucco to really dilapidated Craftsmen complete with bars over the windows to the quietly upscale homes around the Occidental campus.
The evening was so warm, with a light breeze carrying the smells of the ‘hood, carne asada, marijuana smoke, Jasmine flowers, it reminded me of the years I lived in San Francisco’s Mission District – except the sidewalk didn’t smell like pee.
The warm weather brings everybody out, the diversity that is Eagle Rock, runners, people dining on MIA Sushi’s patio, guys hanging out in front of Evil Or Sacred Tattoos, smokers burning cigarettes in front of Barrio Fiesta, teenagers rolling down the sidewalk, one on a skateboard, one pushing a shopping cart with another one in the cart, sports fans yelling at the flat screen at The Bucket, me & my Shadow.

The shitty mood I’ve been nursing all week was washed away by the life all around, the full Moon and I started to think everything would be OK no matter what comes. I’ve been feeling like I have to hurry up and make some decisions about treating this cancer and feeling so conflicted. There are some things I really want to do in the coming months that surgery, radiation or a combination will totally get in the way of.
Tonight I decided I should allow myself a little slack and take my time. I plan to have some more conversation with my doctors, to continue the Dr. Schultze detox and nutrition and most importantly, I will keep a positive outlook. The walk filled me with love for the beauty that is life and reminded me that I am not alone, plenty of other people have their own battles, and it’s part of life. I have been focusing too much on my inner turmoil, twisting my gut into a knot about a future that doesn’t even exist except in my mind.

The Shadow is having a nap on the cool tile floor at my feet. In this moment I am really happy and what more can I ask for? I most likely will have more anger that I have to deal with cancer again and I will probably feel sorry for myself again, but right now life is beautiful.

Another Doctor I became interested in

After the lumpectomy in 2002, I began to read about alternative treatments in addition to the generally accepted medical course. Specifically, I became interested in the role of vitamins and nutrition in healing my body.
I read "There Are No Incurable Diseases" by Dr. Richard Schulze, I decided I would try some of Dr. Schulze's detox programs, since they focus on getting more high quality vitamins into your system. I want to stress I did this in addition to the standard medical treatment and surgery I was getting from Dr. Funk and Dr. Aronowitz.
The program was not difficult. The most labor intensive aspect is the amount of fresh vegetables and fruits to be juiced every day. Bottled juices are not acceptable and juicing right before you drink is preferable.
I love the taste of fresh juices, so the only problem I really encountered had to do with breaking my sugar and fat cravings, but after about three days, I noticed a pretty dramatic increase in my energy and mood. After only two weeks, other people were commenting to me about the glow in my skin. I was feeling really good, which was important considering the fear I was facing on a daily basis.
I continued to get a lot of fresh juices into my diet even after I had completed the detox cleanse and I honestly feel I healed faster after the much more invasive and dramatic mastectomies than I did after the lumpectomy.
Six years later, I still use my juicer regularly and make sure I do a detox cleanse once a year.
I use a Waring extraction juicer I bought for around $60.00 at Costco. I really like it. It easily juiced just about everything, with the exception of wheatgrass. I also got a Citrus attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer since I really, really love citrus juice. I'm not pitching these products, just telling you what I used and what works well for me.